Well, guys, you may be quite right about Malta. We'll never know for sure, will we? I think that with a full effort the Germans and Italians could have established air superiority over Malta. Once that had been achieved, they could probably have managed the rest. But it's all just speculation at this point.

If I'd been commanding the German forces, I would have moved heaven and Earth to take Malta, and I would have started doing so in 1940, not in '41. And I would NOT have attacked Soviet Russia at all. I would have continued peacefully trading with the Soviets until the conflict in the West had been brought to an armistace between England and Germany...however long that took.

Hitler was emotionally committed to attacking Russia. That was his downfall, militarily speaking. His downfall politically speaking was his paranoid and hateful attitude toward just about everyone except "Aryans" (as he called them). Take a politically insane concept, wed it to a militarily very powerful and efficient nation, and you have an utter disaster on your hands.