I fucking hate this talking point so much, mainly because it's so overanalytical that it thinks the people on the ground are robots that will obey any command given to them. Germany could have well won WW2 purely through a butterfly effect or a "for want of a nail" situation: A company is unable to hold onto a vital area and retreats, the word gets to other units of their retreat, morale falls, more units retreat, the tide of retreating units becomes so great that MPs can't handle them, and ultimately the whole battle is lost. Just transplant this onto the Battle of Moscow and you have a near-total collapse of the East. There was this documentary I watched a year ago, forgot the name now but it was made in the 90's and it interviewed some Eastern front veterans both Russian and German, especially one NKVD officer who was present during the battle of Moscow and another Red Army soldier who was captured at (I think?) Smolensk, essentially the starting phase of the war. The way they describe how piss poor Russian morale was by the time of Moscow really sealed it in for me that had the Germans at least reached the Kremlin the entire Eastern front would've collapsed.