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I used to play computer games about WW 2, an especially good one is the German attack on Russia.  Computer games can be useful in giving on a good sense of where cities are, what terrain is like "roughly", and what forces are present.  It's of course very possible, not really easy, to beat the computer playing either side.

Guderian wrote a book after the war that folks like Liddel Hart supported (and vice versa) that Germany would have won except for Hitler's mistakes.  It was pretty self serving and I can recommend (again) the book entitled "Barbarosa" by Clark.  Guderian claimed if this and if that they could have won in 1941, or at least captured Moscow.  Napoleon of course did capture Moscow, but it wasn't a rail and manufacturing hub at that time as it was in 1941.

The Wehrmacht knocked out more divisions in 1941 than they estimated Russia had, and more were on the way.  The Russian divisions of course were generally not well trained and initially not well equipped, but there were a lot of them.  In the computer game, the German player can go about anywhere he wants, mostly limited by logistics, but he can't go everywhere at once, you have to pick and choose.  If you pick perfectly, which one figures out after playing a number of times, you win.  Wars are far from perfect things.

Speaking of the V2 project, Germany also built an aircraft carrier, almost complete, during the war.  The effort is probably equal to maybe 20 submarines.  Instead of the V2 maybe they could have made ~300 Panther tanks, or more, but they were obviously becoming short on manpower, and FUEL.  That was a war about fuel, mostly, it's why Japan attacked PH in 1941.  It's why Hitler wanted the Caucusus in 1942.  It's why the middle east was largely a British fiefdom.

An interesting scenario is Hitler doesn't attack Russia in 1941 but gives Rommel enough support to knock the Brits out of Egypt, thus opening access to the ME oil fields, and perhaps bringing Turkey into the conflict, or going up into the Caucusus through Iran (geographically tough).  India likely falls at some point, Japan gets the entirety of coastal Asia, and things are different.

But Hitler of course always had Russia in his mind.

There also was a V3 under construction, partially built, a long fixed in place artillery piece meant to strike London.  That would have been ... bad.

On this date in History
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1903 Chicago White Sox commit 11 errors against Detroit Tigers but win 10-9 at South Side Park. Chicago

1915 Future Baseball Hall of Fame slugger Babe Ruth hits his first MLB home run; pitches 12 frames in Boston Red Sox 4-3 extra innings loss to New York Yankees

1934 MLB Boston Red Sox score 12 runs in 4th inning, including record 4 consecutive triples hit by Carl Reynolds, Moose Solters, Rick Ferrell, and B Walters

1940 Pulitzer prize awarded to John Steinbeck for "The Grapes of Wrath"

1945 World War II: Axis Sally delivers her last propaganda broadcast to Allied troops (first was on December 11, 1941).

1954 English athlete Roger Bannister becomes the first to run a sub-4-minute mile, recording 3:59.4 at Iffley Road Track in Oxford

1968 Columbia Records releases "Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison", the first live album by American singer-songwriter Johnny Cash, recorded in January 1968

1973 1st WHA championship, New England Whalers beat Win Jets, 4 games to 1

1974 Oakland A's pitcher Paul Lindblad makes an errant throw in 1st inning of 6-3 loss to Baltimore, ending his record streak of 385 consecutive errorless games

1982 Seattle Mariners Gaylord Perry becomes 15th pitcher to win 300 games

1987 Niroslav Milhailovic begins 54 hours of telling jokes

1994 Channel Tunnel linking England and France officially opens

1998 Kerry Wood strikes out 20 Houston Astros to tie the major league record held by Roger Clemens. He threw a one-hitter and did not walk a batter in his 5th career start.

2020 Irish organization repays a 170 year old favor, raising over $2 million (to date) for US Navajo Nation and Hopi Reservation badly affected by COVID-19. In 1840s Choctaw Nation sent $170 to aid Irish potato famine.

I think Guderian was quite a good tactician and Corps level commander.  I'd opine Manstein was by a goodly measure the best overall Nazi commander at every level of command.  He even proposed the basic attack plan for France 1940.  But for Hitler to win, everything had to go right, pretty much, and that is unlikely to happen over the long term.  I think after successes in Poland/France/Greece/Norway, Hitler presumed he could make no mistakes.

It is arguable that Greece and Mussolini cost him the war in the East.  Italy attacked Greece early in 1941 and it was not going well for them, at all.  Hitler diverted several divisions to bail him out, and ordered the attack on Crete of course.  This probably cost the British a chance at securing north Africa because they sent troops to Greece and then had to pull them out.  But those German divisions had to be pulled back and rested and refitted before Barbarossa could kick off.  Some folks note that the spring in 1941 was wet in the East and Hitler really couldn't have moved earlier effectively.

I think Guderian was quite a good tactician and Corps level commander.  I'd opine Manstein was by a goodly measure the best overall Nazi commander at every level of command.  He even proposed the basic attack plan for France 1940.  But for Hitler to win, everything had to go right, pretty much, and that is unlikely to happen over the long term.  I think after successes in Poland/France/Greece/Norway, Hitler presumed he could make no mistakes.

It is arguable that Greece and Mussolini cost him the war in the East.  Italy attacked Greece early in 1941 and it was not going well for them, at all.  Hitler diverted several divisions to bail him out, and ordered the attack on Crete of course.  This probably cost the British a chance at securing north Africa because they sent troops to Greece and then had to pull them out.  But those German divisions had to be pulled back and rested and refitted before Barbarossa could kick off.  Some folks note that the spring in 1941 was wet in the East and Hitler really couldn't have moved earlier effectively.

The basic argument, as you know, is "the Italian disaster in Greece pushed back Barbarossa by a month and if Barbarossa had been launched a month earlier then they'd have gotten to the outskirts of Moscow a month earlier and they'd have been able to take it."  

I agree with what you've said and I'll add this:
I've come to the conclusion that the primary thing that stopped the German Army in December, 1941 was neither the Russian winter nor the Soviet Russian Army.  Both of those were factors to be sure and I don't mean to take anything away from them.  Russian winters are REALLY cold and the Russian soldiers fought bravely.  That said, winter actually allowed better movement.  In the fall it was rainy and wet and the Russian (dirt) roads became quagmires of mud.  The cold at least froze the mud and tanks can move a lot better on frozen ground than in mud.  

The Soviet Army of 1941 simply wasn't ready to face up to a fully supplied German Army.  What stopped the Germans was their own logistical failures.  They simply couldn't get enough food/fuel/ammunition/stuff that deep into Russia so their Army bogged down for want of food/fuel/ammunition/etc.  Weather was only a minor part of this.  It was mostly an issue of distance and the rail network.  

Also, a lot of people will say that Hitler should have concentrated his forces against Moscow and that sounds good as long as you don't have to feed/fuel/arm them but if you do, concentrating MORE German troops at Moscow only makes the problem worse.  

Ironically Paulus predicted all of this BEFORE Barbarossa launched.  The Germans never intended to occupy all of the USSR.  Their goal was a to occupy everything West of a line running from Archangel (now Arkhangelsk) to Astrakhan.  Paulus conduced pre-invasion war-gaming and analysis and concluded that the Germans didn't have sufficient logistical capacity to actually get that far.  

Yes, logistics were critical for the Germans, complicated by the fact that Russian railroads were a different gauge than in Germany.  There wasn't much of a partisan problem, yet.

I do think the weather was a pretty serious issue though, tanks had their oil solidify if left not running.  The other factor was that Stalin was told by the Sorge spy ring in Japan that Japan was not going to attach Russia and they moved some pretty good Siberian troops to Moscow to counterattack.  Those were some of the best troops Stalin had and were used to the cold.

The computer game makes logistics/supply a critical issue for the Germans, that is mostly what one contends with in 1941-2.

I can't remember the title but I read a book about Sorge years ago. What a fascinating, incredible, and impactful guy.

I know about the Siberian troops, my contention is that a fully fed/fueled/armed Whermacht in 1941 would have brushed them aside and taken Moscow in a few weeks. The biggest factor stopping them was that they were short on food, short on fuel, short on ammunition, short on spare parts, short on everything.

Your comment about leaving the tanks running is spot on and that just exacerbated the logistical catastrophe. The cold did contribute largely because it meant higher demand for things like fuel and food and winter clothing.

One thing Guderian points out that I think is likely true is that the Germans tanks had worn out their treads (and their engines were about shot) by August 1941.  Tanks aren't usually meant to traverse such distances on their own, they are meant to travel on rail cars.  So, they aren't designed to operate on "Russian distances".   This is true with modern tanks as well.

So, by August, with great weather, the German Panzer units were highly depleted of usable tanks.  I think the ToE for a Panzer division was 400 tanks (panzers) and most were under 100 by then that were operable.  That's another form of logistics they didn't seem to consider.