Back in its day Germany gave the entire world a good run for their money

Post WW2, With modern sports medicine, excellent training, well thought out gear, amazing logistics and a huge amount of information available to the common soldier. Technically we have the best foot soldiers.

We still suck and are notorious for loosing wars from Vietnam to Afghanistan.

Because our leadership is terrible to the point of being treasonous in most other time periods/army’s.

And we are going to keep getting our asses handed to us until that changes.

For hundreds of years they were the best on earth.

Logistics and 20 million dead Russians

The correct answer.

Also I’m in the camp that WW1 Germany had the single best army pound for pound in history.


They just simply stomped ass. single handedly defeated Russia, Italy, France, and nearly the British empire.

If it wasn’t for the USA stepping in I give them a 50% chance of collapsing the allied lines in that last offensive.

It doesn’t make sense how fucking good they were against good post industrial near peer armies.

Ww1 german army was very impressive, but they didn't defeat Italy or France, and didn't nearly defeat the Brits.

They only defeated Russia by giving them the gift of communism.

The US provided serious aid, and certainly pulled their weight later on, but there's no way they had a 50/50 chance of collapsing the line.

I say the Commanche in utility.

British in the 1700-1800’s

Look at all of the environments they had to fight, they were literally all over the world.

It takes good soldiers to maintain an empire.

We were the top dogs for half a century, British? 4x that?  Romans? 8x.

After all, if men get weaker after dominating for so long then hats off to the British and Romans.

"War is a continuation of politics by other means."

Some German
When your national leadership decides, at the start, that the goal is not victory* then your military doesn't achieve victory (win).


Korea - strategic goal was the status quo antebellum.

Vietnam - the goal was (originally) to end the Communist insurgency.  Actually accomplished after Tet '68 when the VC ceased to be.  Then it was to train  & equip the S. Vietnamese to defend against the N. Vietnamese & "peace with honor".  Achieved by 1973 then Congress betrayed our promises.  The S. Vietnamese lost in 1975.

Grenada.  We won.

Panama.  We won.

1st Gulf War.  Goal was liberation of Kuwait.  We won.

Somalia II.  UN operation.  A stupid idea from the start.

Afghanistan.  Who knows what the goal was.  Our civilian leaders & our political generals couldn't decide. Politically we turned military victory into a muddled mess into a debacle through a catastrophic political decision.

Iraq.  A bit different.  Military victory into less of a mess into a marginally stable environment and then a ideologically driven political decision to cut and run.  We went back because of ISIS.

Syria.  Who the fuck knows?  Limited military  objectives achieved and then a military bureaucracy that lies to the President - and now we have the President those liars wanted.  And the CIA doing dumb-ass shit.
* Victory in the meaning of militarily defeating your enemy and their surrender.

I’ve never loved one, so…

The good Asian armies tended to be centered on the horse.

Lol that is a good retort

Who beat who where isnt really the indicator of the best infantry.

I would break it down into what the key components are that create good infantry, and then see who did that.


It would help to have a culture that is generally pro-military
This would result in a large number of high quality recruits that want to be in the infantry
You need a system that produces the best leaders. Best infantry leaders=best infantry. In general, everyone needs to start out as a private and be rigorously selected to be an NCO and then officer
Your junior leaders need lots of training.  Six months or so is right.  NCOs and officers need lots of tactical training.  90 day wonders is out.
"Im an officer because I'm royalty, or went to college" is bad.

You need a culture of decentralized execution and you need to have a doctrine that embraces decision making and initiative.
I think you need a culture where everyone has buy in in this system and believes in it.

Frankly, poor nations are more likely to have better infantry as they don't rely on supporting arms.

In general, the best "infantry" is probably US Army SOF, sorta. If they count.
The best infantries ever are the 1930s Germans and the Israelis in the 1960s.
British infantry has been a rolling clusterfuck forever as they had the worst officer selection system ever, the "purchase" system, and an anti-intellectual attitude.

Oddly, the Germans and Israelis copied the officer aspirant system of the Romans, which relied more on how you did as an officer candidate or cadet actually leading, rather then the US system, which is the Western educational model that was (Lets face it) a substitute of "college" for "aristocracy" handed down from the Brits so the 19th century upper classes could ensure the "right" people were in charge. See above.
Question: What is the correlation between combat leadership and the scholastic aptitude test?

US Infantry is mediocre.  Quite frankly, and I can say that because I was one, if US Culture was more embracing of its infantry, we should have thrown out the Brit model and been more like others.  
Our NCOs aren't as well trained as the WWII Germans, who had a six month NCO school that was tactical.
News flash: the Army that gave the most tactical training to its NCOs were the Germans.  We pay lip service to it but could do better.
Culturally, we are limited by societal baggage that is handed down from the Brits and we want officers who have been to college, not necessarily were good NCOs.  We select our officers the way the Brits did, not the Germans and Israelis.

Arguably we recover with Ranger School, TBS, RASP, Q Course, as appropriate.  But its an inefficient system that selects too many wrong people and then weeds them out. And if that gets watered down, then the control measure just fell out.

The reasons the German's were so good is that they had some Prussian traditions, that based on Prussian history were very results oriented and pragmatic.  Use initiative, be pragmatic, encourage comradeship, select and train junior leaders.  This was living in a rough neighborhood that we as Americans don't understand.  Then after WWI we gutted them down to zero, really 100,000 men, and put a genius , Hans Von Seeckt in charge.  This is not to say we didn't kick their asses with firepower and industry in WWII, but if you truly wanted a yardstick, look at what theu were doing in the 1930s and ask yourself if we do it that way. And generally we sorta do.  But not the most.

We have usually been pretty well equipped and have had the best "supported" in terms of FA and air power, which papers over the faults.

Leaders such as Depuy and Patton always said the strength of the US Army was its artillery.

And of course, we are getting worse, quickly, embracing wokeness and the widespread corruption in selection and promotion.

Most of the people in this thread are looking at who beat who but it isn't who, it is how.
We have an expensive military and we spend tons of money on firepower. And it works.  But that firepower papers over weakness.

First point is valid. Second is not so impressive.

 You didn’t lose Afghanistan,you were keeping a lid on it with pretty minimal losses until Trump ordered Pompeo to bust Baradar out of jail and surrender to him. The US didn’t lose to the Taliban,it got bored and went home but it could have maintained the status quo forever had it wanted.It is hardly the case that the Taliban outfought the US or inflicted such high losses that the presence was unsustainable

 

Attached File

 
 The Taliban were not even remotely coming close to being as effective as suicide at killing US service members,it’s hard to consider them somehow superior soldiers with just this little fact

  Attached File

The Spartans, Romans, British during their imperial years, maybe the Austrians.

This.

Norm McDonald was very concerned about Germany.

Yep. If the USA stayed neutral in WWI, there wouldn't have been a WWII. Germany was that good. They took on most of Europe plus Russia and were holding their own until we got involved.

In the late medieval age English soldiers were considered some of the best in Europe.   From 1340s until the early 1500s.  

They performed well during the 100 years war and the War of the Roses.    They were prized as mercenaries as well.

Pre colonial British regulars, particularly their archers were top notch. Heavy cavalry wasn't to shabby either but there were better in Europe and Asia.

Conscripts were cannon fodder, as they were for most European countries at the time.

I always found it fascinating what the Japanese were able to do in Iwo Jima, Okinawa, etc.  How they created their elaborate tunnel systems.  I'm not saying they were superior soldiers, but their resourcefulness and dedication were up there.  And American soldiers haven't been subject to the widespread hardships that our foes have.  The Vietnamese 30 years later come to mind as well.  On the flip side, it took even more balls to climb into those tunnels to flush those soldiers out...

Who remembers the thread about this?
https://armyreservemarksman.info/2022/01/11/army-sniper-school-fail/

Not to mention that the tactics we used were created by the Germans between 1917 and 1945

Germany generals were considering taking out Hitler before the war just because the march to Austria came pretty close to collapsing into a mess. This was in Germany with no opposition. The reason they did so good later is because countries just let Hitler take his time working up from small to big conquest resulting in excellent training. Combat effectiveness can really change in a few years. No resting on the past. If it isn't continually built up with lots of effort it just fades away

Peak germans were quality over quantity when it came to soldiering

The Germans were successful in WW2 because of this one tiny little trick:

Genghis Khan and the mongol horde conquered everything by during their time.

How would that compare to the energy drinks of today?

Well how does a Rip-It compare to meth? Cause that is literally what pervitin is.

So functionally equivalents, but one is really hard on your kidneys.

This man gets. That or Borneo or Aden... But that was fancy lad infantry.

I mean Rip-It's are no cakewalk on your body either.

Hessians

What's the deal with that Osprey?

Agreed, but the powers that were bit off more than they could chew.

The German Army troops, materiel, tactics and weapons of the time were some of the best ever fielded.

But they lacked the manpower. If they had the resources of the US, I dare to say most of the world would be speaking German now.

Thank God for the hubris and ambitious naivete of their leadership. They could have won had they not been so greedy ,so quick.

The US fought the Wehrmacht D-League in Europe.

The war was over at that point. They had no supplies, most units were replaced 2 or 3x over by reserve conscripts and the entire focus was stopping the soviet human wave advance in the east.

While the Winged Hussars are Cavalry guys, not really footsoldiers -  I figured if someone hasn't brought them up to mention them as a cool military unit in history, I will

Honestly only thing I know about them was they won the day against the Muslim Turks but to the Poles that were in Ghazni I raise a glass

China plans to outdo them both out on those rocks in the Pacific 200 miles from China they’re claiming is Chinese territory.

I was surprised to learn Scots mercaneries were part of that fight.

Marquis de Lafayette was French.

Appreciate your posting.

Roman legions !

Spanish tercio ?

lansquenet ?

Swiss mercenaries ?

It's even more delicious when you continually tell everyone you're the best and then meet the "better".

One thing they sure as hell do not instill is modesty.

Now I get why individual Scots fighters bitched in letters about who was going to lead the battles or when describing the aftermath of the battles back in the 16th - 18th centuries.

Snip



For WW2? I dissagree, WW1 is a bit of a different animal.


Troops were pretty good, but material? No, not really . They were primarily horse drawn, were fighting in what was basically their dress uniforms. The SS had to rely on captured equipment almost exclusively. If they didn't have an excellent NCO corps they would have been total clown shoes.

Tactics? Worked well enough against un-prepared and under equipped forces. They went all of WW2 building squads around the MG, and there is a reason why no one does that. I don't think anyone even uses the Garman tactic of having the riflemen fix a target and have the MG deliver the killing blow, but i may be wrong.

Weapons? No. Standard infantry arm is the K98, fine for WW1 but not when almost everyone you are coming up against has a semi auto. Too many wunderwaffens that had zero impact on the ground

Weak allied nations allowed them lots of ground to dig in, and the USSR wave attacks gave them a high K/D ratio

Definitely a hardcore fighting force. Probably saved western civilization. For a moment in time.

That and gave us Vlad Dracula.