German superiority, myth or fact?

The "average" leg infantry formation of 1939-41 was nothing to sneer at, IIRC the first two Welle (about 60 divisions) were either standing army or fully trained reservists at war start and one of those units was likely to come out top against any similar sized opponent, the reason there was simply better infantry tactics evolved from the WW1 assault troops, their opponents were lagging behind the learning curve at the time.
IMO taking over a whole country with around 3 corps of infantry and despite foreign intervention is a pretty good track record for the troops involved, despite the episodes mentioned, and I consder Dietl's troops performance at Narvik as outstanding not poor.
I did limit my example to Sebastopol ratrher than Crimea as 22Pz had a key role in the Kerch battles and I wanted "pure" infantry actions. The dilution of combat power of the infantry only took place after the 1941 losses, and the units TA describes, that included the dregs of the manpower pool, and most likely second rate captured equipment as well, still often proved pretty tough opponents, look at Market Garden, a lot of the opposition was from scratched together units, the British and US forces were elite but the attack still failed. The only Geman units I can think of that performed consistently poorly were the LW field divisions and they didn't last long, 10 "bad" divisions out of nearly 300 is not bad.
They were not supermen and far from as good as their propaganda tried to show them but "troop quality" is the only possble explanation for the results they achieved, logistcs were poor, equipment not significantly better and the raw numbers were usually not in the German advantage.

 

I disagree.

The Norwegain army was not mobilized, the British failed to send aircrafts to contest the Luftwaffe (the few Gloster Gladiators were bombed n the frozen Lesjaskogsvatnet). The British sent two Brigades 148th and 15th who was rushed to the frontline when the Germans held the supplybases in southern norway.

The French sent Foreign Legionaires who were ill suited to combat in a friendly country (pillage and rape) and some Chasseurs du Alpine who did well in the assault on Narvik.

The Poles did help on the Narvik front with sea power (destroyer) and mountain troops.

Main point is that the Allies only put their efforts on the Narvik front, but scatterd Coys from the 16th and 14 IR fought their way to the gates of the city.

The poor display of the Allies (in particular the British) actually inspired many Norwegians who would end up in the Waffen SS. The Germans seemed better (they would win the war)

Of the many landings in Norway only in Oslo fjord is anything close to an opposed landing. Blucher was sunk by a junior officer who took initiative and full responsibility.

Dietl did not acheive any victory on the battlefield in Narvik. Colonel Sundlo capitulated as soon as the Germans got ashore (Sundlo was a Quisling) Dietl used the survivors from the Destroyers and the other German ships sunk at the port in Narvik to bolster his forces. Even with replacements rushed on the train from Sweden he was driven all the way to the Swedish border by the Norwegians and Allies.

What saved Dietl was the Allied withdrawal from Norway.

 

How many examples of anywhere from average to pathetic would you like?

 

While you can obviously find lots of "average to pathetic" if you look at the big picure, like Army Group A in France, that was essentially an infantry formation, they usually came out on top, The early campaigns were not just the panzers, there were only 10 of them in France !!!

As for Dietl IMO most other troops in a similar situation would have surrendered, they kept on fighting until events elsewhere forced the allies to retreat, that is why I consider their performance "superior", you may call it fanaticism if you choose, but keeping on fighting against bad odds is one of my "troop quality" criteria.

I'm not underestimating the effect that being attacked before having mobilized had on the capability of resistance of the Norwegians, though why they failed to mobilize when both sides were preparing to invade, the allied troops were already on board when the Germans landed, is an interesting "off thread" question. The Italians attacked France without mobilization and the results were not good to say the least, Units lacking 20 to 40% of theoretical manpower tend to be not very effective, IIRC in the Norwegian case at the time of the attack most units were just cadres with barely 10 to 15% of theoretical strength.

Jaeger, while I would agree that the foreign legion that mostly trained for desert and colonial warfare would not be my first pick for Norway aren't you confusing them with the goumiers (native north african troops). The FL was mostly made up of white europeans and had iron discipline, the Chasseurs des Alpes were mountain troops ideally suited for the terrain.

 

No confusion on the Foreign Legion. My grandfather was there.
13th Demi-Brigade of the Foreign Legion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He traded a coat with one of the French Mountain lads (camo pattern on one side, winter camo on the other).

The 51st Highland Division was shot to bits during the 1940 campaign. They could have retreated as an intact unit to be transported at sea, instead they stood by their slower moving French allies and ended up in St.Valery.

There are many other similar examples. People stuck it out because they were ordered to do so.

Why is it only the germans who get labeled as superior troops for it?

 

I don't think that the Germans are the only ones that get credit for putting up resistance under diffucult circumstances, as we brought in the FL think Camerone and Dien Ben Phu or closer to our main interest Bastogne, Tobruk, Odessa and Brest-Litovsk. Resilience is one attribute of good quality troops.
"Shock effect" plays an important part in determinining the victors, when "shocked", either by firepower or manouver, low morale troops will rout/surrender high morale will continue the fight with what's left. Either the Germans were hard to rout or they managed to wipe out most records of their failings, I personally believe both statements hold a lot of truth.

 

The germans were hard to rout. They were part of a totalitarian state that shot people who disobeyed orders.

There are plenty of cases where the rout was stopped by officers shooting deserters on the field of battle. And there are examples of routs by crack units like the SS Nord in Finland and SS Wiking in AG South.

 

Agree with you, but that mix of draconic discipline and low level initiative they achieved was often highly effective. AFAIK it was not by the design, the army's training stressed low level initiative, the nazis didn't allow for individual failures, a pretty unstable mixture in the long run and it would probably have exploded as the two mindsets are incompatible but nazism only lasted in power for 12 yeas, it's hard to think they caused all that destruction in such a short time.

PS: I did mention SS Nord in one of my previous posts, not what I would call crack, I tend to side with the belief that in their early incarnation the W-SS divisions were less good than their army counterparts for lack of good NCOs, the SS performance at Arras was not exacly "routing" but came close, without a powerful leadership like Rommel taking a hand who knows. At Abbeville, the German 57th (a 2nd Welle infantry division) facing a stronger force with B1bis tanks and with no stukas, no panzers and no Rommel to rally shaken troops did a lot better.

 

The low level initiative was imperative to make the Aufdragstaktik (mission Command) to work.

The training of NCO's or Officers for the Waffen SS was very good. The Junkerschule Bad Tolz in Bavaria is a prime example of that.
Richard Schulze-Kossen Die Junkerschulen 1982 has more info on it.

One thing that the Germans managed well was to have strong dicipline without creating too much distance to their men.

 

It was no myth,it was fact.I recommend reading the in depth study military history books by Ronald Lewis and Major General John Strawson,both whom were ww2 veterans who fought against the germans in North africa and Italy.They explain in many of their books why the germans were better in combat and how they adapted so easliy to the changing circumstances of the war much more quickly then the allies and how time and time again retained their total professionalism and discipline in the heat of the most fierce battles,which cannot be said of the allies unfortunately.The British Official History states in its comments on the 1st Alamien"the german soldier always seemed capable of making one more supreme effort."

 

One thing that may have a lot to do with the "superiorty" is that the Germans allocated a much higher percentange of first class manpower to the frontline troops than the western allies that usually sent more of the best recruits to the artillery and support troops.
Late in the war the expansion of the number of divisions and the creation of of a huge number of "elite" units (Panzers, Panzergrenadiers, Paras, Mountain, etc) and of the "private armies" of Himmler (SS) and Goering (Paras) "starved" the regular infantry of first class recruits.

 

American battle doctrine calls for strong fire support. Air power and artillery do most of the damage and the infantry and armor clean up what is left. There are some exceptions but not many. Even in Vietnam they fired 10,000s of arty rounds.

 

I am not really a fan of Hitler and WWII Germans, but looking at the big picture, Germany almost single handedly defeated 3 major powers: UK, France and Russia "simultaneously". They did this while being short on raw materials and most notably oil and committing tremendous strategic blunders. Dunkirk was number 1 and Stalingrad was number 2. Had the Germans annihilated the allied forces in Dunkirk, it is reported that the UK was ready to negotiate a peace treaty on German terms thus effectively ending the western front. If the entire German army was let loose on the USSR, I think they would have won.

Also extreme brutality and ruthlessness in conquered territories were German undoing. That prevented the Germans from using an internal dissatisfaction in the conquered Soviet territories and bleed Russia from within. In short, Germans were clueless rulers and committed ridiculous blunders. And YET, it took the allied forces 6 years and millions of men to defeat them. Italy was a non factor and simply did not want this war. It was pretty much 3 against 1 in Europe and the Germans were this close to winning. I think the only rational explanation is their overall technological edge and military discipline.

You also conveniently forgot the German advantages in chemicals and most notably in autonomous rockets. It is said that had V1 been invented 2 years prior, the war would have been over.

The only area where the Germans were ultimately doomed was the nuclear technology. There, again, idiotic Nazi rulers drove the brilliant Jewish scientists in droves out of Europe, which banded together in the Manhatten project and gave the allies a decisive weapon to defeat the Germans. You have to remember that in the 1930s, GERMAN was the scientific language of the world. Almost all the breakthrough inventions in quantum mechanics were made by the German scientists. It is truly ironic that the brilliant European scientists, almost all of whom had been educated in German universities, ultimately created the doomsday weapon for the enemy of Germany. One of the major turning events of the second world war was the end of the German language as the scientific language of the world.

Heck, plenty of German scientists and engineers ran away to the allies after the war. The number of scientists of German heritage that won the Nobel prizes for the US after the war is astonishingly high. And even today, in the 21st world, Germany is the world's leading exporter (well, just recently overtaken by China) and continues its stronghold in the engineering sector, heavy machinery, chemicals, and as such. Credit should be given where it is due. Germany is one heck of a country as far as technology/engineering is concerned.

 

Actually during the battle of Poland Czech tanks were in 1. and 3. Light Divisions.

So they didn't add to any of the 7 (including also "Kempf") Panzer divisions, only to 2 out of 4 light divisions.

However, in terms of tank strength 1. Light Division was more a Panzer division than light (with over 220 tanks).

Also 2. Light Division had over 160 tanks, but no Czech tanks among them.

 

Couple of quibbles:

I wouldn't consider either of these as bad of blunders as you seem to.
Take Dunkirk: Could the Germans have "annihilated" the allied force there? It was pretty good defencive terrain and the availabilty rate of the German mechanized equipment was headed for the floor at that point. Furthermore the British could have provided fire support from the RN. In other examples even Tigers didn't hold up well to DD fire much less that of cruisers. Even if the Germans had tried to annihilate the Dunkirk position I suspect the British would have gotten at least some troops off and they could well have handed the Germans a rather stinging set back.
As for Stalingrad certainly there were errors there but attacking the USSR was a much greater one. It should also be noted that Stalingrad lasted well after the strategic operation it was part of failed and that it may have helped save army group south.

Actually ther eare others and better ones. The Germans had little in the way of a technological edge over the French for instance. What they had over both the French and the Soviets in 1940-1942 was a vastly supperior doctrine as well as a better more flexable organization.

It's not at all clear how much of an advantage the Germans had in these fields. Certianly it didn't translate to mutch in the way of practicle fielded weapons.

I don't know who said it but they were wrong. The V1 had a CEP that roughly corresponeded to Greater London. That makes it pretty useless as a military weapon. What's more the US was ready to start mass producing improved versions 6 months after one was captured.

No. They lacked the economy and the industrial might to compete with the allies. The Soviets surpassed them in operational art by mid war and earlier in the intell department, the western allies were ahead of them in most of the EW fields had borken several key codes and caught or turned all the German agents in Britain.

But even with these "droves" (care to list them all I think you will find the number is smaller than you think) would Germany have had the resources. Without them the US would have although it might have taken longer.

 

It did not take 6 years to beat them. By the end of 1943 to any rational observer the war was won. Germany was everywhere on the run and had no chance of winning or even getting a draw.
It took 6 years for the corpse to stop twitching but the writing was on the wall long before the last breath was drawn

 

Germany had the most advanced army in WWII out of all the major participants. They had the best tanks, most well-trained soldiers, bombers, and their U-Boats gave the Allies a major headache in the Atlantic. Had Germany won the war, we would have truly seen what technological advances they were capable of. They were actually making an atomic bomb before the US, they reason the US made one first is because they captured the German scientists and took them to America to make the bomb for them. It is said that if Germany had one more vital element, they would have built the first atom bomb and the whole course of the war would change completely. Also, Germany was building jet engines for their fighters, but never had time to use them and their planes were destroyed on the airfield. If Germany had jet-engined fighters during the Battle of Britain, they would have successfully invaded and conquered Britain. Another German technological advance far ahead of its time was the V-1 and V-2 missiles. These could only reach Britain but there was one they were building one that could reach New York!, suggesting that had Germany won the war in Europe and the Soviet Union, Hitler would have turned his attention to the United States. Germany was by far the most technologically advanced military in WWII.

 

Only before the other countries mobilized. The allies became increasingly proficient in combined arms tactics, eventually surpassing the German military's ability to do the same. The end result was the German military defeated on the battlefield time after time.

Depends on when you're speaking of. In 1940 the French had better tanks but inferior doctrine and employment. When the M4 Sherman first appeared in North Africa, it was the best tank on the battlefield. You can argue that the mid to late war German tanks were the most powerfully armed, that they in many cases had heavier armor, but they were inferior mechanically, had lesser reliability and less maintainability. The best tank is the one that's there when you need it and in the quantities needed to win. Germany didn't have this.

Only initially.

Really, which ones? I really don't think the Germans had a bomber of the quality of the B-17, the B-29, the Landcaster, the Mosquito, and on and on.

They were very good, but no more so than the American submarine campaign in the Pacific. In the end, it was the fact that the British and Americans were superior to the U-boats in anti-submarine ships, aircraft, weapons systems, tactics and doctrine, that neutralized the U-Boat threat.

The Allies actually had more technological advances than the Germans.

Not so, most of the scientists that were instumental in making our bomb were not even of German ancestry. That's one of our greatest strengths, we had Italian-Americans, Hungarian-Americans, German-Americans, etc. working for us. Two of the key English scientists were German-Jews that had fled Germany pre-war. If they'd stayed they would probably have been shipped off to the furnaces by Adolph and company. We also cooperated and shared scientific advancements with our allies. Britain and Canada were instrumental in our fielding the bomb first. If Germany and Japan had been better allies they might have done the same.

Britain and the US were also developing jets. In fact, modern jet engines were the result of a number of peoples work, to include but not limited to, Frenchman Maxime Guillaume, and Englismen Alan Arnold Griffith, and Sir Frank Whittle. The German inventor Hans von Ohain working independantly patented his jet engine in 1936, Whittle had patented a similar engine in Britain in 1930, six years before von Ohain. Germany fielded their jet first but it was out of despiration. They needed a wonder weapon to regain control of their skies from the thousands and thousands of well trained, highly skilled allied pilots flying quality, high performance aircraft. Too little, too late.

I'll give you this one but it amounted to little more than a terror weapon. It never had the capability to alter the strategic situation.

How? They didn't have the naval power to support the landings. They lacked the sealift to transport the troops, vehicles and supplies necessary to secure and expand a lodgement. They also lacked the amphibious doctrine, training and expertise to pull it off.

 

Germany had better equipment, training and doctrine than anyone they invaded/faced in 1939-1941.
The U-boat campaign was so successful in the beginning because of the amount of shipping in the Atlantic; in 1943 the US was building ships faster then Germany was sinking them.
The V1 & V2 were an irritant; but, they never really achieved their expectations.

There were a bunch of things Germany was lacking that would have been considered vital to developing an Atomic weapon the least of which was a delivery system for the weapon if it would have been developed.
What captured German scientists worked on the Bomb ?

 

USMCPrice,

sparghast had some correct points in his post. The Wehrmacht had the modernest Army at time and they had the highest technological standart. We won´t forget that some of the winners used their technologies which saved them years of development. Bad point was that the longer the war lasted the lesser the resources were and the technological advantage was gone for the huge amount of the opponents tanks, bombers and so on. Last day i talked to an great guy who is a military historian with the Gebirgsjäger and he has the evidences that they had used helicopters in the last month of war to transport their light artillery up to the mountains and seen that this was a really advantage. To the bombers, there is known that the Luftwaffe had no equal bombers to your B-17 or B-24. That was Hitlers failure. A war is always easier to win with the ability of devastating the enemies homeland. And that isn´t to make with Stuka´s and short range bombers.
To the jet´s, the Luftwaffe had more really good prototypes which had caused big troubles to your bombers if they had the chance to make some more of them. Again a disadvantage of the resources and the time.

There were plannings to V3 to reach the USA but much to late and as far as i know it existed only at the papers. Again a matter of time.

The conquest of Britain, could have been made successfully but not with this plannings and not with the plannings of Barbarossa at the same time. If Hitler had decided to conquer Britain he must made the plannings in a way that the British Army had been divided to a western landing zone and a eastern landing zone for a example. And with battleships and heavy bombing the right places it had been running successful. What happened after the landing and after the qonquest of the British island is a other story.

So to come to a end, sparghast is correct in some points but the history has shown that a high technology standart is nothing against the overwhelming mass of lesser high technology Armies. Which shouldn´t mean that you had only 2nd class material, quite the contrary was the case. See only the M1 Garand and a very important fact the easy to made Liberty Ships without them you would have propably lost the war for the lack of supplies.

Hope that won´t offend anybody as it never was meant to do so.