Harrison Morgan
“We have only to kick in the door, and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.” Hitler’s famous declaration prior to invading the Soviet Union illustrates how reality can shatter prewar expectations. But coming on the heels of the German Army’s blitzkrieg into Paris and the sudden collapse of the French Army after six weeks of fighting, why would he doubt Germany’s ability to defeat Stalin’s forces given Russia’s humiliating withdrawal in World War I, the devastation of Stalin’s purges, and the Red Army’s poor performance in the 1939 Winter War against Finland? He evidently did not. Yet, despite massive early losses, the Soviet Union not only survived but would demolish Hitler’s army and emerge as one of the world’s two superpowers by the war’s end.
Similarly, Israel’s two-pronged war against Hamas and Hezbollah has produced outcomes few expected. Before the conflict, Israeli military leaders assessed Hezbollah as the greater strategic threat. The group fielded an estimated forty to fifty thousand active fighters, with another forty thousand in reserve, and possessed as many as two hundred thousand rockets, including long-range precision missiles capable of striking deep into Israel. Hezbollah also had extensive combat experience in Syria, where its fighters spent years battling rebel forces to support the regime of Bashar al-Assad. In contrast, Hamas had a smaller force of approximately twenty-five thousand fighters, an arsenal of between eighteen and thirty thousand mostly short-range rockets, and significantly less battlefield experience.
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