Please, they build a war machine in a decade and trained the best and most disciplined troops. There was no European army who could match them.
The Wehrmacht build upon multiple things during the 1930s, it was by no means starting anew and rebuilding from scratch. The “Reichswehr” of the Weimar Republic was conceptualized to only allow the best, most competent and most promising soldiers into its ranks. It was build to be an army of officers that would form the nucleus of a new german army once rearmament was possible.
It dictated much of the politics of the Weimar Republic and undermined the democratic process wherever it could. Prussian aristocracy and military tradition embedded themselves covertly into every nook and cranny of the new state, waiting for the right opportunity to give Germany back its military might.
The industry and economic base needed for rearmament was build on completely unsustainable debt. So much debt that wars of conquest were the only possible source of income that could finance it. The Nazis fully knew this during the 1930s and gambled on the success of their future wars. The first “victim” of german conquests was Austria, which was a country with vast gold reserves, possessing 343,8 Million Reichsmark in Gold, compared to Germany’s 188,6 RM at the end of 1936. This doesn’t include the private holdings of Austrians, which were also taken for rearmament once Austria had been absorbed. (
Source for my figures, it's in german)
Look good at the German soldier from 1942 and compare him with the German soldier from 2022. German soldiers of WW2 era were like fierce Rottweiler dogs ready for actions. Today's Bundeswehr is just like poodle kept for cuddling at home.
The german soldier of 1942 was trudging around the vastness of Russia or the Libyan desert and quickly becoming exhausted, his stomach grew ever hungrier and his equipment deteriorated from the ever scarcer supply.
The german soldier of 2022 is better equipped in basically every aspect outside ideological conviction, and can rely on a political leadership that doesn’t waste the lives of millions for its delusions. He doesn’t have to go hungry or march into his doom, and he doesn’t have to fear for his safety and life for speaking up against his nation, politics or purpose.
A battalion of 2022 soldiers would be able to face and defeat a division of 1942 soldiers.
They kinda remind me of the ancient Roman/Greek soldiers in a way. Wether you support them or not, they had to be extremely disciplined, hardened fighters.
Yes, that’s why they ridiculed italian soldiers during the entire war, and even took them prisoner in the millions as yet another enslaved labor force. And the greeks had their villages wiped out as retaliatory measures, while they were starving in the hundreds of thousands from a german made famine. Greek partisans, those descendants of the brave, hardened and disciplined fighters, were murdered in the tens of thousands by the german soldiers that apparently are equally admirable, according to you.
And regarding the greek and roman soldiers of their respective time periods, whatever romanticized picture you hold of them, revise it.
One myth is that Germans were allowed to rape and plunder as much as they want...false. You'd be sent to a camp or possibly executed.
Where did you hear that myth from? To me it seems that they’d get sent to camps or shot is the actual myth, with all the raping and looting that the Wehrmacht did in Russia, Poland, the Balkans and western Europe and got away with unscathed.
Allied soldiers were allowed an entire pack of cigarettes a day, German soldiers only 6 a day. NS Germany from 1933-1945 was actually the first nation to speak out on the evils of tobacco and alcohol. Degeneracy and decadency were not tolerated.
Yes, degeneracy and decadency weren’t allowed, which is exactly why the german soldiers were all drugged out of their minds when they went into battle. Pervitin was a harmless mood lightener, it didn’t turn the german soldier into a junkie at all, never.
I am not a German, but their struggle was everyones struggle. Black, white, Turk, Arab, we all have the same enemy. May the Valkyries lead those German soldiers to Valhalla.
You’re not german, which is exactly why you shouldn’t be defending, let alone admiring them. As someone who had multiple members of their family fight and die in that war, I don’t find myself feeling any sympathy for their fight, let alone calling them heroes. That whole valkyrie valhalla nazi lunacy crap was the last drop, I fully agree with
@Nilgiri here, you are more than just a bit of a wehraboo.