That element is present, but it's ground he has already addressed in "A Republic, Not an Empire". To the extent that he brings up the issue at all it is simply as a part of "with the British blundering so badly, why did we need to involve ourselves to save their butts again?" It focuses more on the errors of British policy than anything.

Mosier points out as well the pattern of military infrastructure development near the frontiers suggested aggressive war, not defensive. For the latter, you build forts and roads and rails that run parallel to the border to facilitate the movement of troops from one trouble spot to the next. For offensive warfare, you build bases, rather than forts, and improve the transport infrastructure leading towards the frontier, to facilitate the movement of troops, reinforcements and supplies behind the advancing army. The Soviets were engaged exclusively in that second variety of construction.

That could be an ironic way of referring to the purges of the late thirties you realize - in a certain sense (i.e. 9mm doses), they were, which accounts for a lot of the ineptitude of the Soviet military in the early days (see, for example Finland)when Western observers characterized Soviet military maneuvers in the mid thirties as competently utilizing the latest and most modern equipment and tactics.

Except the operation to relieve Stalingrad was planned with the goal of taking back Ukraine. They kind of fell a little bit short, and that last because Paulus was an over-promoted staff officer, who wasted his armor taking it into an urban environment rather than protecting his flanks, and possibly surrendered prematurely, when Manstein et al were counting on him tying down Soviet forces for longer. Also, given how close Manstein's attempt to relieve Stalingrad got, units that were deployed to the West such as the Afrika Korps and the 1st SS (held in reserve in case Dieppe was the prelude to an invasion) could have made a significant difference. So much for Stalin's complaints about no Western Front (especially when the American war against the Japanese relieved him of the concerns of a second front.

Mosier cites Manstein's memoirs recording Hitler explaining that they needed to divert troops to defend Italy and the Adriatic coast from the Western powers who had just invaded Sicily. Hitler was a bit obsessive about protecting the Romanian oil fields.

Not so much as is generally believed. The mythical aspects of Soviet production figures is another area he explores, and that theoretical learning curve of the Soviets is not suggested by casualty figures, as the Germans' worst numbers were in the winter of Stalingrad, while the Russians were horrible all the way through. Right up until Berlin fell, they were still slaughtering the Russians in disproportionate numbers. That does explain what seemed to my mind an insane obsession with fighting off the Western powers from Hitler's point of view. The Russians would be the far worse occupying power, so it would seem more logical to throw everything into gambles to knock the Soviets out of the war, rather than the Ardennes campaign of late 1944. The usual answer to that is that the Soviets were so overwhelmingly powerful that such a blow would have been impossible, but if that were the case, Germany was doomed anyway, and the smart thing to do would be to throw all efforts into holding back the Red Army to give the Western powers time to establish a relatively more benevolent occupation. On the other hand, the rates at which they were killing Russians suggests that if they could just get the US & UK out of the fight, they could settle Stalin's hash right quick. The T-34 was adequate, but by the late war, the Panzer IV & the surprisingly effective (if despised by purists like Guderian) tank destroyers were easily their matches, and with superior leadership and competence in their deployment. Meanwhile, roughly half of the tanks deployed by the Russians were American or British manufacture. The Russian claims of their shortcomings were not shared by their German opponents. At least one German account of Kursk refers to defeating a unit of American tanks, with complimentary descriptions that suggest a Sherman. In addition, almost ALL the trucks and motor transport used by the Soviets came from the West, and the increasing ability demonstrated to follow up on their opportunities and break-throughs is more easily explained as a result of a critical mass of American transport and rolling stock arriving in the USSR to be so utilized. Likewise, the smashing of Army Group Center in 1944, was against the group which had been stripped of its armor and air assets to counter the Western invasion, and as he had in 1939, Stalin timed his assault in Eastern Europe for two weeks after his Western ally proved successful in their own invasion.

Even to the extent that the Soviets won and Mosier might be exaggerating the relative prowess of the two military systems the timing of too many of Stalin's wins with Western action severely undercuts his complaints that Russia was bearing the burden with no help or that the Allies were not making any significant contributions up until June 1944. He is able to throw the Siberian divisions at the Germans before Moscow - right after America's declaration of war on Japan relieves him the need to defend Siberia. He is able to cut off Stalingrad, after the German activity in North Africa diverts one of their better armor commanders and an elite unit and the allied raid at Dieppe causes another elite division to be withheld in Western Europe (and bear in mind that the elite German divisions had the firepower of Russian corps or armies, as the Soviet divisions tended to have only half the manpower they were supposed to have, let alone armor and support equipment). He is able to claim to have halted Operation Citadel days after the Allies invade Southern Europe. He is able to mount a successful offensive of his own weeks after the allied landings in Normandy. He is able to push into Germany at a horrific cost, after Hitler has shot his bolt in the Ardennes.

To be fair, I don't believe by the time they were up to the later variants of the Mark 3 they were necessarily operating several different models at once. Those tanks were first designed in the thirties and were practially obsolete then. They needed upgunning desperately, from the original 37mm gun, to the still inadequate 50mm (by war's end, armored cars were mounting guns of that caliber - plainly it was not a proper tank gun) and eventually the 75mm gun that was actually capable of harming an allied tank. At most they were running a couple of variants at any given time, and whatever the logistical difficulties of that scenario, they'd have been exponentially worse if they tried going back to the drawing board and working up a replacement for the PzKpfw III Aus B from scratch. This slip-shod & half-assed tank development is also strongly supportive of the premise of Buchanan (and from what you said, Taylor as well), that Hitler had no real plans for a war at the time it started. It also makes the various claims about Russians replacing their numbers as fast as the Germans could kill them, while the Germans dwindled rapidly from the beginning, somewhat less credible. The Germans lost Mark III, Aus C tanks and replaced them with Mark IV Aus D and Panthers and Tigers and supplemented them with tank destroyers, at first cobbled together from captured Russian guns and Czech tank chassis, and later purpose-built models like the Hetzer and Jagdpanthers that racked up massive kill totals, despite not being permitted to wear the black uniform of a Wehrmacht tanker.

A phenomenon not confined to the Germans, when one considers the oxymoron of "Soviet quality control" and the fact that the general who tried to bring this issue to Stalin's attention before the war got shot for his pains. A broken down German machine had a good chance of being recovered and repaired. A Russian break-down was scrap, at least until they got American tank recovery vehicles.

Mosier also makes a decent case, IMO, that while Hitler's stand-ground orders might be arguable, they were not the clear-cut error everyone claims. The logistical nightmares of a fighting retreat could have completely undermined the cohesion and professionalism of the Wehrmacht. The Soviet "tactic" of trading space for time in 1940 is another myth. They were attacking the entire way, and getting killed or captured in the millions. People allow the Soviet myth of a clever Fabian strategy to stand because the German advance makes them presume an equivalent Soviet retreat. If they did manage retreats, those were still the bloodiest months of the war for them, and you can hardly blame Hitler for worrying about the same thing happening to the Germans. Given the kinds of kills they were racking up, and the lack of defensible terrain and strong points in Eastern Europe, it was not like Normandy, where you simply retreated to the next hedgerow or stone village or hilltop and dig in again to bleed out your enemy some more. Retreating from Stalingrad, for example, probably meant falling back at least to the Dneiper or the Crimean region. Staying in Stalingrad effectively cut the Russians off from any western access. Hence Hitler's refusal to allow retreats is not as irrational or costly as is generally portrayed. Those German production difficulties also translated into logistical issues, which would be exacerbated by moving back and forth all the time.