Why were the Germans so incredible at warfare?

Question

To say the nazis were stupid is incorrect.


http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/grady/nazi.html

Answer 1

superior technology, plain and simple.

the german war machine of it's day was head and shoulders above any other in the world at the time.

this has nothing whatever to do with the nazis.

from the prussian crushing of the french at sedan in 1870 to the german defeat in 1918 and again in 1945 there was no war machine that was as sophistocated as the german war machine.

in fact, hitler became a liability to this complex and far reaching system. hitler decided that companies like krupp should make all of their cannon, battleships, tanks and u-boats from materials obtained from within the reich. this meant that the complex alloys that krupp had developed would not be used in the later years of the second world war.

it was also a fine line, between highly effective complex machinery and over the top fairy tale unrealistic and overly costly machinery.

at some point, the germans lost their technological edge and after that, found it impossible to get it back.

german industry from the outset of the industrial revolution had been very good at being the biggest and the best, with a huge emphasis on the biggest.

this worked well for the tiger tank at first, until repairing them became overly difficult and expensive.

the tanks that they built even larger than the tiger thankfully (for the germans) rarely ever saw the light of day.

similarly in WWI the germans (again krupp) the 'big bertha' and 'paris cannon.' both were remarkable acheivements, but both had severe flaws.

in the case of the big bertha, the flaw was in how heavy they were and how hard they were to move. in WWI the advance on the western front was halted when ludendorff called for seige cannon for the seiges of impressive forts around belgium. it took three days to get the berthas into place to blow liege to bits. where the soldiers inside eventually came out with that dazed faraway look in their eyes that was to become increasingly familiar to western european enemies of germany.

it's difficult today to recapture how the firing of the first bertha effected the world. it was much like the detonation of the first atomic bomb - it changed everything.

so the siege was a great success, but no one mentioned that the cannon were three days late and that this delay more than anything else allowed the allies to entrench and set up the dreadful stalemate that was to define WWI.

the paris cannon was also a WWI gun, that was a remarkable piece of technology that could be fired from 70 miles away from it's target and was overseen by a full admiral.

the germans fired this directly into paris, often with devastating results but also often with almost none at all.

this was a terribly expensive gun, and in spite of it's acheivement, hardly worth the expense.

by WWII germans were so used to technological superiority that when they lost it, they would just shrug it off.

when the tiger tanks couldn't move through the spring mud, they called it 'mud season' and waited - ignoring the fact that the american sherman and russian t-34's both plowed through the mud.

german history and the german mindset is not solely defined by the nazi era.

Answer 2

Well they may have out smarted themselves as they were defeated. Its possible they could have been defeated by either the Soviets or the Americans alone. They had no chance against both.

Their infantry and mechanised units were very efficient highly trained and well motivated. They had some of the best equipment but were not able to produce it in sufficient numbers to make any difference. American artillery was more effectively used and offset the advantages in German tanks, American planes were better and controlled the air space, the Soviet tanks were a more modern design than the German tanks.

Much is made of their combined arms attack on France however, the French had more tanks in the field than the Germans but failed to mass them. If the French had massed their tanks and attacked the Flanks of the German push towards Dunkirt the German invasion of France would have ended in a disaster for the Germans.

Bottomline they were too clever by 1/2.

Answer 3

Germany's resumption of unrestricted submarine conflict on February 1st 1917, became the 1st in a chain of activities that which might ultimately effect in the USA affirming conflict on Germany April 6th 1917.

Answer 4

Well, they were the also rans, twice in a row! There is an old adage: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!" The Germans, during the first half of the 20th century were war mongers, but they couldn't quite pull the switch. They were brilliant engineers and aeronautical experts, but they had the worst logistical expert and war planner known to man, Adolf Hitler!

"A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link!"

Answer 5

The Germans do have a culture that values hard work and discipline, and at he same time innovation more so than any other European country. Their culture lends itself to a well oiled military machine. This is true even so today, only they apply themselves more towards economics and engineering..

Answer 6

at the time germany had some of the best scientist in the world. we would never had the bomb first except for germans who defected here. in fact we bombed some of their scientist but they survived to go on and help us win the war

Answer 7

They may have created a huge war machine in WWI and II, but ultimately there were fatal flaws that caused their defeat.

Answer 8

it stared with a great educational system in late 1800s

Answer 9

Most troops were given meth-amphedimine. Get your details together before you give too much credit.

Answer 10

Evil does not equate to stupid, just misdirected. ~