Oh man....me and you need to meet up for coffee and nerd out hard core. I majored in history and holocaust and genocide studies BUT I too am very interested in all WWII history. Before graduating I had to write a thesis. My thesis was, "How the Weather Effected Operation Barbarossa." I am a firm believer that the weather played a HUGE role in the operations failure however many historians disagree. They maintain that it was a factor of coarse but it was the vastness of Russia, supply lines and basically the fact that Russia had crazy amounts of people to throw into the front lines. However; I say that the vastness was overcome within two months, the Germans were basically on the door step of Moscow by August, the supply lines were keeping up decently but once the weather turned it was all over and the Red Army was so disorganized the Germans just plowed through them in those two months. My main argument as some historians call it, is Hitler's Summer Pause when in August he decided to stop, re-think his view of Moscow and head for Kiev and the oil fields. HOWEVER! and this is really interesting, while i researching i came across a document that was published around the 1950s in Arizona written by German meteorologists. Basically it states that the Summer Pause was because of rains which began around August which i am sure you have read in many memoirs BUT this was only the beginning of the Russian wet season. It was the belief that traveling in August would be too much for the German war Machine to continue onto Moscow, therefore Hitler decided to head south until they ended....but they did not end obviously. The German scientists messed up! Resulting in a winter war. Furthermore, Hitler called for swift victory so many Germans were fighting in their summer uniforms in December, their guns were freezing, tanks broke down, and artillery was of no use due cloud cover. Meanwhile, the Russians had weapons and tactics designed for winter warfare. For example, the T-34 with ultra wide tracks and low center of gravity so it could zip across the Russian and Ukrainian steppes with retaliative ease. THat is basically the thesis in a nutshell. I focus on Moscow, Leningrad and finally Stalingrad and the German 6th Army. If you are looking for pictures or more literature, check out "In Deadly Combat A German Soldiers Memoir of the Eastern Front" by Gottlob Herbert Bidermann. It is by far the best WWII German Memoir I have read. YAY HISTORY!
. That's on the Military Channel, no?