How was the German Army different from the American army in world war one?

Question

I mean like in their strategies and how they fought not on appearance or what they were.

Answer 1

They were more apt to relativly barabarous methods to include chemical wep for one thing...

Answer 2

The German Army was known as the Prussian Army, Prussia was the biggest & controlling State of the German federation of States, all the other States supplied troops from the independent State Armies to the Prussians for service in WW1.

At the start of the war August 1914 the Prussian military were the best in Europe, most of the victories inn the early days were easily won.

The USA came into the war in mid 1917, poorly equipped to fight but with great spirit, weapons, rifles and artillery and uniforms and equipment were supplied by the British & French as well as tactical training, this was done to try and spare the Americans the casualties that both France, Belgium and the UK had suffered in trench warfare, but in the early days the US lost a lot of men through there eagerness to get to grips with the enemy, machine gun fire and artillery killing many.

By mid 1917 the once proud and elite German forces had been ground down and now were stiffened by young, (very young some 14 years old) conscripts, the bulk of the experienced Germans wasted on futile attacks in the preceding years, in this light the early arrivals from the USA once trained would have been on par with the Germans.

But what swung it was the Allied Naval blockade on Germany and the lack of reenforcement, whereas the Americans were shipping in 300,000 fresh men a month.

On the 11, November 1918 it was all over, Germany had by then exhausted herself, nothing left to fight with, the home will of the people broken they agreed to surrender.

Answer 3

The German army in WW I still fought mainly by old European rules (very centralised command, only senior officers could make tactical decisions, etc., their supply trains were less extensive and soldiers were alloted less ammunition - and less food, they had to forage for part of their daily food intake).

The American army had just finished fighting a forty year war agains the Plains Indians and had learned how to take advantage of natural cover, and to move from position to position to position quickly. Their lower ranking nco's had tactical decision making authority (and more importantly,
ability) and the US soldiers were allotted more food and lots more ammunition.

The best illustration I have ever seen of the difference between the Big Three and the US armies took place shortly after US troops arrived in France. The Allied commander of the sector they were in assigned a battalion of US troops to dig in along a line of trenches where the Allies and the Germans had been fighting over a particular village for nearly two years, the trench lines hadn't moved more than 30 or 40 feet in either direction in that entire time.
The US battalion cmdr did not like that idea and said so, he didn't want his soldiers mired down in the same pointless fighting already going on there. After some haggling, the US forces were allowed to stage an attack on the German held village on their own (with the Allied commanders expecting another failed attack with more massive casualties).
Thirty MINUTES after the US attack began, the village was in American Army hands, and it was never reclaimed by the Germans!

Even in modern times there are major differences between 'ours' and 'theirs'. Just one instance: during the cold war, no Soviet soldier under the rank of Lieutenant was allowed to learn how to read a map or operate a radio (two measures taken to help insure that soldiers couldn't defect or desert - after all if they did not know where they were, how could they set out to go somewhere else?, and if they could not read a map, they couldn't escape an area as quickly or easily). By comparison, EVERY soldier in a US unit knows how to read a map, use a radio, call in air strikes, etc, etc.
This is one reason why, unit for unit, no one on earth can beat a US military force of the same size and type in equal combat.

Answer 4

By time the US got to Europe, the German Army had lost millions of soldiers, was practically out of money, etc.

Answer 5

It was comprised mainly of Germans, whereas the US army was comprised mainly of Americans.

What kind of a question is this...?

Answer 6

Well....yes they were.

They were German and we were American.

More ?

They spoke German and we spoke English.

More ?

They had pointy hats and we did not.

More ?

They lost and we won.