The mountain terrain of Greece is hard a tank friend terrain and can be defensible by few troops , but this not make any difference. You can say weather is better, but you replace this by British help an the Yugoslavia change.

“Hah. To put things in perspective: I doubt I need to elaborate greatly on the late-war performance of the Red Army down south, other than observing that when it went seriously on the offensive advances tended to be counted in hundreds if not thousands of kilometers.”

The only reason they need to count “Hundreds if not Thousands of kilometers” is due to fact that they lost these same kilometers early in the same battlefields.

“In the Karelian Ishtmus the massive ’44 summer offensive took most of June just to push the frontline from the Leningrad outskirts to the “VKT” defense line running from Vyborg to Ladoga, and ultimately ran out of steam short of the ’40 border by early-mid July (after which Germany took priority and the troops were ordered to dig in).”
For obvious reason i don’t use the 44 offensive(Focus em Germany) , by later war i’m referring to second half of Winter War, when Soviets changed their tactics and command, same army, same enemy but the results improved.

“And the Soviets sure as *fuck* weren’t doing a repeat showing of the farce of four years earlier.”
About time. What you mean to farce?

I believe its one of the main reasons Guderian was Sacked. If they had attacked the Smolensk pocket? was it? They woulda been outside Moscow at least two weeks earlier. As far as the bullets or bread thing, it all ties in from there. Whats the point of bread and clothes without bullets.

Oh well, it is what it is….

The whole operation basically ran out of steam in about two weeks and achieved little of strategic consequence. The successive attacks in other parts of the front did little better.

Moreover it should probably be noted that the (relatively) dramatic territorial gains of the Kaiserslacht spring offensive were only achieved on sectors whose defenses weren’t, for varying reasons, properly echeloned in depth as by this point of the war should have been the case. Against proper defenses in depth the Sturmtruppen didn’t do all that much better than humbler troops – and certainly nothing of the sort the Allies went on to achieve with massed tanks.

Secondly I frankly have no idea where you take the information from that the use of the “Sturmtruppen” was “a disaster” and “helped Germany to lose the war”.

I’m referring to openly available facts that you can find for example at Wikipedia, yet your Information that the Germans sucked oh so badly seems a little more hidden. So if your would kindly provide me with a source or two I might even believe you. Until that happens I can only call massive BS.
As for your statement that they were “unable to break the French and British lines”. That is wrong. They did and at several points. the German command was just unable to exploit that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Offensive#Operation_Michael

As for the “by all means superior” french Army, you mention. (I never made any claims of any superiority of anybody – I am not interested in silly dick-comparation. As for these “superior” forces of 1917/18 – they were indeed of so high morale that they threw spontaneous parties:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Army_Mutinies

You are not, concidentally, French?

If you try to use a car to cruise a lake, the fault is from the car?
No, its your fault.
1-The regions of Murmansk port and north of Lake Ladoga, is a 900 km border so the Finns consider this border indefensible, due to absolute lack of roads and the snow that hit the region Finns never expected the Soviets to try to attack em mass here, but the Soviets chose to attack in these two points to seize the port of Petsamo and to cut the Finland in half.
2-In the Karelian Isthmus Later in the war, the tanks and Artillery worked very well to defeat the Finns Fortifications.Why its not worked at First?
You can say that the winter freeze the lakes so tanks can pass but actions reports showed its not a good idea(Finns shelling the ice), the change in Soviet command and in the Tactics make them work again.
3-The Army Group North big problem is the large and well positioned(using a defense in depth) Russian forces in the recent occupied Baltic countries, yet the objective to reach Leningrad before Winter is accomplished.
4-you mean the troops in Lapland?The only objective of German forces here is to keep the control of local Nickel mines later, by Soviet pressure , the Finns begin to force Germans to retreat to Norway, but only ~1000 Germans die in the fight.

The Poland is doomed for the begin, Finland too, but they can change their fate exploiting the enemy mistakes.