The Wehrmacht

Because Germans like to overcomplicate things.

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>>34869659
Germans are smart so a wide array of Military is better than vanilla Infantry

>>34869659
fpbp
overkill is part of national mindset.

>>34869659
They were big pioneers in terms of diversity.

>>34869659
Because the Germans pioneered military doctrine and units. Everyone else basically just looked at what the Germans did and tried to either one-up it, or learn from it.

>>34869659
Technology smashed everything. We were fighting wars before pre-recorded history.

Even ww1 was trench warfare where nobody gained ground for a year or so. Then all of a sudden, tanks and planes could drop bombs.

Everyone was struggling to use it to their purpose. I actually think the Nazis fucked a lot of stuff up, obviously, but the blitzkrieg idea wasn't a fuck up. How do I know, you know what blitzkrieg is even tho it's written in German.

>>34869659
Air divisions existed for most of the powerhouses, divided by either the glider units or the normal parachuting from a perfectly good plane

Mechanized/Motorized, while not formally designated by some countries, was constantly used by the allies. Ex. the USSR's version of mechanized was IS-2s plus Calvary units.

Not to mention the fact that what >>34869670
said is true. Yet none of that matter when supplies had to be pushed to the front by horse powered carts if the unfortunate division wasn't near a train station

>>34869670
One reason.
Also

>Mechanized Divisions
Due to ressource shortages. If you can only equip some of your infantry with motorized support, you designate them as such to make sure they're properly used. The panzergrenadiers were developed before WW2 to work as infantry support for fast moving tank forces, which was revolutionary at the time.

>Mountain Divisions
To fight in the mountains (duh). There was fighting in the alps in WW1 and it was found that alpine warfare poses unique difficulties. Americans actually created one themselves for WW2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10th_Mountain_Division

>Luftwaffe felddivisions
Bureaucratic fluke. Superfluous Luftwaffe personell was to be put into combat, but Göring didn't want to lose "his" men, so...
Similar things account for most of the extra units, including the entire Waffen-SS. (But before we all laugh at this amount of silliness, let's not forget that the USA currently has an armed forces branch that only exists because someone raised a flag on iwo jima.)

>>34869809
So like he said, Germans like to overcomplicate things.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fqdy6EFl1js

>>34869659
Deutsches Heer>Wehrmacht
Kaiser Wilhelm II>Adolf "Austrian" Hitler
stosstruppen>Waffen SS

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Luftwaffe Field Divisions were a hilarious example of how stupidly inefficient nazi germany was

>Be Germany
>Luftwaffe basically being BTFO by this point
>Few pilots, new ones keep dying in accidents they're so shitty
>Luftwaffe still has massive support staff infrastructure, hundreds of thousands of men literally doing nothing
>Goring decides to just cram them into "field divisions" still under luftwaffe control because of muh pride
>Doesn't let the Heer oversee training or deployment, instead left to Goring's lackeys who have no idea what they're doing in field battles
>said divisions proceed to do absolutely fuck all and Heer Generals blame them for hampering the war effort
>Goring cries to Hitler and it's a reason Manstein got dismissed

>germans are superior!!!!!!!!!1

the reality is that most of the german army marched on foot and had their supplies delivered by horse. they had "so many" """special""" divisions because the extreme shortage of equipment made any division that had something other than rifles and horses """special"""

>>34870850
Not really related but the USAF probably had the best pilot program.

>>34869775
>Yet none of that matter when supplies had to be pushed to the front by horse powered carts if the unfortunate division wasn't near a train station
Or you know, by cars but as long as you can repeat the retarded memes that /k/ spouts sure.

Germans are extremely bureaucratic and tend to robotic behaviours and over-regulation. (Their vehicle laws are a widely known modern example that's politically neutral, while their craven embrace of sand niggers reflects the robotic character of their government.)

Wehrboos often make critical mistakes because of those sexy Hugo Boss uniforms in thinking everything WWII Germans did wasn't a fuckup, but their mistakes cost them the war.

Divided effort and resources cost the Kriegsmarine the Battle of the Atlantic. Capital ships were a waste of money. The Soviets learned that lesson and focused on submarines to cut shipping between CONUS and Europe. Had it come to war the losses, even with massive US investment in ASW, would have been horrific.

Focused US resources OTOH strangled Japan, particularly submarine layed mines and other attacks on maritime supply routes. See the aptly named "Operation Strangle". US submariners did what U-boat captains only dreamed of.

Focus on expensive, hard to maintain exotic tanks led to Tiger, which resources could have been devoted to better automotive reliability and more Panther-sized machines along with the greatest tank killer in WWII, the StuG which though primarily defensive was a fine assault gun and didn't waste armor on a high profile turret.

Failure to build strategic bombers worthy of the name in favor of feeble medium bombers descended directly from 1930s mail planes (Dornier, Junkers) preserved Allied factories and bases beyond their pathetic range.

Buying Bf-109s with their awful landing gear unsuited to rough field use cost many aircraft writeoffs on landing. Heinkel landing gear was superior and you will notice no other successful aircraft imitated that idiotic inboard landing gear pivot location. Bf-109 was a modest success but its defects were a trap once in production. German combat turn practices were outstanding but couldn't negate other problems.

>>34870971
Cars aren't effective resupply, and you can read German accounts of what happens when you fail to provide TRACKED resupply. Have some "Tigers in the Mud" by Otto Carius to start. Then read how Soviets used tanks to haul equipment, and each other. Soviet tankers loved Shermans, known as "Emchas" so much that even Stalinist censorship didn't erase their records.

>>34869809
Most countries have Marines, not just the US. Party for tradition, partly for international laws.

>>34871016
>partly for international laws.

Citation needed.

The credible deterrent of littoral warfare (originally the US Marine specialty) and readily deployed naval shock troops was valuable and remains so useful the rest of the US armed forces now prepare to do it too.

>>34869689
Winning!

>>34871012
You completely missed the point, cars and everything that was available besides horses got used for logistics. It's not just fucking horses, that was the point. The retarded horses meme needs to stop.

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>>34869699

>>34870985
>Capital ships were a waste of money
The Bismark only cost as much as a few subs. Did not meaningfully affect the outcome either way.

>>34869659
PzGren were just MechInf. US has had MechInf pretty much since the Second Civil War (Mounted Infantry). The concept goe back as far as the Romans IIRC.

Mountain Infantry are just light infntry with a specialization in movement through rough terrain. This sounds much like the airborne units employed in WWII. You'll note that though the Germans had paras (fallschirmjager) they only made a couple of jumps, as after the sever losses of the Crete assault, hitler refused to authorize another airborne operation.

Air Force Infantry? I had to look this up. Apparently it was the German's attempt to create pathfinders or skirmishers. From what I've read, they were basically the result of Göring scrabbling for power, rather than any actual need. Von Manstrein blames the Werhmacht's decline and subsequent defeats on theLuftwaffe recruiting the majority of the NCO and junior officer quality men, rather than them being available as replacements for already standing units.

>>34870985

The Kriegsmarine u boats did pretty good considering what they were up against.

The Americans just ran roughshod over the japs who failed to adjust or adapt to submarine warfare in any meaningful way.

>>34870808
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/james-alex-fields-charlottesville-driver-.html

>>34870971
>>34871052
Dunno, mang. Seeing a lot of horse drawn columns here. Plus things like clothing maintenance platoons and motorized slaughter companies, and partially motorized special economics companies. Looks like Germany couldn't prioritize very efficiently.

>>34871269
Forgot to include link.

http://www.wehrmachtbericht.com/page10.php

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>>34871269
>>34871288
WHAT? Motorized logistics and support, how horrible. What you're seeing is one supply district and yes there are horses because horses got used and just like horses got used motorized anything got used.

>>34871016
Having naval infantry is normal for any country with a serious navy. Making a whole second army out of it is not.

>>34871052
>>34871269
>>34871343
>muh horses
It's like americans simply cannot fathom the idea that a ressource like oil can be limited.

>>34869670
literally this, fine example of German autism

>>34871343
So what you're saying is, they just didn't have the logistics to support their grandiose military aspirations? What a stupid way to run a war. It's like they set out to lose on purpose.

>>34872023
No, that was never implied and not shown on any images you linked. I'm beginning to think you're just trying to make stupid shit up.

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>>34869809
/thread

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>>34872371
looks like siegfried took a 7.62 to the head

>>34871052
It isn't a meme though. No one claims that horses were the only transport used, just that the infantry divisions (which were the vast majority of the army) mostly used thousands of horses to bring supplies forward from the railhead, along with a couple hundred vehicles at most.
Here's an article about horse-drawn transport in the German Army:
https://sci-hub.cc/10.1177/002200948802300108

>>34871571
>It's like americans simply cannot fathom the idea that a ressource like oil can be limited.
>implying we dont know about the bombing campaign on ploesti and the ball bearing werks at schweinfurt

>>34870850
Is that Ted Cruz on bottom, second from left?

>>34869670
FPBP
Also German battle doctrine was highly developed, the only ones who came close who saw action were the British. There was an OSS video on German infantry tactics you might enjoy watching. If we didn't have superior logistics and technology we would have been shot to shit.

>>34869659
Everyone had mountain infantry and mechanized infantry divisions. As for Air Force infantry, Germany had that because the Luftwaffe got bloated past its actual mission of being an air force.

>>34871016
I think he was meaning more as Naval Infantry like say the Royal Marines from the UK.

>>34870900
probably due to the whole "lol we get to train on a continent virtually untouched by war" thing. Same with the manufactoring.

America played WW2 on casual mode.

>>34870985
Yeah, this. This doesn't mean they had success and allies didn't make mistakes. If the Germans had strategic bombers they might have actually defeated Russia (industry in the Urals) even with the U.S. crutch. Their tank suspension designs were used for post war French and Swiss tanks

>>34876765
>If the Germans had strategic bombers they might have actually defeated Russia
From SE England to the Ruhr is 450km, from Smolensk to Chelyabinsk is 1800km.
And German production didn't actually decrease until the industrial regions were captured by ground forces, even with the two largest strategic bomber forces in the world attacking it German industry was able to grow until 1945.

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>>34869659
>mountain divisions
Excuse me mother fucker?

>>34873494

> If we didn't have superior logistics and technology we would have been shot to shit.

Doesn't matter how good your fighting force is, if you have shit logistics then it's only a matter of time before you lose the war. At the end of the day it's the nation who can play the long game that wins.

>>34869659

Panzergrenadiere = Armored Infantry

>What is 10th Mountain Division, Chasseur Alpin, Royal Marine Commandos and Gornostrelki ?

>Luftwaffen Felddivisionen = Shitty Infantry Divisions so that the Luftwaffe Manpower could stay with the Luftwaffe and would not diverted to the Heer

Protip :

The :
78. Sturm-division
7. Infanterie-division
28. leichte Infanterie-Division
100. Jäger-division
221. Sicherungs-division
47. Volksgrenadier-Division
14. Landwehr-Division
15. Luftwaffen-Felddivision
164. leichte Afrika-Division
9. Fallschirmjäger-Division
7. SS-Freiwilligen-Gebirgs-Division
13. Waffen-Gebirgs-Division der SS
29. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS
Division z.b.V. Afrika
90th Panzergrenadier Division
Festungs-Division Kreta
90th Panzergrenadier Division
5. Gebirgs-Division
1. Marine-Infanterie-Division

were all usual Infantry Divisions largely comparable to a British or US Infantry/Motorized or Mechanized Division

>>34877995
German logistical organization was alright, considering the conditions they fought in and the ressources they were given. (Unlike the japanese one which was legitimately terrible...)
The point is that the german army was more competent and efficient on the lower levels; more bang for the buck if you will. There's no inherent reason the western allies couldn't have been similarly competent, had they kept up with military innovations between the wars instead of resting on their laurels. It might have saved them a lot of lives and money and (I'm looking at you france) a few very embarrassing defeats.

Not sure if anything is left unsaid at this point.

German gebirgsjagers was a thing by WW1. So were Austrian, Italian, French, Bulgarian, Romanian and Hungarian units with similar skills. No wonder - the all have the Alps or other mountainous areas within or near their borders. USA, England and Russia got units with such skills during WW2.

Paratroopers: Italy, Germany, Japan, England and USA got them right before or during WW2. They never really worked out in scale for anyone.

Germans had a lot of different unit types, as a result of Hitler's thing for fomenting rivalry and lukewarm support for Wehrmacht leadership. It did create a system where anyone able to stand on two legs could be used somewhere for something, but then - if Hitler had had more than half a brain he would not have declared war on the whole world at the same time. and could have avoided wasting so much manpower as cannon fodder.

>>34871149
>The Bismark only cost as much as a few subs
30*
That's obviously not counting the resource drain of how much High quality steel went into Bismark and Turpitz's armor, for practically no gain.
>>34876827
>even with the two largest strategic bomber forces in the world attacking it German industry was able to grow until 1945.
That's because German war Industry was very inefficient up until they started losing.
Soviet Industry was at full steam and would have suffered heavily from strategic bombing, however, as mentioned, the Germans had no means to prosecute such raids, even if they had B-17s.

>>34879188

Kinda meaningless. Germany had a small navy because she was prohobited by the WW1 Versailles treaty from having one. By the time Hitler could denounce the treaty war was already on the horizon and even if he had had the building facilities, the manpower, the steel and the time it would STILL not have been a match for Englands fleet, and he would not have had any ports capable of protecting the ports from bombs.

>>34879056

the different unit types is basically bullshit its mostly fancy names for basically the same stuff

>>34872122
You're a nigger and Germans used horses cause they're dumb niggers too. Dumb nigger

>>34879315

A man with a gun is a man with a gun is a man with a gun? I agree, halfway. Also there is a difference between what was planned for a certain unit type and how they were actually utilized.

Gebirgsjagers for instance. They were trained for long treks through mountainous terrain, and equipped accordingly. In Norway 1940 and Crete 1941 the gebirgsjagers excelled in moving and fighting in the bad terrain. On the Eastern front they were however put into some of the biggest flat areas on the planet, because of their skills at being self reliant. They marched extreme distances under very bad conditions. But in the fighting itself there was little difference between them and regular infantry. Just like the US 10th Mountain Division who saw fighting in Europe but never a mountain.

Regardless, unit types are there for a reason. You can't train one common-as-muck soldier to be good at everything. So for the more special tasks you need to have at least a few guys at hand that can be used on fairly short notice. If the need to come up, you can always make use of them elsewhere as grunts.

>>34879371
Shut up nigger

>>34879383

see this

>>34878475

i did not talk about specialzied troops like gebirgsjäger i meant the whole "oh there where millions of specialized unit types" talk

there where not anymore specialized division, brigade or regimental sized forces than in other armies, they just got more fancy names for ours

our bundeswehr went the opposite way where air-movable, ranger-type, light infantry, basic infantry, motorized infantry are all called Jäger

>>34872122
>yes there are horses because horses got used and just like horses got used motorized anything got used.

If they're grabbing anything with an engine, plus horses, that sounds like an inadequate supply train. Especially when their tactics involve fast-moving armored columns. Sure, the armor gets the lions share of the motorized transport. That leaves the rest of the Heer dependent on horses. Now you have a 2 tier supply system that makes combined arms operations difficult, if not impossible. You also have a supply train that is slow and very easy to interdict.

Even the Soviets, in their bumbling, drunken, crude, costly way, got logistics right. They had to use borrowed trucks to do it, but they did it. Meanwhile, Germany is using a dog's breakfast of captured, commandeered, and purpose-built motor vehicles to try to provide for supply needs and every special purpose they could dream up. Did they really need a railroad destroyer? Their logistics chain was a logistics nightmare, all by itself.

>>34876716
It's actually because of the rotational tours that pilots operated under during the war. After a short tour fighting in Europe pilots would return to the U.S. as instructors, thereby keeping a constant cycle of new and up to date techniques and information being fed to these new pilots. This is the same reason you don't see many American super aces, meanwhile the Germans have guys with 300+ air kills.

>>34879597
>This is the same reason you don't see many American super aces, meanwhile the Germans have guys with 300+ air kills.

You don't see ANY American super aces. The flip side of that is, US pilots tended to come out of flight training at a higher baseline than German pilots. This is because of the rotation doctrine you pointed out, which becomes a self-sustaining cycle- instead of having 1 very tired super ace with 100 kills, the US would have 20 competent aces with 5 kills each. That's good enough to win a war.

>>34869670
This.

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>>34878858
I wasn't ragging on the German logistics; they did the best they possibly could given the circumstances. Allied logistics were absolutely insane. The merchant marine was incredible: they built new ships at a staggering rate, they suffered constant u-boat attacks without flinching, and supplied the U.S. war machine with amazing efficiency across a freaking ocean. In the attack on France, the only time the U.S. slowed down was when they outran their supply lines.
When that happened, the U.S. organized the Red Ball Express, a constantly moving train of trucks that hurried supplies to the front at a staggering rate, driven by men who may or may not have been on meth. Train tracks were quickly repaired and commandeered. Supplies were airdropped. An army that was at a logistical disadvantage could fight as if nothing had happened until they could take better port cities in Belgium.
The Battle for Bastogne was a fluke; the 101'st was rushed in to a hot combat zone before they could R&R, and it was the worst possible weather for the situation. Had the weather been clear the combination of supplies and air power would have made mincemeat of the German offensive.
America wins wars on technology, logistics, and by extension, air power.

>>34870850
Just an fyi. You are misunderstanding thr concept of uber and untermensch. It is a philosophical distinction between being a provider with a strong will and a support for the less fortunate and a morally weak sheep that has no obligation to himself or his group to live up to his highest possible standard. Its Nietzschean.