Is the German army during WW2 underestimated or overestimated?

Is the Heer underestimated or overestimated?

  • Underestimated

    Votes: 12 10.6%
  • Overestimated

    Votes: 69 61.1%
  • Neither

    Votes: 32 28.3%

  • Total voters
    113
That is an incredibly broad statement to the point of being meaningless. It leaves out the resistance he got from Blomberg and Fritsch, which got them purged and resulted in Hitler putting puppets in place in key positions, while seizing the office of War Minister for himself, thus taking over all strategic leadership with the military.

No, I acknowledged them. However, they prove my point as they were purges which were aided and abetted by the rest of the German military. When it came between supporting Hitler or supporting their best ore-war strategists, who were one of their own, the German military chose Hitler.

A great many officers voiced opposition to things like Barbarossa

Post-war myth.

and Hitler's initial desire to attack France in the winter of 1940-41,

In which Hitler's vision ultimately proved superior.

Operations officers were forced to conform their estimates and plans to Hitler's strategic desires and gloss over the issues of logistics and ignore intelligence to again save their positions.

No, they weren't forced at all. They chose to do it. The assumptions and issues were a function of their own biases and preconceptions. There is no evidence that at any point during the planning for Barbarossa the German planners thought that the Soviet Union might prove too big or tough an enemy to defeat. The failures in logistics were their own.

There was actually a rather shocking similarity with the Bush administration and the move into Iraq and Operation Barbarossa; no one would say the US military was incompetent, they were following orders as relayed to them and told not to worry about all the issues that would come with invasion.

Except in Iraq, the US the Bush Administration created a plan, the military attempted to point out the problems with the plan being put forward, and they were ignored. With Barbarossa, Hitler told the generals what his intentions were and the generals went "okay" and drafted the invasion plan. The planners actually ignored Hitler's attempts at interference in the planning process when it came to a number of details, such as the selection of the Moscow Axis as the central effort. It was only during the invasion that Hitler started to succsssfully impose his own will over that of the German generals running the show.

What do you mean by issues with Personnel Management?

The copy of the relevant book with all the details is at home, I'm posting this on my phone at a car shop, but the long and short of it is the Germans failed to adequately staff key positions with eligible candidates.

The issues in WW1 and 2 were different; there were certainly a fair bit of similarities in terms of the military being concerned with pure operations/tactics above all else, but it was the weakness of the civilian government to reign in the military that was the biggest problem there, while in WW2 it was the civilian government that was pushing the military along to increasingly extreme and stupid actions.

This statement is mostly true, but flawed in one respect: the military weren't being pushed by the civilian government. They were following it.
 
Simply put the Germany Army was a dangerous opponent until literally the very end at Berlin. No one during the war underestimated without paying a stiff price, while overestimating its abilities rarely occurred as far as my reading has determined. Now some post war historians feel it was over rated, and certainly it had its weaknesses and problems but as a fighting force they were among the most effective armies in the history of warfare.

In spite of losing....
 

Deleted member 1487

No, I acknowledged them. However, they prove my point as they were purges which were aided and abetted by the rest of the German military. When it came between supporting Hitler or supporting their best ore-war strategists, who were one of their own, the German military chose Hitler.
Rest of the military? No, specific Nazi appointees at the top, yes. People got the hint that if you didn't play ball you were fired or sidelined. The military, like in the USSR, was also facing the security apparatus of state and enough other officers that were willing to go along to get along that resistance was futile. Few had many illusions about the political power of the Nazis or the power of groups like the Gestapo.

Post-war myth.
Crimsonking provided several references in the last argument you guys hand confirming both military and Nazi leadership opposition. Not a post-war myth. How many of those objections actually reached Hitler's ears or swayed him in the slightest is up for debate. When Hitler made up his mind though they all buckled down and got with the program.

In which Hitler's vision ultimately proved superior.
Not really. He had to talked out of the disastrous winter offensive plan, then it was Manstein that proposed an option that Hitler liked, which the general staff eventually turned into something workable.
Halder was ultimately the issue in terms of the original crappy plan and being unwilling to listen to his old rival Manstein, who he tried to get 'limonaged'. Hitler really didn't see the plan in operational/strategic terms, he liked the tactical component of it; in the end he was right for the wrong reasons, even if the German officer corps was wrong for the right reasons. No one had a reason to really think the French would have walked into the trap just as expected and been totally unable to react to or prevent the Ardennes move.

No, they weren't forced at all. They chose to do it. The assumptions and issues were a function of their own biases and preconceptions. There is no evidence that at any point during the planning for Barbarossa the German planners thought that the Soviet Union might prove too big or tough an enemy to defeat. The failures in logistics were their own.
It's a highly complex topic, but they were largely conforming to Hitler's strategic conceit that the Soviets would collapse after the border battles. They made their operational plans based on those strategic assumptions, that and Hitler dismissing the intelligence that the Soviets were stronger than he wanted to believe (and they were yet stronger still than intelligence thought). Though German planners certainly deserve a ton of blame for the mess of planning that was, it was made with Hitler's strategic conceptions as the framework.

For example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa#German_invasion_plans
Roberts, Andrew (2011). The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War. New York: Harper Perrenial. ISBN 978-0-06122-860-5.
Roberts 2011, pp. 147–148:
Although Hitler was warned by his general staff that occupying "Western Russia" would create "more of a drain than a relief for Germany's economic situation", he anticipated compensatory benefits, such as the demobilization of entire divisions to relieve the acute labor shortage in German industry; the exploitation of Ukraine as a reliable and immense source of agricultural products; the use of forced labor to stimulate Germany's overall economy; and the expansion of territory to improve Germany's efforts to isolate the United Kingdom.[57] Hitler was convinced that Britain would sue for peace once the Germans triumphed in the Soviet Union,[58] and if they did not, he would use the resources available in the East to defeat the British Empire.[59]

Gorodetsky, Gabriel (2001). Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300084597.
Gorodetsky 2001, pp. 69–70
Ericson, Edward (1999). Feeding the German Eagle: Soviet Economic Aid to Nazi Germany, 1933–1941. Praeger Publishing. ISBN 978-0275963378.
Ericson 1999, p. 162.
In autumn 1940, high-ranking German officials drafted a memorandum on the dangers of an invasion of the Soviet Union. They said Ukraine, Belorussia and the Baltic States would end up as only a further economic burden for Germany.[66] It was argued that the Soviets in their current bureaucratic form were harmless and that the occupation would not benefit Germany.[66] Hitler disagreed with economists about the risks and told his right-hand man Hermann Göring, the chief of the Luftwaffe, that he would no longer listen to misgivings about the economic dangers of a war with Russia.[67] It is speculated that this was passed on to General Georg Thomas, who had produced reports that predicted a net economic drain for Germany in the event of an invasion of the Soviet Union unless its economy was captured intact and the Caucasus oilfields seized in the first blow, and he consequently revised his future report to fit Hitler's wishes.[67]

The General Staff that was doing the planning for Hitler was OKW that Hitler had as his personal echo chamber and had long since learned that Hitler did not like disagreement once his mind was made up; planning for Barbarossa was made AFTER Hitler had already decided on invasion, so planning within OKW ran on Hitler's personal beliefs since he refused to accept any contrary evidence.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Führer_Directive_21

German military planners also researched Napoleon's failed invasion of Russia. In their calculations, they concluded that there was little danger of a large-scale retreat of the Red Army into the Russian interior, as it could not afford to give up the Baltic states, Ukraine, or the Moscow and Leningrad regions, all of which were vital to the Red Army for supply reasons and would thus have to be defended.[72] Hitler and his generals disagreed on where Germany should focus its energy.[73][74] Hitler, in many discussions with his generals, repeated his order of "Leningrad first, the Donbass second, Moscow third";[75] but he consistently emphasized the destruction of the Red Army over the achievement of specific terrain objectives.[76] Hitler believed Moscow to be of "no great importance" in the defeat of the Soviet Union[g] and instead believed victory would come with the destruction of the Red Army west of the capital, especially west of the Western Dvina and Dnieper rivers, and this pervaded the plan for Barbarossa.[78][79] This belief later led to disputes between Hitler and several German senior officers, including Heinz Guderian, Gerhard Engel, Fedor von Bock and Franz Halder, who believed the decisive victory could only be delivered at Moscow.[80] Hitler had grown overconfident in his own military judgment as a result of the rapid successes in Western Europe.[81]
Repeatedly Hitler's choices won out over the military, so it was his strategy that ran the show, not that of the army.

Except in Iraq, the US the Bush Administration created a plan, the military attempted to point out the problems with the plan being put forward, and they were ignored. With Barbarossa, Hitler told the generals what his intentions were and the generals went "okay" and drafted the invasion plan. The planners actually ignored Hitler's attempts at interference in the planning process when it came to a number of details, such as the selection of the Moscow Axis as the central effort. It was only during the invasion that Hitler started to succsssfully impose his own will over that of the German generals running the show.
And the same thing happened with the planning for Barbarossa, Hitler got a lot of contrary evidence and opinions, including from Goering and Ribbentrop, but dismissed intelligence (including Guderian's estimates about Soviet tank strength, which he reported said he regretted and had he believed it he might have not launched the war) and contrary opinions. Similarly people opposing the Iraq war were actually kept out of the planning process and not invited back.
https://books.google.com/books?id=C...age&q=bush shut out dissenting voices&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=2...age&q=bush shut out dissenting voices&f=false

There was quite a lot of dissent within the military, government, and even high level Nazi officials (Goering, Ribbentropp), but they were effectively told to shut up by Hitler and he issued his 'Fuehrerbefehl 21' settling the issue, which got everyone to generally buckle down and get with the program by end February 1941. Sure the planners did somewhat ignore Hitler on issues and Guderian was notorious for doing what he wanted for the most part, which got him fired, but strategically Hitler got his way on Moscow, Leningrad, and Ukraine. By 1942 then he had taken over the army leadership directly and became both the strategic and operational leadership around which the army revolved. That involved yet another round of mass purges that continued to the end of the war. Operationally that would play out even during Case Blue when he disagreed with von Bock and ended up firing him over it, taking over the campaign.

The copy of the relevant book with all the details is at home, I'm posting this on my phone at a car shop, but the long and short of it is the Germans failed to adequately staff key positions with eligible candidates.
I'm interested in hearing what that was, but doing when it's convenient.

This statement is mostly true, but flawed in one respect: the military weren't being pushed by the civilian government. They were following it.
Sure, dragged along, with some going without a fight. However you want phrase it.
 

Rest of the military, yes. When Beck wrote to Manstein about the problem, seeking support, Manstein reply was that Beck should make a better effort at getting along with Hitler. Manstein at the time was not at all a Nazi appointee nor was he at the top. When Beck resigned, he did so on the basis that he hoped it would cause most of the rest to follow. Not a single one did.

Crimsonking provided several references in the last argument you guys hand confirming both military and Nazi leadership opposition.

That conversation is still on going (my response has been held up by distractions and the complexities of having to respond to per70 and Crimson Kung, but drafting is most of the way done), but suffice to say he actually has not provided anything that actually confirms military opposition. A single claim that appears, uncited, in a singular book and apparently no where else is not confirmation.

EDIT: Aaaand now that I go back to continue it, I realize the forum has deleted all the progress I made and saved during the course of Saturday and Sunday. Goddamn it.

Not really. He had to talked out of the disastrous winter offensive plan, then it was Manstein that proposed an option that Hitler liked, which the general staff eventually turned into something workable.
Halder was ultimately the issue in terms of the original crappy plan and being unwilling to listen to his old rival Manstein, who he tried to get 'limonaged'. Hitler really didn't see the plan in operational/strategic terms, he liked the tactical component of it; in the end he was right for the wrong reasons, even if the German officer corps was wrong for the right reasons. No one had a reason to really think the French would have walked into the trap just as expected and been totally unable to react to or prevent the Ardennes move.

And the idea that Hitler didn't see the strategic/operational comes from... Halder after the war. Who after the war tried to recast his role as the real originator of the plan. Meanwhile, the evidence at the time is that Hitler was savvy enough to recognize the operational/strategic implications of the plan after the full briefing. He had already showed better strategic vision in his choice over when to start the war and later in the Kiev vs Moscow issue in August 1941. The reality is that he already had showed better strategic vision then his generals and would do so again at points in the future, so the idea that he suddenly wouldn't when presented with a military plan that envisioned the annihilation of Anglo-French army is rather ludicrous.

It's a highly complex topic, but they were largely conforming to Hitler's strategic conceit that the Soviets would collapse after the border battles. They made their operational plans based on those strategic assumptions,

As they largely agreed with such assumptions. Where disagreements between them and Hitler did arise during the planning, the planners simply carried on as if the disagreement never happened and Hitler agreed with them in the hopes that Hitler would come around to their view in time. As events during the invasion were to show, he never did.

EDIT:

that and Hitler dismissing the intelligence that the Soviets were stronger than he wanted to believe (and they were yet stronger still than intelligence thought).

And the German generals were right there with him in believing.

Though German planners certainly deserve a ton of blame for the mess of planning that was, it was made with Hitler's strategic conceptions as the framework.

And the senior planners unthinkingly bought into Hitler's strategic conception, as it lined up with their own beliefs and preconceptions about the Soviet Union. That's why their planning was such a mess. Many of the faulty assumptions which underlay the Barbarossa were also present in the previous contingency plans which had been drawn up or were being drawn, so the idea that Hitler was the source of them is patently false.

The General Staff that was doing the planning for Hitler was OKW that Hitler had as his personal echo chamber and had long since learned that Hitler did not like disagreement once his mind was made up;

Incorrect. Planning was done in OKH, not OKW. Furthermore, the OKH had repeatedly and openly argued with Hitler in the past and would continue to do so in the future. Their singular failure to do so over Barbarossa is illuminating.

planning for Barbarossa was made AFTER Hitler had already decided on invasion, so planning within OKW ran on Hitler's personal beliefs since he refused to accept any contrary evidence.

And the planners at OKH were right there with him in the personal belief that and ignoring any contrary evidence. They were aided by the fact that the German military system had been set-up from the beginning to confirm the preconceptions of it's leaders.

And the same thing happened with the planning for Barbarossa, Hitler got a lot of contrary evidence and opinions, including from Goering and Ribbentrop, but dismissed intelligence (including Guderian's estimates about Soviet tank strength, which he reported said he regretted and had he believed it he might have not launched the war) and contrary opinions.

And the planners were right there along with him. When Bock, upon first being briefed on the Barbarossa plan in 1941, inquired with Halder what would happen if the Red Army if it did withdraw into the Russian interior, Halder's reply was to blithely go basically "oh, that won't happen" and continued on.

Similarly people opposing the Iraq war were actually kept out of the planning process and not invited back.

And tellingly, the people who you claim to have been opposed to Barbarossa were involved from beginning to end in the Barbarossa process.

Sure, dragged along, with some going without a fight. However you want phrase it.

Not dragged along and not some. Most. Followed. Willingly. As much as you try to absolve their responsibility for both their failure and their crime in waging a unprovoked war of aggression, the reality is that the German generals happily marched behind their fuhrer into oblivion.
 
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What were the exact kill ratios?

about 1.8 to 1 until 1945.

Why specifically when the Red Army had almost every advantage in 1944/45 did they still suffer immense losses from the German Army which was a shadow of its former self and the Volkssturm?

Remember when I said the Ostruppen fought like crap for the Germans...well, the whole Soviet army was Ostruppen!

There are other reasons too. Mostly, they were conscripting people who hated Stalin and the Russians (MOngolians, occupied Latvians, Checnyans, Ukrainians, etcetera.) They were no dependable soldiers. Also, tank and aircraft training was pretty much piss-poor the whole war.

What is operational art and how does it differ from tactics and strategies?
I don't think so, though it didn't help that Stalin liked going after trophies (like berlin) and expected his armies to move at a breakneck pace, so it was not rare for JU 87 pilots, Stug 3 gunners, and snipers to have dozens of kills. Some hundreds.
 
That's not exactly true. The German paras mostly fought the Wallies, the HG Panzer Division was a quality formation despite it's incomplete organization and lack of experience, Panzer Lehr and several very high quality SS formations (as much as that could be said about the SS except for equipment and experience) fought in France. Any number of good army divisions fought in the West too. Just as there were dregs (and more importantly lack of replacements and supplies) in the West, there was also disproportionately good armored divisions too.
It is exactly true. The Allies fought a good division here or there. Some stopped the Allies in their tracks. But, the Allies never faced more than 2 or three at once. The exception may be the battle of the bulge, which was conducted idiotically with impossible objectives...plus it was Dec 1944. The Germans were rushing men into service without training. I spoke to an old German woman whose brother with a lame foot was drafted and six weeks later was killed on the front.
 
about 1.8 to 1 until 1945.

Just want to clarify here: when we say kill ratio, do we mean "kill" as in KIA, irrecoverable losses, or total casualties?

Remember when I said the Ostruppen fought like crap for the Germans...well, the whole Soviet army was Ostruppen!

No it wasn't. The best of the Red Army fought just as well as the best of the Germans or the Anglo-Americans. It's just that the rest of the Red Army, which was more mediocrely trained and equipped compared to the Germans and took the worst casualties for it, was yet larger still and dragged down the average.
 

Deleted member 1487

Rest of the military, yes. When Beck wrote to Manstein about the problem, seeking support, Manstein reply was that Beck should make a better effort at getting along with Hitler. Manstein at the time was not at all a Nazi appointee nor was he at the top. When Beck resigned, he did so on the basis that he hoped it would cause most of the rest to follow. Not a single one did.
I wasn't aware that Manstein was the entire rest of the Heer. Manstein also begged him not to resign and felt that resigning would remove potentially moderating and necessary professionals from the force, giving Hitler free reign to appoint whomever he liked, which with Keitel's advice he appointed several relatively pliable professionals like Halder. Not everyone can afford to simply quit on principle, some people need the work and like it, so expecting people to resign in protest rarely works. Remember all the officials that were supposed to resign from the Pentagon if Donald Trump were to take office? Not a single one resigned:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/16/pentagon-troops-it-s-us-or-trump.html

That conversation is still on going (my response has been held up by distractions and the complexities of having to respond to per70 and Crimson Kung, but drafting is most of the way done), but suffice to say he actually has not provided anything that actually confirms military opposition. A single claim that appears, uncited, in a singular book and apparently no where else is not confirmation.
There were multiple references, including Richard Overy's "Goering: Hitler's Iron Knight" to his opposition to the conflict as well as a number of government and military officials. I'm just not sure of how much military opposition actually reached Hitler's ears, as his staff at OKW was pretty much picked to be vehicles for his decisions rather than a team of mixed opinions that would challenge him.

And the idea that Hitler didn't see the strategic/operational comes from... Halder after the war. Who after the war tried to recast his role as the real originator of the plan. Meanwhile, the evidence at the time is that Hitler was savvy enough to recognize the operational/strategic implications of the plan after the full briefing. He had already showed better strategic vision in his choice over when to start the war and later in the Kiev vs Moscow issue in August 1941. The reality is that he already had showed better strategic vision then his generals and would do so again at points in the future, so the idea that he suddenly wouldn't when presented with a military plan that envisioned the annihilation of Anglo-French army is rather ludicrous.
Hitler was willing to take insane risks over and over based on supposed payoffs, so just because he was willing to gamble on something based on how it was presented to him doesn't necessarily mean he was supporting the operation based on sound reasoning, he was willing to base it on payoff alone. Halder did eventually turn it into the actual plan rather than just a concept. In terms of the Kiev-Moscow option in Summer 1941 again Hitler was basing that on securing resources, not the flank for the Moscow operation, plus he was never keen on Moscow as something actually that important and wasted a lot of time and resources encircling Leningrad that would have better been spent securing the flanks and preparing for Typhoon; in terms of Kiev right for the wrong reasons, wrong on Leningrad period. Halder was right about Moscow, just not about the sequencing of operations. I'm not saying Halder was a great genius either. Hitler again is to blame for the war in the East in the first place, WW2 in general, and any number of other decisions and on the stuff he was right about it generally was for the wrong reasons, i.e. political/ideological/quasi-economical ones instead of military realities.

As they largely agreed with such assumptions. Where disagreements between them and Hitler did arise during the planning, the planners simply carried on as if the disagreement never happened and Hitler agreed with them in the hopes that Hitler would come around to their view in time. As events during the invasion were to show, he never did.
What should be kept in mind was who those planners were in the first place and who put them in charge of making the choices. Ignoring realities of the serious problems with the operation was done to conform to Hitler's conceptions of how the war would go. Again I'm talking about planning in 1941, not the early studies in 1940 by Marcks and Lossberg. Lossberg's study was right about the Soviet plan to stand fast and counterattack to avoid losing territory for prestige and economic reasons.

And the German generals were right there with him in believing.
Depends on which ones you mean. This inner circle sure, there were dissenting voices like Köstring on the ground in Russia, but we don't know if Hitler read those reports or not, Lossberg seems to have.

And the senior planners unthinkingly bought into Hitler's strategic conception, as it lined up with their own beliefs and preconceptions about the Soviet Union. That's why their planning was such a mess.
Hitler's handpicked inner circle sure...because they were handpicked to think like him or were cowed by the success of the invasion of France and belief in their own military forces (which were echoed by the Brits and Americans during the first few months of the invasion).

Incorrect. Planning was done in OKH, not OKW. Furthermore, the OKH had repeatedly and openly argued with Hitler in the past and would continue to do so in the future. Their singular failure to do so over Barbarossa is illuminating.
https://translate.google.com/transl...pedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Jodl&edit-text=&act=url
In the future Jodl was soon with the preparation of plans for a campaign against the Soviet Union occupied. The transfer no. 21 of 18 December 1940 under the code name Operation Barbarossa outlined the attack on the USSR, came largely from Jodl and his staff in the Armed Forces Joint Staff. Jodl was also drafting of international law Commissar Order involved, [2] the particular orders: "These commissioners [i. E. "Political commissaries as organs of the enemy troops"] are not recognized as soldiers; It does not apply to the prisoners of war who are subject to international law. You have to be completed after having been segregated. " [3] In March 1941, Jodl was evidence that, for the planned campaign which the SS below Einsatzgruppen Soviet commissars and" to make Bolschewistenhäuptlinge "in the operating area without delay" harmless "would (s. Commissar order ). [4] In fact, perpetrated Einsatzgruppen after the invasion of the Soviet Union crimes of unimaginable proportions.

OKH created special study groups with Marcks and Lossberg to create contingency plans, but Barbarossa itself was done by OKW's operations department with some input from the OKH special studies. Even in those Stahel says Lossberg says there were major problems getting intel about the USSR. P.51 of Stahel's Operation Barbarossa notes that:
The early planning stages of Barbarossa reveal a muddled process where information was produced to match major decisions already taken, rather than information being gathered on which to base major decisions.76
76 Megargee, Inside Hitler’s High Command, p. 116.
That confirms what I was saying: planning was conforming to Hitler's preconceived ideas about the campaign, rather than what information was available.

Most probably Halder tempered such a foreboding forecast with the optimistic anticipation of the Red Army’s swift defeat, allowing for an unopposed ‘railway advance’ further east. In any case it remains clear that the campaign was driven in its conception by grand strategic and macro-economic considerations87 above more pertinent questions such as available strength, logistical possibilities and a sober respect for the ever present element in war which Clausewitz dubbed ‘friction’.88
When coupled with the previous quote, it is clear that the issue is Hitler's PoV influenced planning all the way down so that planning was conducted with what Hitler wanted to hear in mind, it was then as much if not more so a political document as a serious military plan.

And the planners at OKH were right there with him in the personal belief that and ignoring any contrary evidence. They were aided by the fact that the German military system had been set-up from the beginning to confirm the preconceptions of it's leaders.
Hitler certainly created a personal military of a medieval type with his ideological purges and requirement for a personal oath of loyalty. The WW1 army was in no way as beholden to the civilian government as it was in WW2. And yes, Hitler created a cult of personality around which planning was done to meet his preconceptions, which was facilitated both by the selection of officers that conformed to Hitler's desires and their own marveling at what had just happened in France.

Megargee spends an entire chapter discussing how the German generals ultimately bought into Hitler's thoughts. Stahel spends something like a 1/3rd of his book Barbarossa and Hitler's: Defeat in the East on it. More and more recent histories have acknowledged their point and agreed with their observations. Rather unlike the Cold War histories that, having no better source, repeated the myth to the point it entered the public discourse and still lingers on in otherwise serious history books, they base their evidence not on what the German generals claim to have said and done after the war, but what they actually said and did during it. As a result, their citations are filled mostly with primary source documents from the time instead of post-war works like other histories and German general memoirs.
I'm going through Stahel as I type this and what he says I've quoted above: planning was done around Hitler's decisions, not around the evidence because Hitler had selected a staff that would conform to what he wanted, not to objective fact. It certainly is to the discredit of the officers responsible that they took bribes, neglected all sorts or responsibilities (both morale and professional), and fit themselves into their dictator's delusions.

And the planners were right there along with him. When Bock, upon first being briefed on the Barbarossa plan in 1941, inquired with Halder what would happen if the Red Army if it did withdraw into the Russian interior, Halder's reply was to blithely go basically "oh, that won't happen" and continued on.
Sure, as I said Halder was selected to replace Beck because he was pliable to regime and hardly a genius; in the end he got himself fired for not being enough of a toady.

And tellingly, the people who you claim to have been opposed to Barbarossa were involved from beginning to end in the Barbarossa process.
Who Halder? He wasn't involved in initially planning, that was Marcks and Lossberg, while once Hitler issues the Barbarossa directive it was Jodl and OKW's operations staff that did the planning, guys totally in Hitler's pocket. Anyway Halder was again a toady picked by Keitel because he would be pliable after Beck resigned.

Not dragged along and not some. Most. Followed. Willingly. As much as you try to absolve their responsibility for both their failure and their crime in waging a unprovoked war of aggression, the reality is that the German generals happily marched behind their fuhrer into oblivion.
The survivors of the purges followed because their jobs depended on it. Anyone with a problem with the regime was either sidelined from decision making or kept their mouths shut and went along otherwise they were out; later in the war as people disagreed with Hitler militarily or disregarded his orders in the field, they were dropped, like von Rundstedt, Guderian, and Manstein. I'm somewhat saying that the strategic issues rested with Hitler and how he constructed his cult of personality rather than the military per se. In terms of a military following orders to launch an unprovoked war of aggression...far too many examples of that exist through western history, including concurrently and post-WW2 to really even bother listing, sadly militaries don't oppose illegal orders in most cases, they carry them out even outside of dictatorships. Just following orders for Hitler's handpicked toadies certainly is to their eternal shame as individuals, but sadly there aren't many examples in history of militaries standing up to dictatorial regimes.
 
Just want to clarify here: when we say kill ratio, do we mean "kill" as in KIA, irrecoverable losses, or total casualties?
I looked it up, it is casualties, not KIA.

No it wasn't. The best of the Red Army fought just as well as the best of the Germans or the Anglo-Americans. It's just that the rest of the Red Army, which was more mediocrely trained and equipped compared to the Germans and took the worst casualties for it, was yet larger still and dragged down the average.[/QUOTE]
And the best of the Romanian army fought great . We are speaking about how the army performed as a whole, excuses don;t matter.
 
I looked it up, it is casualties, not KIA.

Just making sure. Of course, in the end such a definition means little beyond that, on average, the Germans were better at the sub-unit level. It was nothing that was going to win them the war.

And the best of the Romanian army fought great.

The difference being that the best of the Romanian Army was very small, even in proportion to their own forces. The best of the Red Army wasn't small at all. The number of men in the Soviet mechanized forces in 1944 alone was only 100,000 men smaller then the entire Romanian Army. The number of men in the non-mechanized guards formations add something like a million men.

We are speaking about how the army performed as a whole, excuses don;t matter.

Except you clearly aren't. To begin with, I was just correcting your erroneous statement which stated, and I quote, "that the entirety of the Red Army was Osttruppen". This is like stating the entirety of the German army was Volkssturm or SS... or Osttruppen, for that matter. It's manifestly untrue. A large part of the Red Army was as good as anything the Germans or Anglo-Americans fielded despite the fact that an even larger part... wasn't. However, even more to the point is that your comparison is inapt because ill ratios say nothing about how the army performs on the operational-strategic level and thus cannot speak as to how an army performs as a whole.

I wasn't aware that Manstein was the entire rest of the Heer.

Beck heavily respected Manstein and recognized his talent. In that sense, he did represent the much of the Heer as far as Beck was concerned. Nonetheless, Megargee in Hitler's High Command record further rejections of Beck, like how throughout July and August Beck attempted to convince the other Generals to join him in opposing Hitler's plan but was met with stony silence. Megargee also notes that Manstein's letter was representative of the rest of the Heer's generals in another sense:

"Manstein managed to encapsulate, in just a few pages, the main problem with officers of the high command: their inclination to deal with operational and organizational details instead of broader issues of "politics"; their unwillingness to let go of personal power for the sake of unified leadership; and their complete obliviousness to the dangers of Germany's strategic position."
Megargee, pp.50-51

Manstein also begged him not to resign and felt that resigning would remove potentially moderating and necessary professionals from the force, giving Hitler free reign to appoint whomever he liked,

Except he did not say anything about Beck resigning nor did he say that it would remove potential moderation. The closest he came is noting that he respected and support Beck as a fellow professional officer and Chief of the General Staff, but he also noted that said support was conditional and advised Beck to basically give up the role of strategic advisement in favor of focusing on purely military matters which would have turned Beck's position into... well, what it ultimately became: a further extension of the Fuhrer's will on the issue of strategy. This, as well as the recommendation that Hitler should take command of the army as well as the armed forces, is rather the opposite of what you are suggesting as it would have increased Hitler's ability to appoint whoever he liked. (Megargee, Pg 25). In fact, I was wrong about Beck writing to Manstein: the letter was actually unsolicited by Beck.

Naturally, Manstein left out those parts in his memoirs and only focused on the part where he offered respect and support to Beck.

which with Keitel's advice he appointed several relatively pliable professionals like Halder. Not everyone can afford to simply quit on principle, some people need the work and like it, so expecting people to resign in protest rarely works.

And all bringing that up does is highlight how inept Beck's efforts to oppose Hitler were. The appointment of Keitel and Halder do as well, as both were ultimately the results of Beck's attempt: Halder via being recommended by Keitel after Keitel gained his position at the recommendation of Beck. Beck advanced Keitel's name in the belief he was a good administrator who would not just be Hitler's toadies and sell the army out to him. That Keitel did just that highlights just how wrong he was. As Megargee observes, the fact that Beck's efforts increased Hitler's authority over the military rather highlights how alone he was.

There were multiple references, including Richard Overy's "Goering: Hitler's Iron Knight" to his opposition to the conflict as well as a number of government and military officials. I'm just not sure of how much military opposition actually reached Hitler's ears, as his staff at OKW was pretty much picked to be vehicles for his decisions rather than a team of mixed opinions that would challenge him.

I'm not discussing the opposition by Goring or the Nazis. I'm talking about that of the military.

Hitler was willing to take insane risks over and over based on supposed payoffs, so just because he was willing to gamble on something based on how it was presented to him doesn't necessarily mean he was supporting the operation based on sound reasoning, he was willing to base it on payoff alone.

And my point is that Hitler's willingness to take insane risks on nothing but the payoffs, ultimately, proved better in getting Germany victories then the German generals own conceptions about how the war would go... which would have seen Germany smashed right off the bat, if not ruined by economic collapse. My point, furthermore, in bringing this up is noting how this says less about Hitler's strategic abilities then it does about the German generals strategic abilities.

Halder did eventually turn it into the actual plan rather than just a concept.

No. Manstein was the one who created the plan. Halder just eagerly adopted it after Hitler approved it and adjusted his own to match.

What should be kept in mind was who those planners were in the first place and who put them in charge of making the choices. Ignoring realities of the serious problems with the operation was done to conform to Hitler's conceptions of how the war would go. Again I'm talking about planning in 1941, not the early studies in 1940 by Marcks and Lossberg. Lossberg's study was right about the Soviet plan to stand fast and counterattack to avoid losing territory for prestige and economic reasons.

And even keeping that in mind, they all suffered from the same problems. Even the earliest plans that were drawn up before Hitler's decision, like the Marck's plan, was made had the exact same conceptions of how the war would go, a conception that was never questioned, as they were present in the Marcks and Lossberg plan too. As Stahel writes on the Marcks plan:

"While enlightening in its own right, Marcks's 'Evaluation of Situation Red' also reveals a great deal about the intellectual process employed in planning the eastern campaign from the earliest stages. The unquestioning assumptions of Marchs's 'Operations Outline East' that, as will be seen with subsequent army studies, made no assessment of the ability of the Wehrmacht to achieve victory in a single campaign, proved symptomatic of the responses he received to the 'Evauluation of Situation Red'. Such blind supposition of success-among the very body charged with establishing the operational parameters and feasibility of the campaign-is strong evidence of the 'closed circle' of discussions and debate that was fostered within the army General Staff. It also hints ominously at the vast and unseen implications of an invasion of the Soviet Union." Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East, Pg 44.

And on the Lossberg plan:

"Just as Marcks had done, Lossberg's plan never questioned the ability of the Wehrmacht to achieve victory and concerned itself only with the best method of achieving that end. His outline of the campaign included no timetable for operations and is remarkably vague concerning the critical advance of the main army groups. There appears a wanton lack of consideration for the difficulties Soviet counter-measures could represent and an astounding under-estimation of the size and robustness of the Soviet economy." -As above, Pg 51.

So regardless of who was doing the planning, the exact same issues manifested. This powerfully reinforces my point that the issue in operational planning wasn't just Hitler, but rather the senior German military leadership as well.

OKH created special study groups with Marcks and Lossberg to create contingency plans, but Barbarossa itself was done by OKW's operations department with some input from the OKH special studies. Even in those Stahel says Lossberg says there were major problems getting intel about the USSR. P.51 of Stahel's Operation Barbarossa notes that:

That confirms what I was saying: planning was conforming to Hitler's preconceived ideas about the campaign, rather than what information was available.

Unfortunately for you, what you fail to note is that Stahel and Megargee are not speaking about just Hitler's preconceived ideas, but also those of his generals. And the same on the decisions being made. Which is my point. Had you actually read their books, as opposed to just read them, you would be aware of this.

Here is the section Stahel is citing: "Clearly the upper echelons of the German military were not interested in information that did not match their plans and preconceptions. Michael Geyer's conclusion about Hitler can be broadened to include the senior military leaders: they did not gather information in order to make major decisions but only plan the implementation of decisions they had already made. For their part, the German intelligence services did well at evaluating doctrine and tactics, the areas closest to their own General Staff training, but when faced with an army whose doctrine was unfamiliar-such as the Soviets'-they relied upon old biases." -Pg 116

And yes, Hitler created a cult of personality around which planning was done to meet his preconceptions,

Except the German military's system of confirming decision makers preconceptions regardless of said preconceptions attachment to reality long predates Hitler. They were already a built in feature, not something Hitler added.

I'm going through Stahel as I type this and what he says I've quoted above: planning was done around Hitler's decisions, not around the evidence because Hitler had selected a staff that would conform to what he wanted, not to objective fact.

Your obviously then failing to comprehend what he is saying. Stahel's entire point in that section can basically be summed up by this line from Megargee:

"The point is not that they missed an opportunity to resist Hitler's strategic decision; Hitler never allowed them such an opportunity. The point is that, contrary to their later assertions, they supported that decision though their own assessments of the Russians operational capabilities." -Inside Hitler's High Command, Pg 110.

Sure, as I said Halder was selected to replace Beck because he was pliable to regime and hardly a genius; in the end he got himself fired for not being enough of a toady.

Except during the planning for Barbarossa, he wasn't pliable.

The survivors of the purges followed because their jobs depended on it. Anyone with a problem with the regime was either sidelined from decision making or kept their mouths shut and went along otherwise they were out; later in the war as people disagreed with Hitler militarily or disregarded his orders in the field, they were dropped, like von Rundstedt, Guderian, and Manstein.

Except for all those times they disagreed and were not dropped. Rundstedt in 1940, Guderian in August 1941, and Manstein repeatedly in 1943. So obviously disagreement alone wasn't enough to get fired.

In terms of a military following orders to launch an unprovoked war of aggression...far too many examples of that exist through western history, including concurrently and post-WW2 to really even bother listing, sadly militaries don't oppose illegal orders in most cases, they carry them out even outside of dictatorships. Just following orders for Hitler's handpicked toadies certainly is to their eternal shame as individuals, but sadly there aren't many examples in history of militaries standing up to dictatorial regimes.

Unfortunately, your still missing the point. My focus here is not so much on the German generals failure in morality nor on how common a failing it is in history. I think we're both in agreement there. My focus is on their failure at their ultimate, actual job: waging and winning a war. Megargee goes into all of this, like on the High Command's role and culture:

"Try though he [Hitler] might, though, he could not work without a command system, a collection of individuals bound together by common values, ideas, and practices. The system itself emphasized, though a culture that had evolved over centuries, the individual's subordination to the collective whole. In that sense it helped Hitler to maintain control, since the system did not produce individual rivals. But that whole also constituted an entity in and of itself, one that Hitler could neither discard nor completely dominate. He could not be the sole voice in the command system, much though he wanted to be. Despite his jealous dislike of much that defined, the system's culture and ideas permeated every sphere they touched: political, strategic, operational, and organizational. That fact limited Hitler's power, but it also pulled the rug from under the generals' postwar apologies, because the evidence shows that most of the time the high command strove to work with the Fuhrer, not against him. The command's values and ideas were not nearly so different from those of Hitler and the National Socialists the myth would indicate. The dominant military culture was ripe for cooperation before the Nazis every became a factor in German politics. For all the talk of conflict that arose after the war, the two sides both contributed to Germany's downfall."-Pg 230-231

On the political fight:

"In political terms the military's leaders demonstrated from the start that their goals and those of the Nazi Party coincided. Just as much as Hitler, they wanted to see Germany become powerful again, to see the terms of the Versailles treaty dismantled, and to retake the territories lost at the end of the Great War. Throughout the Weimar years they had maintained the fiction that the army was apolitical, but in that time they had deliberately undermined the constitution they had sworn an oath to uphold. They wanted an authoritarian government; they believed that only such a system could bring about the necessary militarization of Germany. When the Nazis appeared on the scene, the generals though they had the perfect instrument. They believed Hitler could harness the power of German society and industry for them, without threatening their monopoly on armed force, and Hitler naturally encouraged that belief. He even sacrificed his old comrade Rohm to demonstrate his fidelity to the army, and in return the army swore personal loyalty to him.
That loyalty would prove remarkably strong, even after the army's leaders could see that their position in the state was not nearly so secure as they had thought. When the Nazis killed army officers in the course of the coup against the SA, the army accepted the loss with barely a murmer. The reaction was the same when Hitler and his cronies framed Fritsch and purged the officer corps in 1938. In fact, Hitler did more to distance himself from the army's senior generals than vice-versa. With time came increasing hubris and distrust on the dictator's part, along with a corresponding disinclination to take the army's side in any dispute. Through it all, though, most army officers strove to demonstrate their loyalty, to prove themselves worthy of Hitler's respect and trust. The exceptions-those behind the July 20 coup attempt and other conspiracies-were notable as much for their small numbers as for their courage. Most of their comrades either opposed their efforts or stood by to await the outcome. The army did not lose the political battle so much as it failed to offer one." -Pg 231-232

On strategy:

"Hidden below that superficial argument [referring to Hitler's early successes in 1936-1940 blinding German military leaders], however, lies the Germans' fundamental inability to make sound strategic judgements. This was a problem with deep historical roots that, at the very least, stretched back to Schlieffen and the senior officers and officials of his era. With almost no exceptions, the Nazi-era military and government were devoid of people who could correctly balance means and ends in order to come up with a realistic strategic plan. They welcomed war with Poland, despite the certainty of conflict with Britain and France. Likewise, they believed that they could conquer the Soviet Union easily. Then, they not only failed to recognize that effort's collapse in front of Moscow but also simultaneously accepted a war with America without batting an eye. From there the strategic picture rapidly became hopeless, but the generals drove their troops to fight on. The myth of the high command focuses on Hitler's lack of strategic acumen, but in this respect he was in good company. The generals' postwar protestations of innocence and their attempts to place sole responsibility on Hitler's shoulders now stand out as obvious falsehoods. At best, they deceived themselves. At worst, they cynically tried to deceive everyone else." -Pg 233.

And on operations:

"The problem with the Germans' image-like their operations to begin with-is that it is one-dimensional. It emphasizes the positive aspects while glossing over the negative. As far as Hitler's performance is concerned, one must give him credit for his successes, which often occurred in the face of opposition from his subordinates: his support for the thrust through the Ardennes and his "no retreat" order in the winter of 1941-42 come immediately to mind. Admittedly, the balance of inspired versus foolhardy decisions stands firmly against Hitler. But what of men who served under him, whose operational genius is still so often lauded to the heaven? Their record is much less positive than most people know. Operations consists of more than the ability to maneuver forces on the battlefield. To be effective operationally, an army must be able to figure out what its enemies are doing, disguise its own intentions, and keep its formations properly manned and supplied. In these respects the Germans proved themselves to be woefully inadequate. Their intelligence efforts were a cruel joke. They consistently misjudged their enemies capabilities and intentions, especially on the Eastern Front. At the same time, the Allied were quite regularly able to discern German plans. In terms of logistic and manning*, as was true of strategy, the Germans could not balance ends with means. The underlying fault was the officers' fixation on the maeneuver plan and their unwillingness to integrate the support functions into the planning process." -Pg 233

*"Manning" here means the issue of personnel administration I mentioned earlier. I'm still trying to coagulate that bit into a easily presentable form, as it takes up a third of a chapter..

And on the issue of the fuhrerprincip's:

"After 1945 the surviving generals made much of the conflict between Hitler's top-down command philosophy, the Fuhrerprinzip, and the long-standing general staff traditions of joint responsibility and "command by directive." There is no question that such a conflict existed. The history of the war is replete with examples in which Hitler refused to allow a subordinate commander any flexibility in whatsoever in the execution of an order. (snip some boilerplate stuff about how this lack of flexibility took over during the course of the war). They key question is: Was this somehow Hitler's fault? In order to believe that, one has to accept that he forced his commanders to adopt his style of command against their will, but the evidence clearly contradicts that interpretation. The senior officer corps adopted the Fuhrerprinzip with only occasional token resistance. For whatever combination of reasons-duty, fear, loyalty, and ambition among them-they proved only too willing to enforce absolute obedience on their subordinates, in many cases under threat of death."-Pg 235

Quite frankly, you have an extremely romantic view of the German General Staff as competent not only tactically, but operationally and strategically as well. This is the view which they themselves propagated after the war but one which conforms ill with the reality. But I can easily see why your so eager to say it was all Hitler's fault and belittle the idea the generals had a role in it: it lets you continue to pretend that they had the ability to come up with a sound plan to defeat the Soviet Union for which you base much of your suppositions about German victory on and obsess over.
 
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not to dive in too deep in the discussion of the German General Staff, but Creveld judged them very harshly in regards to their planning of Barbarossa in his book "Supplying War", justly so in my view. They seemed to rely entirely too often on 'winging it' when it came to logistical planning for the War in the East. It should be noted the General Staff developed that plan, Hitler only approved it and only provided the broad strokes of what he wanted. He didn't really step into the day to day level of operations direction until well into Case Blue in 1942.

They also resisted Manstein's plan for the invasion of France in 1940 and the broad strokes of their ideas for Sealion clearly show they were out of their depth. Hitler isn't the only reason the Germans lost the war. The German General Staff made plenty of their own mistakes.
 
It would be unfair to say the leadership of the German army didn't by and large acquiesce to Hitler. People like v. Bock and Keitel were in the minority. It is far far easier to come up with a list of senior officers who were not of this mind being of the old school and believed in classical notions of economy of force or annihilation. Moscow represented the best chance at destroying the Red Army.
 
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