Thanks, I appreciate that :)

It is true, if they hadn't done Nazi things and had actual allies they could have done better, for sure.

Exactly. It's Fascism 101 - you invade anyone smaller than you to get slaves/money/etc, you pick scapegoats to blame for any issues you have, and you steal everything not nailed down, and then you move on to the next place. Eventually you pick a fight you can't win, and then you lose.

Part of them losing that fight was two of my grandparents, and I'm kinda pissed we're dealing with them again. So I want to reinforce: If a country goes fascist, this shit is coming. Nazi Germany was never going to win anything with an ideology that flawed.

There would be no way to stop. The German economy was really messed up by the Nazis. They essentially had no exports because they were producing mainly materiel for the war and were under an embargo anyway.

That means they had no way to get money besides literally taking it from conquered countries. The problem is, you can only loot once. This created a vicious cycle where they became more isolated and needed to conquer even more.

Honestly, before nukes existed, the Nazis could have been defeated by an embargo. But it would have cost more lives. Invading Germany saved lives and the nukes saved even more lives in Japan.

If you’re brainwashed by your own propaganda, attacking both superpowers probably feels like a good idea

Operation Bruhbarossa

In their defense, they kicked the everliving shit out of one world power (France) already

The USSR lost more, spent more, and was more affected and effective than the USA in WWII.

Deleting the USSR from your history makes that history wrong and dumb.

Straight facts.

The US showed up at the tail end of WW1 and mostly just spread around influenza.

Meh. Don't get me wrong, the USA joining world war 1 was the final nail in the coffin and likely cut the war short by a lot (and made it a slam dunk for the allies, instead of a pyrrhic victory), but compared to, say, Canada or Australia (not to mention the UK and Russia that both lost as much, if not more men than France) they basically didn't fight. They joined very early and were invaluable in holding french territories throughout the war, which is why they both suffered more losses than the USA even though their militaries (and populations) were way smaller.

WW2 USA was an absolute juggernaut though

Very true, it's how we crushed the Japanese, too. They were almost literally clearing neighborhoods for reclaimed metal and wood, converting entire towns into production facilities and even with that, they paled in comparison to the productive giant of the Goblino. Their zeroes might take 3 planes out of ours, and we would replace them three-fold and with more experienced pilots. They were forcing young pups into dilapidated old craft at the risk of great military disgrace to Kamikaze us because they knew they had no better options. The horrors we faced in the Pacific were truly abject, but it still would have been remarkable to be a wallflower back then and see the collective gusto that we managed to pull together, and all while still maintaining a perfectly functional economy with a massive swathe of our workforce overseas. I read somewhere that the US was using not more than 20% of our manufacturing capacity towards munitions and craft, and even then we were absolutely devastating the Axis.

Had the USSR capitulated to the Germans, there was a real risk that the UK would follow as the German war machine could refocus its efforts. India would likely have fallen soon after to the Japanese. At that point, the German production base, which was already heavily geared up, would have access to all the resources it could possibly need, and the US would have had serious trouble defeating them. It would be a race to the A-bomb and who could produce them the fastest most likely, although it's questionable how effective the weapon would be with a consolidated Luftwaffe without a continental power keeping them busy.

Without the British, intelligence efforts against Germany would have significant issues. It's possible that the USSR would capitulate due to this.

Without US lend-lease, the USSR would have capitulated as well, and with only the British standing against Germany hope would have been lost.

The German war machine was extremely powerful. It could not keep going forever of course, and in due time they would have failed. But had any major power not been in the war, Germany could likely have consolidated enough power to avoid successful invasions from overseas powers.

It wasn't close. Plenty of countries hadn't joined in yet. Only European countries and allies were fighting directly.