Were German weapons of WWII superior to U.S. weapons?

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I would rate it this way:

Battle rifles - US far ahead. Garand was by far the best battle rifle used in any quantity in that war.

Handguns - US. Can't beat a 1911.

Subguns. Maybe the Germans had an edge here.

Artillery. German 88s beat the heck out of anything the US had until late in the war. But our ability to call in accurate fire made that difference moot.

Ships. Early in the war, German ships were mostly better, especially the smaller ones. But, quantity has a quality all its own.

Armor. German armor was mediocre but their tactics pretty sound. Late in the war the Germans came up with some very impressive tanks, but they were not very fast or reliable. Too few, too late.

The US had several things going for it. One was the logistics end of it. We had factories that were not subject to continuous attack pumping out everything needed 24/7.

The other thing is a little harder to understand. German troops were well trained to do as they were told. And that is what they did. It was completely a top down organization and very few leaders would take any serious initiative unless ordered to (which is sort of a strange way to put it).
 
SoCalShooter +1

I agree with SoCalShooter. A very nice comparison.

Doc2005
 
I've read that the average German soldier was "worth" - 11 Russians, or 5 Brits or 3 Americans.
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The old baloney of the uber soldier. When comparing apples to apples (i.e. combat experienced troops to likewise, elites to elites, raw recruits to volksgrenadiers) there was very little difference.
 
One of the Brit historians did an analysis of the various infantry forces of WWII. The Germans on average inflicted 120 casualities for every 100 they took. Now that includes a lot of different campaigns, opponents, and times in the war all averaged togther. But 120/100 is the overall figure.

One other thing to consider: by the time the US entered combat against them, the Germans were on the strategic defensive. The US was on the attack most of the time. It's much easier to defend. The Sherman reflects that fact. It's fast, mechanically reliable, and mobile. Just the thing you need to advance. The Panther and the various iterations of Tiger tank were slow, unreliable, and hard to maneuver. But they had excellent armor and guns. Just the thing you need to defend a position and withdraw from it if necessary.

By the time the US came along the Germans, except for a very few fortunate units, couldn't field full strength infantry units any longer. The MG-42 and MP44 became essential to keeping the firepower up at the squad level. Who needs 11 guys if you have 5 or 6 manning 2 MG-42s?
 
Ilbob
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Artillery. German 88s beat the heck out of anything the US had until late in the war. But our ability to call in accurate fire made that difference moot.

endquote:

The 88 was not an artillery piece. It was a high velocity Anti Aircraft gun. It could be depressed and used as a direct fire weapon and was somewhat effective as an anti-tank gun.

It could not be laid for indirect fire and had no fire direction center or forward observers. There was no panoramic sight or aiming stakes. It could not be deployed unless the gunner could see the target. That made it very ineffective when artillery was most effective, that is, night time or other periods of limited visibility.

As an artillery piece, it rated with civil war cannons. It was very vulnerable to counter battery fire from allied arty.
 
Type XXI Uboat - beats anything of ours that could dive.

Iowa v. Bismarck - hands down, Iowa wins. Bigger guns and more of them. Superior secondary battery which was also capable of AA fire. Better radar and could turn like a destroyer. Then again, look at when they entered service. The Bismarck was an early war ship and the Iowa class a late war battleship
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You forgot Essex Class Carrier v. ??? The Germans had 1 carrier under construction but never got it tosea. Actually the Escort carriers we had would have been a better item to mention as they ultimately eneded the U-Boat threat Type XXI subs were ahead of their time, but still needed to come up for air. Once we had aerial coverage for convoys, the U-boats became more hunted than hunter
We won because we are morally superior to all others, had the best and most undamaged indusrtrial base and ultimately, we won because Americans are really really good at making wars.
 
Sure the Germans were building the Graf Zeppelin but they never finished it - hence I never did a comparison. BTW, in terms of aircraft, I believe even the Ranger could carry more airplanes. We on the other hand had almost 100 aircraft carriers at war's end including the Midway class. The big carriers allowed us to sweep the IJN from the seas and the baby flattops not only carried aircraft replacements for their bigger brethen but formed the nucleus of the hunter-killer groups that swept the U-boat menace back. Aircraft carriers gave us control of the seas and with it, allowed us to transport vast quantity of men & material to our allies and to the front.
 
I think I'd give the edge overall to the Germans because of their large weapons mostly. Tanks, U-Boats, jet aircraft late in the war, sub-guns, heavy machine guns, V2 rockets...they were ahead of their time and superior in many ways to the Allies.

If the Germans had the same industrial capacity and oil reserves available to the Allies, I fear the outcome may have been a lot different. The Germans tried to rely on technology instead of sheer numbers, because they had too. The Soviets just plain outmanufactured them and ran them over with tanks, Mosins, and a million men. The Western Allies did nearly the same with their massive supply lines and domination of the air.

That said, the Garand and 1911 were superior to anything similar in the German arsenal.
 
German '88

The 88 was not an artillery piece. It was a high velocity Anti Aircraft gun. It could be depressed and used as a direct fire weapon and was somewhat effective as an anti-tank gun.
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then what was the 88mm gun they put into the Tiger I, Tiger II and the Panther?

these were not AA platforms!!

based on the "wealth of experiece" I gained assembling the Tamaya 1:35 scale model of the German 88 when I was 13 years old.....there were two distinctly different configurations of the 88....one was for AA and the other was a dedicated anti-tank gun.

Hey....Japanese made plastic scale models don't lie ;)
 
German navy superior......NOT!

on this topic I do have a little bit of background.....

the Germans made excellent U-boats later in the war, but like everything else they didn't have enough of them.

They had excellent submariners (with big BIG Kahunas...like Gunther Prein) ....

BUT....

the boats were micro-managed from afar and required to radio in reports and positions often....

Little did they know that the allies had developed radio detection equipment and that they gave away their position (at least a line of bearing to their position) every time they did so.

The U-boat casualties were VERY VERY high!

By '44, they were having a negligable impact on allied shipping, couldn't put enough boats together to form Wolf Packs, the best skippers were dead and the crews were green.

By '43 the allies were kicking the CR@P out of the U-boats.....

aside from the U-boats.....what navy are you talking about.....after being blocked in their ports....the Bismark was sunk on her maiden "break out" combat patrol and the Graph Spree was burned by her skipper in Argentina.

Aside for beating the Brits to the punch when they invaded Norway, anyone want to elaborate on the great sea battles the German navy won during WWII?

They couldn't do anything to stop allied battle ships from hammering the landing zones in the Med. and at the height of their power, they couldn't stop the Brits from evacuating Dunkird with every seaworthy dory they could send accross the channel (though pea soup fog certainly helped).
 
Germany never settled on production of anything! They made frequent changes with small runs made tanks, missiles and other weapons unrelaible.

QC problems due to slave labor was a major concern; 88mm shells had a dud rate in excess of 50%

Hitler loved big guns; hundreds of of smaller artillery pieces coluld have been fielded in lieu of 1 Dora! The military and contractors/researchers did not coordinate at all, so 50% of V1s never even made launch.

Me262 jets could not land/take-off on grass or asphalt fields; as soon as Allie fighters were informed of jets, they flew to concrete fields and shot down the German jets as they landed!

Let's discuss some of the misconceptions about naval strength.

Kriegsmarine

All of the surface ships were woefully outdated, even Bismarck class which was a warmed-over WWI design suited only for North Sea/Baltic operations. Bismarck/Tirpitz had great beam (128') with a very low armor belt, poor bunkerage, lousy secondary battery (separate high and low angle guns), triple screws with poor rudder/stern engineering (couldn't steer by engines). Bismarck sank Hood, a late WW1 design, by a lucky shot! (Golden Twinkie!)

Iowa class were also pre-war designs approved in 1939 and laid down in 1940! These magnificent ships performed functions (gunfire support, carrier escorts, etc) that they were never designed for! Only the Montana class (never built) could be considered a true WW2 design.

Scharnhorst/Gneisenau were so-so designs but poor sea boats (until bow mods). Their 11" mains lacked punch and the armor scheme was defective. Light cruisers and destroyers were worse and unable to perform escort/attack duties in the North Atlantic/Arctic.

Hipper class (8") was overly large with awful engineering plant and short-legged. Pocket "battleships" (Deutchland class) were slow, overgunned heavy cruisers with defective power plants. Graf Spee was vulnerable to even 6" gunfire.

Early KM submarines were small but well built. Type XXI were late and would have been great and possibly extend the war.

US Gato and follow-ons were much longer ranged, and after torpedo mods, far more deadly that German U Boats. The US Navy did to Japan (and over longer distances) that Germany could not do to Britain! Allied ASW was outstanding by late 43 and air cover (escort carriers and long range bombers) could find even schnorkel boats with ease.

streakr
 
One thing which made our small arms better than the German's and Russian's small arms during WWII:

Our boys were, for the most part, pretty damn skilled with a rifle, whereas most German troops were not - to the exception of the 'crack SS' troops, which were mainly superior due to discipline and not riflery.

I'll take accurate aimed fire from a dozen troops and a single support weapon over two support weapons and a dozen troops who barely know how to load a rifle any day of the week.

Same reason we were able to win WWI: our men could shoot, to the chargrin of the enemy.
 
I would never slight the men who met face to face with the enemy, but it was the nation's capability to get them there, equip them in a manner superior to the enemy, support them with combined arms in theater, evacuate them and patch them up when wounded, and replace them when necessary, that won the war.

You could have saddled the American fighting man with the small arms, tanks, and airplanes of any of his foes, and provided the logistical and economic output remained the same, he would have won with those weapons too.

On an individual level, it must have been comforting to know that a soldier or marine was being given the best battle rifle of the day. It would be even more comforting to know that more ammo, more water, more food, more medicine, and just more of everything, was a requisition away.

I read somewhere once that Air Marshall Goering was going over the wreckage of an American bomber shot down over Germany. It was said he knew Germany had lost the war when he saw more or less fresh cookies that had been delievered in a care package. If we had the spare capacity for such individual "luxuries" the ramifications were clear-- America had no trouble getting anything we needed to the front against Germany.

One would think he'd have picked up on it sooner running into lend lease aircraft. Lend-lease aircraft amounted to 18% of all aircraft in the Soviet air forces, 20% of all bombers, and 16-23% of all fighters, and 29% of all naval aircraft. In operational areas the lend lease concentration of aircraft was even higher in terms of percentage. Of the 9.888 fighters delivered to the air defense (PVO) fighter units in 1941-45 6.953, or over 70% were British or American. On the Karelian front, lend-lease aircraft amounted to about two-thirds of all combat aircraft in 1942-43, practically all torpedo bombers of the naval air forces were A-20G Bostons in 1944-45 etc.

The most prominent American planes flying the Red Star were P-39 Airacobra fighters, A-20 Boston and B-25 Mitchell bombers, and C-47 transport aircraft. The Hawker Hurricane was the most represented British plane.

That we could supply a barely tolerated ally with almost a quarter of its air forces, not to mention all of the trucks, motorcycles, machine tools, etc, while fighting a two front war of our own, only underscores that small arms were only a modest factor at best in terms of what won the war.
 
ArmedBear, you wrote...

Austria's rifle that Garand copied wasn't either; I own one.
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I've tried and failed to come up with a single Austrian semi-auto, prior to that country adopting a version of the CETME in the 1950's. Please let us know which rifle it was, that John Garand copied. American honor (and Canadian too, he was born in Quebec) is at stake here :)

Bart Noir
 
Sorry, I can't find any web references which support what I said. I seem to recall reading the material in either a historical account of WWII, something I saw on the Military (er, History) Channel, or a culmination of different sources.

I do recall that part of it had to do with the fact that by the time the US got into the war, there was already a fairly high concentration of green troops due to their support weapon preference and benegration of the infantry, as many of the experienced and properly trained troops were killed, injured, or off towards the East to fight the Russians.

Also, recall that a large part of the initial offensive (outside of the D-day landings themselves) was conducted by more heavily trained troops - such as airborne infantry. As a part of the heritage from our WWI doctrine of an infantry trained in marksmanship, being able to hit a target was a large part of the training of our troops in WWII. The fact that the US has, and had, a gun culture was no insignificant contributing factor to the success of such measures, either.

The fact that Germany preferred to use peon infantry with bolt-action rifles, with multiple support weaposn is illustrative of Germany's contempt for general fighting troops' ability - only the MG gunners got much, if any training. Inversely, the fact that the US preferred infantry with autoloading over primarily supportive fire is also illustrative of the fact that our doctrine and training emphasized the potency of our individual soldier.

Sorry I can't provide more info than that.
 
who do you think pioneered Blitzkrieg, which calls for penetrating the enemies front line and fighting behind their lines for extensive periods of time with no flanks
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WE did!! in the 1860's no less!:evil: all the germans did was change the make up of the forces used from Infantry, horse cavalry, and muzzle stuffer artillery, to partly mechanized infantry, Armored cavalry, and modern artillery.

the first blitzkrieg style use of combined arms was in fact at Brice's Crossroads MS, when N.B. Forrest ordered his artillery to fire and fight in a manner that made them part of the frontline and almost as mobile and fluid of a unit as their protecting cavalry. results: the union army was STILL running when they reached southern TN.


the concepts that Guderian, Rommel and the rest used to build the german doctrines of WW2 were based on the writings of English and Prussian cavalry officers sent to observe "the war in America". That europe ignored the lessons for 70 years before one state chose to give first hand lessons, does not make the origins any different. "Blitzkieg" was born in the CSA.
 
Quote:

One of the Brit historians did an analysis of the various infantry forces of WWII. The Germans on average inflicted 120 casualities for every 100 they took. Now that includes a lot of different campaigns, opponents, and times in the war all averaged togther. But 120/100 is the overall figure.

This really isn't an impressive figure when you look at the facts. Being on the defense they should have inflicted more casualities. Military planning calls for a combat power ratio of 3:1 if the attacker wants a decisive win. It was our ability to combine disciplines and supply our allies that prevented the ratio from being higher for the Germans.

To compare what elite forces can do the Rangers in Somalia (Blackhawk Down) inflicted about 50 EKIAS for each friendly. If they inflicted 50,000 for each friendly that doesn't even the score.
 
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I wouldn't call the Garand superior to the FG-42. The latter was selective fire, detachable magazine and just plain cool looking (as if that counts).

Now, as for the Kriegsmarine, the Prinz Eugen class heavy cruisers were a disappointment. While they were suppose to be superior to any allied cruiser, they had a lot of problems with their high-pressure steam turbines. In fact, after the war, it took a U.S. Navy crew to figure out how to make them work reliably and they did it when they brought the Prinz Eugen to America for ultimate disposal at the Bikini Atoll. Their best light cruisers (Liepzeg or Koln) couldn't touch our pre-war Brooklyn Class. The Germans had 9 6" guns and we had 15 6" guns. We also had a lot more AA than their light cruisers did. Our Baltimore class heavy cruisers were more reliable and better armed than the Prinz Eugen/Hipper too.

German destroyers, especially the Barbara configuration (turret with twin 5.9" guns) were very well armed (light cruiser armament), but nose heavy. Again, high pressure steam turbines didn't make them any faster than ours and ours were more reliable. The Germans also built a lot of torpedo boats (not PT type Schnell bootes) but 800 ton boats whose main armament were torpedoes. Excuse me, but they were obsolete when the destroyers were designed back in the turn of the century (to destroy torpedo boats). Even with the matter of guns set aside, we had superior fire control radar.

Now, the Scharnhorst & Gneisenau battleships (or lightly armed battleships) with their 11" guns and heavy armor was more than a match for our Alaska Class Super Heavy Cruisers (9 x 12"), but the days of big guns was eclipsed by the aircraft carrier (OK, the Scharnhorst & Gneisenau team sank the Royal Navy carrier, HMS Glorious, in the North Sea).

A more fair comparison of the Kriegsmarine would be against the Royal Navy. But in short, while most of the Royal Navy's ships were much older (the exception being the King George V class battleship and some of their light cruisers (Southampton Class, Belfast Class, Fiji Class about the same age), there were more of them and the Germans had to rely on either one of two naval strategies: commerce raider or fleet-in-being. Commerce raiding only works for a while before you're hunted down (which the British did). Fleet-in-Being only works until the RAF or the Royal Navy Air Arm bombs you under (think Tirpitz or think Taranto) or sends a mini-sub in to plant charges under your keel. Besides, with 17 battleships (in total) against 4 (including the Scharnhorst/Gneisenau), the Germans were badly outnumbered. As Gross Admiral Erich Raeder said, "All we can do is to show that we know how to die."
 
I've tried and failed to come up with a single Austrian semi-auto, prior to that country adopting a version of the CETME in the 1950's.
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I think he means the bolt action Steyr 1895, which was the first battle rifle that used enbloc clips. Still, saying Garand ripped off the design is a bit of a stretch.
 
Flak 88 confusion

Hope this clears things up. The Flak 36(88L71) was a towed anti-aircraft weapon that could be deployed quickly, for a gun of it's size, during the rapid advances the blitzkrieg spawned. It had a huge splinter shield and was very conspicuous from the ground when deployed. They were used effectively in France when a British/French Armored counter attack threatened the entire german army. Typical Anti-tank weapons were ineffective against the heavy Infantry tanks(Think Matilda and Char 1 b's). The attack was stopped cold when it almost overran forward AA units. Later, Rommel used the Flak 36's against the the british in North Africa with similar results. Their awesome long range insulated them from counter fire that should have found the guns exposed and vulnerable by nature of their huge size.
They were so successful that the Wehrmacht put them into smaller, wheeled anti-tank carriages for use on the Eastern front. They were not as successful as was hoped because larger towed Anti-tank artillery was difficult to manhandle and use by their crews.

The guns used by Tiger tanks was an older flak piece(88L56) that was obsolescent. Still a capable performer, but not a lethal or long ranged as the 88L71. A few german tank destroyers utilized the 88L71. The mere size needed to provide a stable platform meant these AFV's were either extremely large and heavy or large and poorly armored. The resulting beasts were slow and relatively easy prey.
 
"The other thing is a little harder to understand. German troops were well trained to do as they were told. And that is what they did. It was completely a top down organization and very few leaders would take any serious initiative unless ordered to (which is sort of a strange way to put it)."

I must respectfully disagree with ilbob here. From World War One on, German junior officers were taught to take the initiative. In fact, in many exercises, young officers were put into a position where they were given a chance to "take the objective" by stretching or disobeying "orders" or to obey "orders" and fail. Those who choice victory over mild disobediance were rewarded. Thus, rigid command structures were discoraged due to the chaotic nature of modern warfare. I think ibobs opinion may come from common stereotypes about German national character.
 
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Very interesting points made on all sides of this subject..... BUT Two words really sums up the diffrence between German war waging implements and American ones.


Nuclear Weapons


Germany is rather lucky the war ended for them when it did.:evil:
 
Very interesting points made on all sides of this subject..... BUT Two words really sums up the diffrence between German war waging implements and American ones.


Nuclear Weapons


Germany is rather lucky the war ended for them when it did.
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More like the Allies are lucky we destroyed/crippled, or overran the german research facilities before they had a chance to finish developing the components of either of their proposed nuclear weapon systems (granted the Antipoidal bomber wouldn't have worked), and decided to go ahead and kill new york or london.
 
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