It was actually Hitler's greatest accomplishment. He almost sacked Moscow. The offensive went from northern Finland to the Mediterranean and just destroyed everything in its path. It was awful and brutal, but from a military standpoint, it was beautiful. Russia just could never be destroyed by Europeans, napoleon tried and failed, etc etc. Hitler tho, already fighting a war, almost did it. Media projections called for 2 weeks for Moscow to fall after the western front, but stalingrad.... the one choke point brought it crashing down. Men sneaking to corpses to grab rifles, people boiling wallpaper for calories, it was horrific. Yet this battle literally determined the current state of the world today
To be fair, how often do you imagine Russians discuss actions in north africa or belgium?