Yesterday, 11:26 AM
Probably more than any other element, hubris was responsible for Germany's defeat. I think it would be fair (but arguable) to say that Germany's military (aside from long range bomber capacity - their only long range bomber was the Heinkel 111, a twin engine platform that could barely make England from western Germany and back) was the most effective and deadly of the European front, with the American military probably coming in a very close second (although a good argument could be made that the American military did a far, far better job in fighting a two-front war than Germany ended up doing).
German military leadership gained a head of confidence with their sweeping early victories in Poland, Sudetenland, and especially in their devastating conquering of France in a matter of weeks, and became convinced that they couldn't be stopped. They sent the Wehrmacht into the Soviet Union in the Spring of '41 without an adequate long term plan in the event that objectives were not achieved before Winter, which in that part of the world at that time could start as early as early October. At that point, materiel foundered, soldiers froze and starved, and their fighting capacity was utterly diminished. Leadership would refuse to disengage from absolutely unwinnable engagements like Leningrad, the advance on Moscow, and particularly Stalingrad, where they lost an entire army and one of their better general officers in Von Paulus.
The Soviets threw men and equipment at the Germans in volume. They didn't outfight the Germans, they overwhelmed them. In the meantime, Germany was facing the second front of the American invasion in North Africa, which lead to the invasion of Italy, and then inevitably the D-Day invasion, which, once the beachhead was established within basically 2 days of the invasion, it was effectively all over but the crying for Germany.
The Panzer and Tiger class tanks were nearly unstoppable. Their kill to loss ratios were unreal (I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but both platforms took a lot more than they lost). Their only weakness was that they were slow, and that is how the American Sherman tank was able to eventually defeat them - through volume AND speed. There was no defeating a German tank face to face for any Allied tank. The only chance a Sherman (or, Shermans) had was to outflank the German tank and attack the thinner armor on the backside of the tank. A Panzer or Tiger entrenched and with its flanks protected was virtually invincible. Allied tanks would have to draw them out in order to defeat them.
The Germans also innovated using AA artillery as anti-armor, and it was devastating. The 88 mm AA field cannon did a lot of damage to Allied armor.
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