Was the Wehrmacht overrated?

Mmmh lets see, after your post is every single German soldier who was in the east a war criminal. Thats a bit cheeky. Lets see the Jugoslavian partisan leader Tito gave the order to kill approx. 30.000 people at Bleiburg and Kočevje. Is he a hero of the war? Others killed lots of innocent people without having a war like Mao, Stalin or take the British Army in her early colonial era, the IJA in ww2. The list could be much longer. But who want to say that all of the partizans were war criminals or the chinese and the others. Statistics are a funny thing but they do what not should be done, they equal the "normal" acting soldiers with the criminals and thats not good! So please let such poor and single sided statistic out of the discussion.
Stick to the motto: "I do not trust any statistics that I have not falsified yourself."

 

That's a special arithmetic:
1)the number of Germans engaged in the east was more,much more than 4 million
2)not all 13 million Soviet civilians were murdered:a lot of them died of sickness,hunger,cold,bombardments,etc...
I also don't see the relevance of the involvement of the WM in the mass murders in the East for the OP,OP being:was the WM overrated?
By a lot of persons (in front the fan boys),the WM has been described as an invincible phalanx,that lost the war because of the interventions of the stupid Hitler.We know that this is a myth,and that,although the average German soldier was fighting stubbornly,the WM had no chance,with or without Hitler .Thus,we can say that the WM was overrated .

 

Is this guy for real?

 

You are by far one of the worst posters here. Every response is based on emotion. Please do not respond to me anymore.

 

So the Romanians, Italians, Hungarians, Bulgarians, and various other nations that provided troops including Russians, Finland, Latvians, Lithuanians, various Yugoslavian parts, Spanish legion, French, Belgium, Scandinavian etc etc etc. did nothing? Not to mention the Japanese.

The Germans did not fight all on their own despite what so many seem to think and post, saying it took all the resources of the allies to defeat Germany makes it sound as though they alone took on everyone else in the world and everyone else was directing their full power solely against Germany.

 

The ones who were worth anything served in the Wiking division. Japan did not assist them in Europe. Finland was ok.

 

Maybe you need to read up on some of those countries and what they did then.

Japan may not have been helping Germany in Europe but the US and British Commonwealth were also fighting them and it took resources away from fighting Germany.

Germany was not fighting alone it had its allies. They had weak points yes but they were far from useless. The allies also had their weak points.

 

It is easy for us rogues to discuss such a subject as we have the advantage of hindsight, a previlege which the people of 1939 did not possess...

IMO, the German war machine of 41 was the best land army (maybe even in the air) at the time. How could she not have been? She's been getting ready for war since 1933. The "ora" of invincibility that the Wehrmacht held was earned by the conquest of Europe. Wherever the Wehmacht went, nations would fall, people would run and armies would be destroyed. Im confident that the British and French forces at Dunkirk did not consider the Wehrmacht "overated".

It took 6 long years, tens of millions of lives and nearly a dozen nations to subdue her and her allies; IMO, that is not "overated".


The one problem (aside from many) that Germany had, was that by 1943 other nations had caught up and Germany lost her edge.

 

Exactly. Ask 30 million Russians and 400,000 Americans if they were overrated. Not to mention the peoples of the other nations of Europe.

 

Allthough statistics can me misleading, I uderstand Taminos emotions. The German army, along with the SS, murdered millions of innocent civilians including childern. The evil they perpetuated was so heinous that to this day it makes me feel sick. I mean, how do you build an extermination camps with gas chambers and then go home and kiss your children good night. How can dig tranches and line up people like sardines and then shoot them. For what. For being humans of another race. Hell, they were not even of another race, just different country or religion. Every time I see the photo of a German soilder shooting a polish woman while she is sheilding her child from the bullet, it makes me sick that the German army caused such horror to man kind. So if some of us get a little emotional here, just deal with it. WW2 has side effects to this day, and I speak strickly personaly. No I was not alive during the war, in fact I was not born untill the early 70s, but what the German army did to my country and my peoples, still haunts me today.

 

As far as was the Wehrmacht. No it was not over rated. It steamed rolled across Europe at a unprecedented rate. Poland 3 weeks, low countries usualy 24 hours per country, France about 4 weeks, in Russia it almost barged into Kremlin. Just how does a nation take over so much land and peoples in so little time unless it had superior weapons and training. However, I do believe that if Poland, France, Russia, etc spend a decade preparing for war, there is no way the Wehrmacht woudl have preformed so well.

 

Data I use are from David Glanz and I consider him trustworthy. I went so far even to directly use the whole unchanged sentence indicating the number of axis soldiers. It is up to reader to see or refuse to see. But let us for a moment forget these scary numbers and try to see and feel.

Wehrmacht soldiers have systematically aimed their guns to unarmed civilians; even towards little kids in front of their mothers. They deliberately stripped-of the whole towns from supplies and left citizens starve to death. They have killed hundredths of »partisans« without the guns. …

It is not just numbers that count but also the lack of conscience, then, during the war and after the war has ended. There were no many regrets.
For civilians Wehrmscht was a formidable killing machine and that's what makes them so dishonest and repulsive.

I was talking about the Wehrmacht in general and I understand that there were many honest people who haven’t participated murders, but what’s too much is too much.
Finally, regardless of the numbers, the conclusion holds: Far too many Axis soldiers were involved in the murder of far too many civilians. That's exactly what I wanted to say regarding this specific matter.

 

Let me correct you: he was a Communist leader. If he has ordered that murder, and I believe he did, he is as guilty as all others who have committed crimes against humanity. Yeah, my father was a partisan, but not a Communist, he was just a patriot who has opposed occupation of his country.

I do indeed appreciate your opinion. However, rating is classification according to grade and it depends on criteria and perception in the first place. I will illustrate this by using an example:

Wow do you rate Mike Tyson?

No doubt, he was a great boxer but do you remember what he did. He doesn't even qualify to be compared to other sportsmen who behaved decently. That's how I see that.

Thanks Tom and question for those less emotional: is there any other way to respond to such profound misery?

 

Which small nation ? Are you talking about Germany? Other than the Soviets Germany was the biggest and most populous state in Europe, especially when you add annexed Austria and Bohemia Moravia into the equation. Your view that Germany stood alone is just wrong. Romania contributed 250,000 men for Barbarossa (over 1.1million would serve eventually), the Finns 300,000. Later you can add 210,000 Hungarians, up to 200,000 Italians and contingents from Croatia, Slovenia and Spain. Possibly 350,000 non-Germans volunteered for the SS:
Albanian: 3,000
Belgian: Flemish 23,000
Belgium: Walloon 15,000
British Commonwealth: (English) 50
Bulgaria: 1,000
Croatia: 30,000
Denmark: 10,000
Estonia: 20,000
Finland: 1,000
Hungarians: 15,000
Latvia: 39,000
Netherlands:50,000
Norway: 6,000
France: 8,000
Italy: 20,000
Russian: 60,000
Rumania: 3,000
Serbia: 15,000
Spain: 1,000
Sweden, Switzerland & Luxemburg: 3,000
Ukraine: 25,000

I have respect for the fighting abilities of the Wehrmacht and it's units but it was hardly poor little Germany against the world. Certainly initally the were succesful but certainly in the UK it was only 20 years since the last war and we new how hard they were to be then.

 

Yes, everybody knows that and which kind of crimes are happened under the German Nazi-Dictatorship, so please do not remind anybody at every post of how horrible that time was. As Jeff said: look at the millions that Stalin killed, and have a look at Mao, he made Hitler and Stalin looking like poor schoolboys! And no one will ever and ever pray that they are murderers.

We can agree calling Tito a leader of the communistic Partisans.

 

It very much depends on when you are talking about. For instance up until the invasion of France at least relativly speaking the British and French seam to have under rated it. The same can be said about the Soviets up until mid 41. After that I suspect that it was over rated by quite a few.

Catch an enemy by surprise and have superior doctrine. Although the training part is accurate. Hard to claim that German weapons in 39-41 were superior enough to make a difference. Indeed some important ones were inferior. Indeed if you look at the time it took the allies to retake France it wasn't substantially longer than the Germans took and they took it away from the Germans. Furthermore thay had a singificantly greater logistics bottleneck and initially a much shorter front to attack along.

 

But,this is totally of topic :the question was :is the Wehrmacht overrated (military)? NOT :has the WM committed war crimes .

 

I believe I understand the point you are trying to make however; im not sure that equating the conquest vs the liberation of France to be a fair one. When the Germans marched in France (very sneaky) they defeated the best of what both the French and British had (arguably). The allies on the other hand (comprising of 4 nations) didnt exactly face the 6th army nor the same Luftwaffe which the French and British forces had in 1940.