[ansel12]

"They share the Nazi's biggest weakness. Their culture's requirement of total obedience means that they are incredibly slow at reacting to unforeseen circumstances (and in warfare, nothing goes as planned), because they have to wait for their orders before responding. They are not allowed to use initiative, intuition, or creativity, because it is not allowed in their daily lives. Once again, Freedom proves to be an incredibly powerful tool!"



My reading of WWII contradicts yours, the Germans were superior soldiers, to everyone they met, because of their initiative, intuition, and creativity.

[Teacher317]

My reading of WWII contradicts yours, the Germans were superior soldiers, to everyone they met, because of their initiative, intuition, and creativity.

Yeah. I was mostly spewing conventional wisdom. There are some anecdotal stories to back up that viewpoint, but it is difficult to adhere religiously to that view while noting that a nation of only 60 million came thiiiiiis close to defeating the entire western world (WHILE carrying Italy on their back, AND being allied with an utterly unresponsive Emperor). I should retract that opening phrase slighting the German soldiers... but I sincerely believe that the Arabs are well-described that way, and the article seems to back me up on that.

[Terabitten]

There is an excellent book called "Closing With the Enemy" by LTC(ret) Michael Doubler that addresses the topic of why the US won the ground war in the European theater in WWII. Doubler's position is that we won because we were able to apply tactical and operational lessons learned on the battlefield faster than the German army, which was hamstrung by the General Staff in that regard. In other words, the US Army was able to take a good idea from a staff sergeant squad leader and quickly "get the word out" to the entire theater of operations. The Germans, OTOH, would study the problem at the General Staff level and provide an "answer" from there.

The obvious answer is that armies from essentially democratic countries understand that the "right" answer can come from anywhere, and they are not afraid to accept an answer from anywhere. Armies from less democratic nations, however, find it far more difficult to accept an answer from "below."