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Well put. +1
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You are missing the point. It was "drawn-out" like you say....no other military force has lasted so long while being so ill-equipped, outnumbered, strategically displaced etc...
In light of the situation at the time, I do no see many other historical examples of such a tenacious defense against a vastly superior coalition of forces that, by mid 1944, had Germany spread on three major fronts.
No one is crediting Germany with any kind of success, other than prolonging the war well past when it should have ended. This is not much room for discussion/interpretation in this regard.
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You are missing the point. It was "drawn-out" like you say....no other military force has lasted so long while being so ill-equipped, outnumbered, strategically displaced etc...
In light of the situation at the time, I do no see many other historical examples of such a tenacious defense against a vastly superior coalition of forces that, by mid 1944, had Germany spread on three major fronts.
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Hogwash and bullsh-t.
They succeeded spectacularly early in the war because they were both starting from their "home base" (zero length lines of supply) and against both the French and the Russians they weren't just better trained and lead but were veterans of real warfare.
Neither was the case for their opposition by 1944. Once the Allies broke through in Normandy They kept those supposedly defensively brilliant Germans on the run ... until they ran out of gas. They neither attacked from some home base since they had to transport everything over the channel and onto beaches or through distant and inadequate ports (Cherbourg).
Likewise the Russians moved the Germans some 600 miles during Operation Bagracian and since they had already made progress they were not starting from some built up home base nor was it against something like the non-veterans, poorly lead Russian Army of 1941. They too had to stop once in a while to rearm and reequip.
Germans aren't ubermencsh. Quite fooling yourself.
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Do you read operational history? It sounds like you are talking about generalities here.
The German military had advantages that offset this, such as early preparation, efficient troop training and later, a very defensive posture. This is why it was 'drawn out' and the front didn't collapse immediately to an Allied blitzkrieg. The Allies had severe hurdles of their own- the RKKA started the war as a paper tiger, British armored doctrine was considerably worse than the Germans in North Africa, and the US was green going into 1943, but learned quickly.
The Wehrmacht peaked in 1941 vs the Soviets/W.Allies peaked 44-end.
Come fall of 1943 and much of the Wehrmacht is pretty static, and of low offensive value. The armored divisions are the only ones that have real weight.
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After Kursk the German situation was very fragile, the fact that the war progressed two more years until the capitulation is remarkable, in my opinion of course.
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My point was that Germany nearly captured Moscow in much less time, through continuous outmaneuvering of Russian garrison forces and entire armies.
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No offense, this is pretty much a 1990s/1980s POV when Eastern front research and scholarship was one sided, based solely on the German POV. This tended to exaggerate German and axis allied military capabilities.
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With the Wehrmacht's units, I find that it was the most tactically/operationally effective in 41 and 42, and much less so afterwards.
Besides recurring training/tactical leadership defects in 44-45', the Soviet tactical command culture was a bizarre weakness, as it tended to force units to be overly aggressive without encouraging creativity, and forced them to attack the same dangerous place over and over with the resultant losses.
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When the war began, the soviets lacked experienced and skilled officers in the higher tiers, due to the great purge. The Germans on the other hand, had alot of those. During the course of the war many of the "good" Wehrmacht officers retired had to retire or got killed while the soviet staffs gained more and more experience and learned from their enemy.
I think this point gets neglegted way too often.
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Comparing dictatorship and the modell of totalitarism you can come to the conlcusion that Stalin in relation to Hitler did it ironically the "right" way. After Stalin eleminated nearly his whole officer corps especially from 1937-1939, as already mentioned, his officers left had to gain experiece in operational warfare. The key point is that Stalin let them doing throughout the war not intervening in major operational decisions made by his staff, but so did the almighty Führer.
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Well you can also use the word "strategy" in its traditional definition of meaning an organized plan. For instance, German generals favoured conceding some sector if the end result was a shorter front line, which would allow them to have deeper and stronger formations consistent across the front. This is strategic brilliance conducted through tactical levels of command.
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