Hello, looking at some comments on internet, I do think some overrate how efficient the wehrmacht was. Calling it extremely efficient is, I think, overrating it and ignoring its problems/flaws. I don’t think the wehrmacht killing a lot of people make it efficient, an army can be led by corrupt or incompetent andstill be able to kill a lot of people (and a problem with K/D ratios is they can be based on overclaims so not really a reliable stat). I’d say they were effective on occassion (ie, good at some things but not extremely good and they still had a bunch of issues). I’m also not sure someone like glantz would portray the wehrmacht as extremely effective or not talk about its problems (I’ve seen him being used by those who overrate the wehrmacht)
Thanks for your answers, while it can be an interesting debate, I don’t think overrating the wehrmacht is good.
Also lots of people don’t know just how much the Wehrmacht was on pervatine… contributing to their blitzkrieg speed through France and the USSR
Efficiency is a very broad brush and the wehrmacht in 1939, 1941, 1943 & 1945 were not the same. It could also be very efficient and very inefficient at the same time depending on what measure you use.
Were the wehrmacht efficient? Sometimes in some ways yes, other times and in other ways no.
For example in September 1944 they were very efficient in establishing fighting units after the collapses in the East and West; but in the preceding weeks they were inefficient in conducting an orderly fighting retreat.
And got lucky almost everytime.
If the french had bombed the traffic column in the Ardenes, it could have devolved into ww1. Stalin didn’t mobilise and went ‘na na na the germans ain’t invading’, yugoslavians didn’t mobilise in time and chose to defend the entire border