Japanese Imperial General Headquarters Vs German Oberkommando der Wehrmacht

Japanese Imperial General Headquarters Vs German Oberkommando der Wehrmacht

  • Japanese Imperial General Headquarters

    Votes: 8 16.7%
  • German Oberkommando der Wehrmacht

    Votes: 40 83.3%

  • Total voters
    48
Japanese Imperial General Headquarters Vs German Oberkommando der Wehrmacht

Both the Japanese and German supreme commands had their share of successes and failures during World War II. Which of the two systems was more effect and did a better job overall? In many ways the two systems are polar opposites with the Japanese being very decentralized and the German system extremely centralized around Hitler.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_General_Headquarters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberkommando_der_Wehrmacht
 
both were both brilliant and seriously flawed at the same time, but in the end the Wehrmacht and Kriegsmarine were models of inter agency cooperation compared to the IJN and Japanese Army

at least the German staffs actually told each other factual information, while the Japanese Navy hid Midway from the Army for months!
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Yeah, it's not exactly setting the bar especially high...

Yeah, it's not exactly setting the bar especially high...

It's sort of the "prettiest woman in Barstow" concept.;)

Best,
 
Ah, goddamn it. I thought we were voting who was worse and voted for the Japanese. Is there anyway to alter that?

In any case, as TFSmith observed. Despite their manifest faults at the strategic level, OKW fought the war as well as they could hope for at the tactical and (to a lesser extent) operational levels. The same could not be said of the Japanese. Plus, while there was plenty of backbiting and disobedience of orders by subordinates looking to have the war fought their way, there was never the outright institutional assassination of rival officers in those efforts that sometimes characterized IJGHQ.
 
I would rate OKW higher. In the case of IGHQ, on top of the factionalization, backstabbing, and pervasive inter-service rivalries, many men at the top were only in their positions because of nepotism and influence within certain 'cliques' that enjoyed preeminence at the moment. Many Japanese field commanders were very competent, skilled men, but with few exceptions the closer you got to Tokyo higher leadership as a whole became increasingly less attuned to reality more self-serving and grandiose.

While OKW was bad enough with its overcomplicated chain of command and reliance on Hitler for major decision-making, with the Japanese you literally had dozens of little Hitlers and Goerings running around, sometimes working against each other and always finding ways to make life harder for the men actually doing the dirty work. IMO the Japanese were the worse of the two in this regard.
 
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