>>>I think the Hitler and Napoleon and a number of others had the same problem, which wasn't just Russian. They had build a system that was only good at destorying. They had to give the system someone new to fight all the time, or the system would trun on them.<<<

FWIW, in my view the Russian campaign was still due, though residually so for the most part, to the revolutionary ideology that France had been going through for nearly two decades by then, which Napoleon came to benefit from and assume, and which the empire that he had instituted sought to project.

That of "liberation" or, on the other side of the coin, face annihiliation from, all the old regime monarchies replaced by or still in struggle with French armies arising out of the early years of the Revolution.

Through these early years of the French Revolution, what turned from supposed to then actual, largely French aristocratic and catholic emigres and a Louis XVI organizing with foreign powers to invade France to destroy the revolution, and then to successive governments of France battling both those foreign armies beyond France's original borders as well as internal "enemies of the Revolution" in civil war, soon developed into a revolutionary ideology involving warfare as all means against all of Europe and beyond.

In the first instance, France went to war defensively against all the monarchical systems that feared and fought against the French Revolution, and then went to war almost of the same cloth in order to "liberate" Europe from old regime governments and from a catholicism which little respected national and social boundaries.

However, these wars early on in the French Revolution soon drew more attention from France's internal problems towards the spoils of war. Napoleon's catapult to the national stage was in part due to the spoils, glory, and distraction gathered from campaigns in Italy. Soldiers had come to not only embody the revolutionary ideology, but also champion it, as contradictory as it had become.

But just beyond this factor of revolutionary ideology casting beyond frontiers, there was something more basic and similar to Napoleon's and Hitler's drive:

Messianism, and the belief that not only is there a natural hierarchy to life (....some people are born to rule, some are born to serve...), but that the road to power is also open to anyone (and not just to some specific castes or elites). The mindsets of both of these individuals over the years, particularly once they attained to rule, of course came to involve other factors as to their drive(s) -- vanity, revenge, lust, conflict, degeneration, etc etc etc -- but the road to rule was primarily paved with these universal views of life projecting into nationalism that they (and much of Europe and the world) shared.

It is no surprise then to see, especially as the revolutionary wars progressed, that the "liberated" peoples of Europe found themselves under a different yolk with Napoleon. Arguably, freer, yes. Still, many of the trappings of the "old regime" of France and the continent merely changed faces with the institution of Napoleon's empire....

In each case of their "rise," you simply have a revolution of the displacement of one belief system(s) with another.

>>>I think the Hitler and Napoleon and a number of others had the same problem, which wasn't just Russian. They had build a system that was only good at destorying. They had to give the system someone new to fight all the time, or the system would trun on them.<<<

FWIW, in my view the Russian campaign was still due, though residually so for the most part, to the revolutionary ideology that France had been going through for nearly two decades by then, which Napoleon came to benefit from and assume, and which the empire that he had instituted sought to project.

That is to say an ideology of "liberation" or, on the other side of the coin, face annihiliation from, all the old regime monarchies replaced by or still in struggle with French armies arising out of the early years of the Revolution.

Through these early years of the French Revolution, what turned from supposed to then actual, largely French aristocratic and catholic emigres and a Louis XVI organizing with foreign powers to invade France to destroy the revolution, and then to successive governments of France battling both those foreign armies beyond France's original borders as well as internal "enemies of the Revolution" in civil war, soon developed into a revolutionary ideology involving warfare as all means against all of Europe and beyond.

In the first instance, France went to war defensively against all the monarchical systems that feared and fought against The Revolution, and then went to war almost of the same cloth in order to "liberate" Europe from old regime governments and from a catholicism which, as things turned, little respected national and social boundaries.

However, these wars early on in the French Revolution soon drew more attention from France's internal problems towards the spoils of war. Napoleon's catapult to the national stage was in part due to the spoils, glory, and distraction gathered from campaigns in Italy. Soldiers had come to not only embody the revolutionary ideology, but also champion it, as contradictory as it had become. And public opinion was at that point more worried about economic woes such as the debt, and about getting beyond The Terror.

But just beyond this factor of revolutionary ideology casting beyond frontiers, there was something highly likely more basic and similar to Napoleon's (and Hitler's) drive:

Messianism, and the belief that not only is there a natural hierarchy to life (....some people are born to rule, some are born to serve...), but that the road to power is also open to anyone (and not just to some specific castes or elites). The mindsets of both of these individuals over the years, particularly once they attained to rule, of course likely came to involve other factors as to their drive(s) -- vanity, revenge, lust, conflict, degeneration, etc etc etc -- but the road to rule was primarily paved with these universal views of life projecting into nationalism that they (and much of Europe and the world) shared.

It is no surprise then to see, especially as the revolutionary wars progressed, that the "liberated" peoples of Europe found themselves under a different yolk, a yolk nonetheless, with Napoleon. Arguably, freer, yes. Still, many of the trappings of the "old regime" of France and the continent merely changed faces with the institution of Napoleon's empire....

In each case of their "rise," you simply have a revolution of the displacement of one belief system(s) with another.