[WW] Quality of Soldiers in World War II

[mock@springmail.com]

Speaking of the quality of the soldiers, for a while I had always been under the impression that German soldiers were better than their opponents, because during the Allied invasion they inflicted 2-3 enemy casualties for every one German casualty (and thus, the only reason we could beat them was overwhelming numbers).  

However, I recently found out that's a myth - they were, as Michael already mentioned, simply average (although small-unit initiative was encouraged).  The reason they inflicted more casualties is that they were almost always dug in, fighting in defensive fortifications, while the Allied troops were always assaulting said fortifications, which meant that the Allies needed 2-3 times the manpower to dislodge the Germans.

-Chris


On Fri, 17 Aug 2001 09:25:09 +0100 (BST) =?iso-8859-1?q?Michael=20Robert=20Blair?= <pellinoire@yahoo.com> wrote:

Back on Topic

Early war German troops were maybe a bit better
trained than most and certain had better elan. Their
strenghs lay more with the NCOs and junior officers
who knew the plan and cheerfully improvised and used
their iniative.
As riflemen they were no better than average, they
relied more on the MGs - which are still some of the
best designs ever made - and are still in service with
the modern German army (MG3). The grunts became
increasingly ammuition carriers for the MGs as the war
went on.