What is the most effective weapon of the Third Reich?

What is the Third Reich's most effective weapon?

  • U-boats

    Votes: 15 20.0%
  • Superior tanks

    Votes: 4 5.3%
  • Jets

    Votes: 3 4.0%
  • Mg-42, early assault rifle, panzerfaust, etc

    Votes: 29 38.7%
  • Other

    Votes: 24 32.0%

  • Total voters
    75

WILDGEESE

Gone Fishin'
I voted OTHER,

as in....Indoctrination!!!

The ability to get somewhere in the region of 60 or so million people to follow, believe and carry out everything The Third Reich and Hitler says and aspires to.

How on earth did Germany despite being outnumbered in population, military assets, production still carry on the war past 1943, even knowing they where on a hiding to nothing, especially on the Eastern Front says everything about the Reich's ability to get their folk to believe in victory despite everything to the contuary.

You can have the best weapons in the world, but it still doesn't make a bit of difference if the person using it doesn't believe in what they're fighting for and they believe that they're in the right.

Regards filer
 

TinyTartar

Banned
The MG-42 gave the Germans the ability to fight disproportionate amounts of Russian infantry and triumph in an engagement where the average Russian soldier, despite not being better trained, had more firepower at his disposal (some Russian units had entire companies armed with submachine guns like the PPsh 42).
 
Hi guys I'm just wondering what is the most effective weapon of Germany in WWII? Effective can mean giving German soldiers superiority in all engagements. If you voted for "other" please say what it is and why you voted that.

I'm sorry if I'm sounding immature, any comments are welcome!:)

My vote would be for their specific doctrine of using Machine Guns at squad level (as realized with the MG34 and MG42.) They gave each squad a lot of fire power that was controlled by a single solider. My understanding is that their doctrine called for the most reliable solider in the squad to man the MG34 / MG42 and the MG34's and MG42's were expected to do the bulk of the killing. I'm told the high rate of fire of the MG34 and MG42 was also driven by their doctrine so they could kill as many enemy in the first burst of fire as possible.

At least when fighting defensively this meant that the impact of ineffective squad members was lessened so long as the MG34 / MG42 kept firing. As the war dragged on the surviving veterans likely manned the MG34's and MG42's and probably accounted for the bulk of the allied casualties inflicted via small arms.

In my view the doctrine is more important than the weapon in this case. Other armies could have used similar weapons and not gotten the same results as the Germans. The Germans probably could have used any reasonably serviceable* light or general purpose machine gun with a high rate of fire and gotten somewhat comparable results. I do acknowledge though that the MG34 and MG42 were good tools for the German doctrine and were presumably optimized for their doctrine, but a Bren gun with a higher rate of fire for example probably would have worked almost as well at squad level and in some respects might have been better.

*Edited to add... A quick change barrel system would have been an important consideration.
 
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