They Chose...Poorly

Eighty years ago today, Nazi Germany decided it wanted its ass kicked.

That's not what its leaders thought, of course. They thought they were invading a weaker neighbor, one that could be quickly overwhelmed by superior military force and modern technology. In this they were largely accurate.

But they also thought that the rest of the world wouldn't care, and that they had the military might to put all of Europe under their control, and that they didn't need frippery like aircraft carriers from which to launch their planes when all of their major enemies could be reached after only a brief flight. They thought that a lonely Great Britain and an isolationist United States, even if the latter entered the war, would prove no match for the mighty Reich. They thought that their own industrial capacity could out-produce other nations to put the latest battlefield technology in the hands of their soldiers and at the command of their pilots.

But it turned out they were kind of wrong, so they got their asses kind of kicked.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of guys.