I used to use the Christmas example, i.e. "would you attack people and kill them on Christmas morning if you knew you could win?" And the students were in absolute horror. I mean, an outright slaughter on the day of the birth of the baby jesus. But of course, that is the most famous moment of the Revolutionary War, Washington crossing the Delaware and all. Oh, yeah, in all that patriotic fervor, and all, we often forget that what old George had in mind was the hired mercenaries (Hessians, the Blackwater of its day) being German, and thinking they were safe - what kind of idiot would cross an ice filled river in wooden boats, AT NIGHT? - got drunk off their ass on Xmas eve, making them easy prey on that glorious morning. It was a turkey shoot as they say.
Of course, despite that, or maybe because of it, most of the Hessians stayed in the US after the war rather than going back to Germany, giving us such stupid city names as King of Prussia Pennsylvania.
And I don't think that Patton would have attacked the USSR, what he had in mind was doing a leapfrog on the Red Army - at that point far, far to the East of the Russian border, dependent on huge supply lines - and declaring victory. It might have worked.
