Who had a more impressive World War performance: 2nd or 3rd Reich

Who had a more impressive World War performance: 2nd or 3rd Reich

  • 2nd Reich

    Votes: 59 63.4%
  • 3rd Reich

    Votes: 34 36.6%

  • Total voters
    93
I think that Kaiserreich. It had two fronts some years and almost won WW1 despite that it had fight against Brits, French and Russians. Yes Nazis fought against them too but France was amazing weak and fell quickly and Stalin devastated Red Army badly and Nazis didn't fight two front war in many years and they failed on that quickly.
 
By forcing Russia out 2nd Empire almost won. Probably would have "won" if they hadn't provoked Wilson and the US.

Whereas Nazis were never gonna force Stalin out. They let their ideology dictate their strategy and their intelligence. In fact their intelligence estimate of Soviet reserves vastly underestimated what Stalin could mobilize (Red Army added maybe 6 million more in 1941 alone).

The Nazis were right about the indirect waste of so many more lives due to prewar purging of command structure. But everybody guessed that -even Stalin. Still, the Red Army adapted. After only fifteen months into the war, Zhukov proved that with Operation Uranus.
 

Germaniac

Donor
The Kaiserreich hands down. I'll paraphrase Dan Carlin, the Kaiserreich was a heavyweight boxer able to keep standing for the entire bout giving and taking punches before finally going down. The Nazi Reich was a flashy one punch knockout artist and as soon as they ran into someone who could take a few punches they started to crumble.
 
Nazis had speed, panache, and technology.

KaiserReich had grit, endurance, and better resilience. They did better and very nearly won eithout the lunacy of their successors.
 
While the Second Reich easily could have won, the Third Reich needs some serious credit for being an inferior version of the Second Reich in every single way (economy, territory, resources, navy, and the less said about human rights the better), yet managed to secure huge diplomatic victories (Austria and the Sudetenland) AND when war came managed to defeat France in six weeks (along with Belgium and the Netherlands and the BEF) not long after defeating Poland in one month. Right afterwards they unleashed a devastating offensive into the Balkans and Soviet Union, nearly winning the war (more or less) if they had taken a few Soviet cities like Moscow.

The Second Reich's performance was as expected--they did very well and mainly lost because their enemies outlasted them (in large part because the US was on their side). The Third Reich was constantly rolling 20s until they weren't, yet still had the insanity to come up with ridiculous heavy tanks and the V2 program--the V1 program was even better (and can be actually argued as useful) since it wasted a ton of resources trying to intercept them! For a bunch of ideologically-motivated maniacs starting far deeper in the hole than the Kaiserreich ever could have been, the success the Nazis had was nothing short of incredible. The luck they had in winning so many victories has inspired an endless set of myths which Wehraboos to this day adhere to.
 
The 2nd were competent. Yeah they had their diplomatic foibles, but they had a whole series of institutions behind the flashy frontline stuff that made them a modern major power.

The 3rd Reich on the other hand... Versailles did a really good job of destroying those war making institutions resulting in the glass cannon Reich we all know and love (well Hollywood at least). Lets be clear. With very little they built an armed forces to a job, and it did that job very well, but it didn't have the institutional flexability to change when the job changed.
 
I want to go for the 2nd Riech on impulse, but Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottomans (while not necessarily the best allies) were far, far, more beneficial allies than Italy and the clown car of european Axis minors. Also while WWII France was far weaker than WWI France, the USSR was significantly stronger than the Russian Empire, also the US' power was better applied to the European theatre in WWII.
 
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The Kaiserreich hands down. I'll paraphrase Dan Carlin, the Kaiserreich was a heavyweight boxer able to keep standing for the entire bout giving and taking punches before finally going down. The Nazi Reich was a flashy one punch knockout artist and as soon as they ran into someone who could take a few punches they started to crumble.
Well said.

I think that in terms of overall military quality and basic decency compared to contemporaries, WW1 germany wins hands down. More functional and stronger economy, objectively superior human rights record, the best army in Europe at the start of the war, and despite the Ottomans' deep problems and Austria-Hungary's criminally incompetent leadership, they were still far better allies than Italy in WW2 (and the wonderful idiocy of Luigi "God's gift to the enemy" Cadorna.

Nazi Germany got the benefit of MASSIVE strokes of luck--a unique degree of Soviet officer corps weakness AND France politically paralyzed, which allowed the lightning strike into France to succeed--and they still lost due to critical failures at every level of their economy, military, and society.

WW1 Germany made a couple of diplomatic flops that left America soft-backing the Entente and not bothering to run the blockade, and even then still damn near won.

To put it another way: Nazi Germany was basically doomed either way, and their best-case scenario is economic devastation following an attempt to white-peace the WAllies after "defeating" the USSR. WW1 Germany would have won if America hadn't intervened in '17, because by that point the Entente's collateral was gone, America was done offering loans and discounts, and French morale was in free fall.

Nazi Germany was very, very lucky. The Kaiserreich was very good at fighting wars.
 
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Had the kaiserreich been as lucky as the third, we would actually all be speaking Germans

(As the main international language ofc)
 
I think some people here really need to re-read the title and OP. Saying things like "yeah the Kaiserreich had a better economy,and better allies,and better soldiers..." utterly misses the point,as all this make its achievements less impressive. A super-duper great power making great gains isn't impressive,its just expected.

The Third Reich on the other hand,was smaller,poorer,weaker,more isolated etc...and yet managed to achieve far,far more than the Kaiser ever did. it did so by some really extreme luck,of course...but thats irrelevant to the fact that it was impressive as fuck.
 
Taking out France in WW2 was arguably more impressive than having Russia being taken out because of internal overthrow and then signing a peace treaty. The Kaiserreich also was never able to take over Greece, which the 3rd Reich did.

I'm not sure what to make of Italy's impact on this debate though. Churchill's joke about having them last time aside, its arguable that the 3rd Reich spent way more resources propping them up than then Kaiserreich spent in aiding Austria on the Italian front.

I also think that from a force maximization standpoint, the 3rd Reich achieved more with less, but I'm willing to concede that as just being my opinion. Germany in WW1 achieved way more with less in the Eastern Front, but way less with more on the Western front.
 
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