Which Had the Superior Military: First or Second World War Germany?

which military was superior the First World War military of the German Imperial state or the Second World War

military of Nazi Germany I know that sounds like a random question but it's actually something that I get asked about all the time all the time

it's not so random either because these people are not just asking me that question out of thin air they are asking me to elaborate on a statement that I once made kind of a throwaway line if

I'm remembering it correctly where I had pointed out that I thought that the first world war German military and when we say that we mean the entire defense apparatus right the entire structure not

the army per se not the Navy per se but all of it put together with the industry the grand strategy the you know States and and armies are intertwined in ways

that are key so let's understand that but when we compare or when I do compare the two I was comparing the entire structure against the entire structure First World War Germany's military against Second World War Germany's

military now what I was not prepared for was the fact that this would be so surprising to so many people and interesting to them to be honest I mean like I said I've I've been asked to

elaborate on that question many times and no one is argumentative by the way or upset they're interested they're curious and it took me a while to

realize why but I think I figured out that it's because it's counterintuitive most people out there who are not World War two buffs just assume because my

goodness who hasn't heard seeing hours of black and white footage or what have you you know all the stuff that Nazi Germany was working on from ballistic missiles to Panzer divisions to jet

aircraft mean you know there's Nazi scientists are such great fodder even today that that's why you have them in all the comic books and the red skull on the Captain American I mean if Odessa said the voice from Brazil I mean it

goes on and on this Nazi science thing is fascinating and so so mid you know it's not steampunk because it's too late it's whatever the mid twentieth century version of steampunk is First World War

Germany really is steampunk I guess what I'm trying to say is I think there's been a lot of hype for Second World War Germany the first world war Germany doesn't get and that's what

makes it compelling to hear a different opinion to some people now why the heck am i talking about this now and what what are we even doing here to earth a little explanation since this is the

first new podcast we started in more than a decade and really the first thing we were gonna do is just throw all this on the History feed figuring that it's

history but you people have taught me a valuable lesson over time and that's that you don't want anything that isn't what you're expecting on that feed you may be ok with me interviewing people

but you don't want it on your hardcore history feed when you think you're getting a hardcore history episode downloaded and it turns out to be an interview so we've learned you want something very specific on the hardcore

history proper feed the problem for us of course and maybe you too is that we're averaging about 2.5 new shows a year on that feed which is a long time

to be out of touch with your audience so for a very long time we have been looking for some sort of content I guess you could call short form content I'm obviously a long form guy takes me 20

minutes to clear my throat as you all know originally a long time ago the idea blitz editions which was supposed to mean short now it just means a completely different kind of focus on

the show that was supposed to fill this gap didn't work we are cutting back and that might be um that might be an optimistic way of even putting it on the common-sense stuff right now so how do

you better use the time that that would free up well how about touching base with the hardcore history audience more than 2.5 times a year so that's what we're trying to do here and just so you know I couldn't decide on a format

because I liked all of them to a degree but I didn't want to get locked into anything I mean I like interviews but I don't want to have to do them all the time I don't want to do an interview show per se I like doing you know short

little history things if I can manage to do anything short that don't turn into a hardcore history show but I don't want to be responsible for doing that every time right the last thing we want to do is do a new show that takes away from the old show that already takes too long

to do right so we understand the parameters with which we're working here Led Zeppelin once said that their format for their music was tight but

loose that's the way I like to operate to listen let's have a format where you know it's our stuff right we are recognisably us but what you're gonna get that's anybody's guess um this is

for lack of a better word and I still don't know what we're gonna call this this is the hardcore history overflow feed this is everything we're not putting in the regular feed whether it's interviews with historians biographers

or maybe historical participants from time to time love to do some primary source work where we could record somebody's memories in digital stone and then maybe somewhere down the line a

historian can mine that for useful info someday be great to contribute to the storehouse of personal experiences and knowledge I do have weird things I'd

like to throw out there sometimes I mean I'd love to have a recurring segment that I call the worst place to be in the world I think it's self-explanatory but I have a bunch of little things like that

nothing that nothing that I think you could base a whole podcast series on forever but enough so maybe we can throw some stuff out there not you know we couldn't figure out how to make it anything but Matt to you when you're

expecting five hours of hardcore history depth and you get 20 minutes of scampering over the thin ice I mean is there anything we could do in 20 minutes where you would go yeah that was great

when you're expecting five hours I don't know but we feel like if nothing else I would love to say hi to you more often and that's what this is so the reason we're talking about the two World War

militaries of Germany and comparing them is because after the thousandth person asked me recently to elaborate on that question I was walking away from the

discussion and a person who may or may not be real who was with me turned to me and said why don't you make that a podcast just do a whole show on answering that question which military was better first or second world war

Germany he goes you get asked about it enough there's obviously an interest out there why can't that just be a show answer that question 20 minutes 25 minutes whatever it is boom thrown out on the end done right said hi to the

audience and everything think if we could one of those out a month wouldn't that fill in the gap a little bit between epic hardcore history shows but I don't know if it's going to provide anything

of interest so we're experimenting here a little bit I'd like to answer that question if I can and maybe this will be one of the recurring segments where I essentially stand up amongst all of you and I make my case I'm not saying I'm

right I certainly am coming at this from an angle of this is my opinion but let me throw out my viewpoint and then you can talk amongst yourselves and decide

whether you give it any validity or not and of course me being me I had planned to come in here and just do it off the off the cuff so it didn't take any hardcore history recording time but I can't I had to pull out the books look

up some stuff I figured who wants to just hear my opinion you got to have a few supports Carl and you can't walk in there and just though you got to if you're gonna be a lawyer you've got to cite something so I have a few things to

cite obviously this whole question is a bit silly and wargaming if you will but I like my silly wargaming questions to be a scientific hard-headed realistic

and logical as possible don't you so let's lay out some parameters the first thing we have to point out is we are not talking about these two armies fighting each other right we all understand how

silly that would be it wasn't always silly and I've always found that interesting up until a certain point in history it's not wild to imagine armies that existed you know in very different

time periods successfully fighting one another if you said Alexander the Great's Army's gonna take on Julius Caesar's Romans which were about two hundred and fifty years later you don't

automatically say Alexander's doomed you bet your money on Caesar and the Romans but if you said Alexander had a 25% chance of winning I don't think that's wrong but that's two hundred and

fifty years difference in time by about what would you say the mid 19th century somewhere that all changes when the pace of change speeds up and all of a sudden

if you're a great power and you find your battlefield technology 3035 years out-of-date you're in big trouble and by

the 20th century you can see this pace of change acceleration going so fast that the innovations that occur inside of a war can win or lose you the

war I think you most clearly see this for the first time in the air war in the first world war where if you get a leap in terms of a technological innovation

for airplanes ahead of the other side and you get your planes in the air it could be six months of owning the sky before the other side catches up and in certain circumstances that could cost

you the war so this technological race is getting so fast we end up certainly by the early 20th century with a dynamic that we see all the time now that we're very comfortable with the idea of

innovations happening all the time during the war in the Second World War all you Second World War buffs I mean how often do you think of which particular variant of this particular plane is this an me-109 e or g because

it makes a huge difference right why cuz this pace of change will literally win you or lose you the war by about the first or second world war so we're not comparing these two armies against each

other because even the 1918 version of the German army which is really an alpha or a beta version of the ver macht and yet it ain't facing the very MOX

excessively at all and it's only a 20-year difference between the two so we're not pitting them against each other we're pitting them you know on a curve based on their historical enemies and that point I made a second ago I

think is very relevant only 20 years between each other when you're 20 years old that seems like a long time but when you get to 50 like I am 51 20 years

looks short as one historian said 20 years is not peace it's an intermission I had a airforce Colonel I grew up next door to he always said it was the

equivalent of reloading it always boggles the mind a little bit to realize how quickly the Germans were moving to get around the treaty restrictions I

mean some historians have pushed it all the way back to like 1919 which if true would mean that the seeds of rearmament

were already being sown as the agreement to end the first world war is being concluded that's wild you all know that there were things going on in the Soviet Union where they had hidden

deals to develop weapon systems and tactics and factories and all that stuff on Russian soil hidden from the prying eyes of the people who would enforce these treaties the German attitude would

probably be that the treaties were forced upon Germany under false pretenses I mean there's a lot of criticism you could make against those Versailles Treaty restrictions in fact the Allies you know before Hitler came

to power there were lots of negotiations about cutting slack on some of this stuff later nonetheless the point is is that long before Hitler was in anybody's

rearview mirror even in the Vimal republics early days you know you already had an attempt to rearm Germany or set the groundwork lay the groundwork

for rearmament and it provides an interesting what-if scenario to wonder if Hitler had never come to power how much of his early agenda happens under

any German government I mean in my mind it's hard to imagine any German government not eventually remilitarization you know even if you're a mime our republic Democratic one so it's

interesting to wonder about the early stuff that Hitler did and whether a dime our republic might have done it to and it's also intriguing to note you know that long before Hitler the foundation

was being laid for the rebuilding of the German military for those who don't know the German military at the end of the first world war was essentially torn

apart an army that had numbered in these several millions at one point in the field was reduced to a hundred thousand men one person at the time called them a

police force paramilitary is the way they're somehow described now which basically means something between a police force and a soldier a hundred thousand men their neighbors all had

many more all kinds of weapon systems are prohibited the reason all this stuff matters is because in this short period of time between the two world wars the

Germans have to recreate an army from scratch and they can't even really get going until the middle 1930s so how deep do the roots of this thing

go even if you attach it to the earlier military traditions when you compare it to the First World War German state which has these deep old roots and they can trace it to two before Germany was a

state with the the histories of several different individual German states like Prussia and Bavaria in all these places the First World War German state is one

is like a bodybuilder who's been eating right and building themselves up slowly but surely the one in the Second World War is somebody who had to go heavily into steroids because of a terrible

injury and they come into the war looking pumped up and initially doing good but when you know something that was supposed to be an easy knockout turns into a slugfest if you have the

legs to weather the storm into the later rounds you know I can't help but use the boxing analogies can I and in that sense you'd have to say that both of these armies the first and second world war

German armies are big punchers knockout artists but the Second World War one is

like Mike Tyson malevolent intimidating awesome throw zzzz knockout blows knock knocks how people spectacularly can't

take your eyes off him but foundationally week maybe psyche stamina all those things first world war Germany

a little bit more controlled although they're a big gambling army - they remind me a lot more of a boxer like Joe

Louis the heavyweight champion of the world in the 1930s 1940s and into the 1950s Louis was a fantastic puncher - a killer but a little bit more defensive

more careful plodding was the way Muhammad Ali described him but that's a little unfair but they're not as wild as the Second World War tyson asked one

they too can knock out opponents and they do with regularity in the First World War but the difference is is that their foundation is much more solid they're

much more stable and they can take you into the later rounds and knock you out remember the Second World War was essentially over in terms of knowing the

outcome by about mid 1943 that's two years before the war against Germany ended but everyone knew the Germans weren't winning anything two years

earlier so Tyson is defeated it just is uncertain which round he will actually be knocked out in whereas in the First World War you know the Joe Lewis First World War

German military is still throwing potential knockout blows in the last year of the war I don't know what value I put on this but let's note that the

German army that went to war in 1914 is an undefeated force and going back almost to Napoleon they trace an almost unbroken string of victories whereas the

Army in the Second World War is literally and figuratively the child of defeat the rank-and-file soldiers likely to have had a father who fought maybe

died maybe grievously wounded in the First World War the upper echelon zuv the officer corps almost to a man First World War veterans and of course the

totalitarian leader at the apex of the leadership pyramid Hitler himself was a corporal in the trenches how much did that defeat and seeing what they saw in

that war changed them I don't know that you could ever put a number on it I will just say if you have to boxing champions facing each other and one is undefeated and the other isn't there's something

that helps the undefeated fighter it may be different person-to-person and I couldn't tell you how much and in what way but everyone notices it and acknowledges it I would say the same is true here but that's hard to make a case

if I'm standing up here as a lawyer representing this point of view so let me represent it in a way that maybe I can pull some evidence together and convince you

let's start with the armies themselves as opposed to the navies the air forces and the rest both these armies were very similar to each other so you have to

kind of compare the things that are different about them both of these armies have at their core the Magnificent German fighting soldier at the squad level trying to figure out

what makes them as good as they are very hard to measure I remember Neil Ferguson and his book a pity of war tries to break it down to some sort of chart you know how much

more deadly are the German soldiers than you know soldiery of other countries but remember it's a lot of things working together and a lot of things that the German military had been good at for a long time

discipline drill obedience tactical efficiency coordination between various arms etc etc the same adjectives that are used about the German soldiery in

both world wars are adjectives that are used to describe Frederick the Great's mid 18th century Prussian troops and the German military tradition of both world

wars is one that can be traced back easily to Frederick the Great's Praja some people like to go a lot earlier than that but it's easy to to look at the military traditions of 18th century

Prussia and see those infused into 20th century German armies and so they're comparable at the soldier level they're also comparable in terms of their tactical equipment I mean you look at like okay what were their rifles like

what were the machine gun all this stuff is predictably very good in the German army the artillery was good all these things are pretty much the same so when you try to figure out what would make

one less strong than the other you look at the underpinnings and in this case I try to imagine the German army in the

Second World War without Nazis if you take the Nazis out of the Second World War German army it instantly gets better then I think you could compare the two I

still think I'd go first world war better because of the underpinnings of the state being much more old and strong like a well-constructed building you know whatever happens the Second World War German military is a rickety hastily

thrown up structure if you're talking about the economy that supports it every World War to buff knows that the people who were trying to build up the stockpile of weaponry and

whatnot did not want to go to war as early as 1939 atom to spines out the economic realities that made Hitler decide not to wait until the equipment and all that was ready the good

reasoning of both sides believe it or not but I'm gonna hang my hat on the idea that the fact that the Second World

War German military is infested and run by Nazis is what makes it inferior to the first world war military so let's start with why this would matter at all

and the basic answer that covers most of these bases is that the ideological question now becomes at least as important and I think you can easily

make the argument more important than the question of merit or technical expertise once ideology becomes more

important than merit and once the Nazis begin to you know place people in positions all up and down the leadership tree from top to bottom just like Stalin

did in his system then you begin to see the impact of people that are less competent on the system people that never would have gotten jobs in first world war Germany because there would

have been people much better than they to occupy those positions are getting work in Second World War Germany and it degrades everything in fact let's look at the guy to me this this is the the

person who proves the rule he's just maybe the highest-ranking incompetent official unless of course you include Hitler himself they're still by the way those people who consider Hitler some

sort of military genius I would make the case and maybe this is a question for another show that if you had Hitler transported back to the deliberations of the First World War German General Staff

and there's only 20 people that can fit in the room they're having this discussion in and they're only going to let the 20 best strategist in the room I don't think Hitler gets anywhere near the front of the line to even get in the

room but let's not talk about him let's talk about his second-in-command a guy who is

he's in charge of maybe you could say the most disappointing underperforming wing of the German military and the one that probably was most responsible for a

lot of the problems because you know they put a lot of weight and a lot of resources into the German Air Force and then they handed those resources that responsibility and the weight of the war

in so many areas and put it on the shoulders of Hermann Goering a guy who was so incompetent at his job at one point that if you were sending out

commandos from the Allied side hit teams to take out German leadership he would specifically want to make sure you did not shoot Hermann Goering because he's one of the best things that ever happened to the Allied war effort

because he was incompetent he would not have had that job in the first world war system now let's understand something the first world war system had its own problem with nepotism we're not forgiving them they're part of that

tradition of blue blooded aristocracy right and you'll look at the nominal commanders of a lot of the First World War armies on the German side and their prince this and crown prince that and some of those guys were decent generals

by the way but you'll notice that for the ones who weren't the German military was extremely adept at walling off their ability to negatively impact things too

much and the best example of that of course at all is how the military dictatorship of Germany were able to sort of isolate and quarantine the

Kaiser himself the imperial warlord of germany or you know sit in the corner play with your maps and your ships we had a war to conduct and they did who's gonna do that in the Second World War

who's gonna cordon off Hitler and Quarantine Hitler from his bad decisions being transmitted to the military nobody because it's an ideological state and

the ideology plays as large a role or a larger role in everything and ideology by the way is absolutely key for understanding the second world war at all adam2 is the wonderful economic

history makes these wonderful points in his book and I'll have to quote a little bit of it but he points out essentially and it occurred to me when I read the lines I'm

like oh this is wild basically my words put into his mouth you know it's the question is what would happen if a major nation state got taken over by a by a

leader who was a fanatical conspiracy theorist and saw the world strictly through their conspiracy lens and then acted upon you know what they thought

they saw for example let's imagine that the person running a major nation state believes that aliens from outer space had been controlling nations and world leaders for a hundred years and when

they get into power they start acting you know as if that's what's really going on right we don't base our decisions on what these countries say they're puppets for the aliens it's kooky isn't it but you know twos

reminded me something we all know but we tend to forget especially we war gamers will sit down there and we're thinking about this tank and that gun and you forget the ideology that that's pushing these armies forward to begin with

Hitler is a fanatical conspiracy theorist but he's not thinking of space aliens he's thinking of Jews running the world and there's a tendency to think yes yes yes but you know these other

things matter until you realize that and this is what to's was so good at in his 2006 work the wages of destruction I mean you have to understand that it explains so much of the crazy stuff that

they did because when I was growing up this was still the end of the era were in the United States the the classic thing to say about Hitler was that he was crazy and then you'd read about what they would do and they would go yeah that's crazy only a crazy man would do

that well twos points out that only if you consider these fanatical conspiracy theorists to be crazy would that work because Hitler's got a logical plan and is

actually acting logically but only if you're able to see things through that same fanatical conspiracy theorist lens he's looking at for example the classic

stupid maneuver of the Hitlerian regime in the Second World War was there anything worse everybody always likes to say attacking Russia which was bad but

remember when Hitler was already at war with Britain and Russia he then declared war on the you know it states the United States didn't

declare war on Germany first and there's a great what-if scenario that some people play with about what would have happened if Hitler hadn't declared war on the United States at all because there was still a lot of isolationist in

the US a lot of people that would not have wanted to go to war with Germany it would have been able to say hey they didn't do anything to us we're at the Japanese bombed us but the Germans didn't interesting counterfactual to play with their Hitler takes it right

out of everyone's hands and declares war in the United States and when I was younger you just thought crazy but twos points out adding twos points out that

not if you see the world controlled by a cabal of Jews who use whole nation-states as their puppets to do

their bidding one of the great weird irony's of Nazism is that Hitler saw Stalin's Soviet Union as a Jewish

Bolshevik communist in his mind communism is Judaism they're mixed up I mean it's all the same right so that's a main Jewish stronghold to Hitler but Hitler also thinks that the United

States because it's democracy and freedom and capitalism is also somehow a sign of Jewishness that that's also another one of these Jewish puppets if you're fighting Jews and not

nation-states well then declaring war in the United States if you think they're this Jewish puppet all of a sudden makes sense and what too is kind of a woke me up to is

that if you're operating with this conspiracy theory as your guide yeah the United States is just another one of these alien controlled countries that the space aliens are using against

us you might as well could you know go after them now here's the way item twos encourages us to think about you know the way that these Nazis worldview

explains a lot quote President Roosevelt was identified as the chief agent of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy bent on the destruction of National Socialist Germany it was no coincidence that

Hitler's famous threat of annihilation of 30th January 1939 came as a direct response to Roosevelt State of the Union address the United States as everyone understood

was the key to deciding the balance of the arms race if Britain and France could count firmly on American aid their position would be well nigh unassailable but the position of the United States

was precariously balanced whilst Roosevelt led the rhetorical assault against Hitler and encouraged Britain France and Poland in their resistance to Nazi expansionism isolationist currents

in the United States were still strong Hitler in the rest of the Nazi leadership he rights could not help but interpret this complex situation through the dark haze of Manichaean

anti-semitism for them it was obvious that it was Jewish elements in Washington London and Paris bent implacably on the destruction of Nazi Germany that were tightening the International encirclement and it was

this paranoid sense of menace that precipitated Hitler's decision to launch his strike against Poland and then against the Western coalition that continued to stand obstinately in his

way end quote if you wanted to say you know what the Germans in both world wars did poorly because they were tactically brilliant

most of the time it was the grand strategy stuff it was deciding for example which countries to go to war with and which Wars to fight or not to fight that they really screwed up in and

in the Second World War the reason for declaring wars and accruing more and more enemies was ideologically based right so the doom of the German military

no matter how good it might have been on the battlefield was sealed by the politicians who put them in wars that no one could hope to win but that's getting

a little off the subject let's talk about how the Nazis made the German army weaker in the Second World War and the difference that you have had in a system like the first world war in Germany that

was more merit-based you can't say it was merit-based but more merit-based start with the idea that you have all these Nazis in key positions that are

incompetent or untrained or non-expert this is not by the way a bug this is a feature as Hitler sees it there are lots

of critiques one could pull off the shelf how about and again all of these people have access to grinds take everything that these ex-nazi

people write with a grain of salt but in his famous book inside the Third Reich which maybe I'm not sure maybe the closest account you'll ever get of the

Nazi situation originally his architect but then the minister of armaments Albert Speer wrote his memoirs after the war and when you read them he'll say things it's like reading Churchill's stuff because instead of saying they

said and then they said it's I said and then he said and a lot of the he said is Hitler so an Albert Speers book he talks about Hitler's tendency to put people in

positions of authority and great importance in the survival of the state who had never done anything like what their jobs were gonna require in the past including Speer himself right a guy

who had become Hitler's friend because he was an architect who was going to design Hitler's new Berlin and Hitler takes a liking to him and all of a sudden tells the architect yeah you're gonna be the the armaments minister with

no experience at all here's the way Speer described it quote one can only wonder at the recklessness and the frivolity with which Hitler appointed me to one of those three or four ministries

on which the existence of his state depended I was a complete outsider to the army to the party and to industry never in my life had I anything to do with military weapons for I'd never been

a soldier and up to the time of my appointment had never even used a rifle as a hunter to be sure it was in keeping with Hitler's dilettantism that he preferred to choose non-specialists as

his associates after all he'd already appointed a wine salesman as his foreign minister his party philosopher as his Minister for Eastern affairs and an

erstwhile fighter pilot as overseer of the entire economy now he was picking an architect of all people to be his minister of armaments undoubtedly Hitler preferred to fill positions of

leadership with laymen all his life he'd respected but distrusted professionals end quote and he names a professional Hal Marsh locked who was fantastic and a

perfect example of the kind of people that were merit-based now the perfect example that should prove the rule of what Speer was just

saying was the guy who was second-in-command in the Nazi regime the famous Hermann Goering head of the Luftwaffe right arguably the most

underperforming branch of the German military Goering story of course is fascinating he was a dashing handsome

fighter pilot in the First World War shall we say gone to seed by the second between the wars he was one of Hitler's

comrades took a bullet in the groin area during the early Nazi marches the pain of that was what was blamed on him

becoming a morphine opioid addict and I love the way the great tank general Heinz Guderian describes Goering you have to understand another thing that

made that the Nazi state so much weaker I think than the first world war state is the Nazi state was full of the most I mean it was like you know if Hitler is

Taylor Swift sorry Taylor Swift his little gang his entourage were a bunch of backbiting and you can't even describe the drama but Heinz Guderian

describes Goering and it's just the most one the Nazis are the most in the 20th century perverse wonderful colorful awful I mean you can't even the adjectives are not even there here's

what Heinz Guderian writes about Goering who's in charge of the German air force the arm that is receiving an inordinate amount of the state's resources because it's seen as this cutting edge thing

that can win you the war and then it's gonna underperform time and time again here's what one of the great tank theorists of all time general Heinz Guderian wrote in his post-war memoirs

of Goering and you can just feel well I'm not even sure what the emotion is it's dripping off the page you tell me he writes quote once however Goering had seen the young German airforce through

its teething troubles he surrendered more and more to the charms of newly won power he adopted a feudal manner of life collecting decorations precious stones

and antiques building his famous country seat Karin Hall concentrating with visible results on the joys of the table that just means he's getting fat he

continues on one occasion while sunk in contemplation of old pictures in an East Prussian castle he suddenly cried out this is goring magnificent I too am a

man of the Renaissance I adore splendor Guderian continues quote his style of dress grew ever more eccentric at Karen Hall or while hunting

he adopted the costume of the ancient Teutons and when on duty his uniform was always unorthodox he either wore red boots of Russian leather with golden Spurs an item of

dress scarcely essential to an aviator or else he would appear at Hitler's conferences in long trousers and black patent leather pumps he was strongly scented and he painted his face his

fingers were covered with heavy rings in which were set the many large gems that he loved to display end quote Guderian taking a shot at goring

therefore perhaps a little cross-dressing goes a little beyond the metrosexual probably but at the same time you know that's just one of the wonderful hypocrisy z' of the nazis is that they always had a strain of people

doing things like that and there's nothing wrong with that unless of course you hypocritically make them one of the top targets that you send to your concentration camps the Nazis were extremely hard on sexual minorities and

the fact that they have people in them that probably could have passed for some just makes it extra as I said hypocritical now once

you think well what does this have to do with the army right I mean this isn't a guy in the field with the weapons but it is they're all interconnected in ways that you can't separate so for example

when Albert Speer gives an account of Hermann Goering shouting down a German general who is explaining to him really important things that will affect what happens to the German army which will

affect what happens on the battlefield Speer writes quote I took part in a session with Goering in the course of which General Thomas expressed his anxieties about the vast demands the

leadership was making upon the economy Goering answered the respected general by roaring at him quote what business is that of yours I'm handling that I am do you hear or

are you by any chance in charge of the four-year plan you have nothing to say in this matter the Fuhrer has entrusted all those questions to me alone

end quote Speer says quote in such disputes general Thomas could expect no support from his chief General keidel who was only too glad to escape being

bullied by Goering the well conceived economic plan of the armaments office of the high command of the Armed Forces was never carried out but as I had already realized by then Goering did nothing

about these problems whenever he did do anything he usually created total confusion since he never took the trouble to work through the problems but made his decisions on the basis of

impulsive inspirations end quote Goering is one of these guys and you see this amongst a lot of the Nazi officials where theoretically on paper Goering is

not a bad guy to run the Air Force I mean with his qualifications the problem is is those qualifications were created at a time when Goering was a different

guy he's a hardcore addict by this time and his decisions concerning the Luftwaffe are catastrophic if you're

German mixed in with these Nazi officials put in place even in the Army for ideological reasons are hardcore

professional merit-based people in all these services who are horrified on his generals helmet Forster said of Goering quote I've seen the

reichsmarschall nod off in mid conference for instance if the conference's went on too long in the morphine wore off that was the commander

in chief of our Air Force exclamation point end quote so imagine this Goering question up and down the chain of command and how much that affects

everything and if you took those Nazi officials out and put people that were more merit-based let's not get utopian here from the first world war sort of standards you'd have a better army in

the Second World War in my opinion let's discuss some of the other things besides the merit question the play into this in my opinion as I'm making my case here

the Nazi ideology of racial exclusion and superiority makes the army weaker if you go to or some of the German

graveyards from the first world war in France you will come across every now and then but with regularity a German grave that has a Star of David on it the

reasons are obvious right that is a German Jew who fell in service to his country a patriotic German Jew of the time period they were everywhere from

the rank-and-file soldier to the scientist bankers industrialists businesspeople it's it's a long list of people who helped the German war effort

in the First World War as loyal Germans you know to the Kaiser the Nazi ideology of course turns the stain against those people and whereas you had good Germans

helping the state now you have an enemy within the first thing that happens of course is you see a brain drain and Albert Einstein will be just one of the people who leaves Germany as times get tough

he will famously come over to the United States send that letter to President Roosevelt saying it might be possible to harness the power of the atom blah blah blah right in the First World War

Albert Einstein stays in Germany and works his physics calculations for the kaisers regime likely anyway not only that but now you have this people who would have been helping the war effort

that now you have to figure out how to at first get rid of and there was a balance of payment problems that was complicating matters but by and large it just basically means at some point in the war you look at a Germany that

really really really needs to allocate its resources carefully and wisely and yet because of their ideology have to apportion a certain amount to wiping out

this ethnic group well one of many but the Jews most prominently and you had your gypsies and you had your poles and you had your Russians and you had your I mean the list goes on and on you had your homosexuals you had your priests

and all of them have to be in a warehouse and exploited and then killed and I mean that takes resources from the war effort and why are they doing that

again oh yeah ideology let's switch to what the ideology means in terms of your commanders both world wars saw the traditional high standards of German

generalship upheld great generals in both wars but in the First World War once again if you did a good job commanding troops and you were a winner you were commanding troops in the Second

World War how much the Nazis like you or feel that you are loyal to them plays a part in whether or not you get an important role there were guys like Guderian who we

just quoted that were sometimes sidelined because they weren't ideologically supportive or pure enough and of course I mean we all know that a decent number of German generals were

killed by the regime the desert fox Erwin Rommel one of their great ones right Patton thought he was one of the best ever what did they do to him they forced him to commit suicide why

ideological problems again so not only is it not merit-based in some ways but if the people who do deserve those jobs don't conform to the ideology enough

they're gone too that's another thing that's going to make the first world war German military better than the second let's talk economics for a second without getting too deeply into it you

wouldn't want me to anyway that's where I'll start making some mistakes but by and large the Nazis had their own theories on economics and this is well understood in the First World War they

were more shall we say Orthodox on their economics the Germans were very much in the Second World War we describes steroids earlier that's not a bad way to put it leveraging their

economy for the short term is another way to put it it's another reason why they were more like Mike Tyson and their front-loading their power and if the fight goes into the later rounds they're in trouble and it did and they were in

the first world war with a better understanding of economics smarter people at the helm who were not blinded by ideology they did better with what

they had longer finally you look at how the ideology boxed the German government in the Second World War from any sort of

outcome that wasn't a total catastrophe take a look at the performances of the two armies and what they did right the German army from the first world war from the Kaiser Reich those guys are

fighting a two-front war from day one the worst nightmare of any central Continental state right you have Russians in the East French and British in the West how do you deal with that

year by year the Germans in the First World War went around knocking out their enemies I mean they knocked Russia out of the war how'd they do that well their

plan was to hurt them and then go and get a settlement with them and take as much of a deal as they could get right they got one of the great treatise of all time brest-litovsk Wright famously

in Germany's favor why didn't her minee of the Second World War do that I mean they had a lot more going for them they didn't have to fight a two-front war

until 1943 you knock France out which they did with they Mike Tyson like spectacular knockout you're not fighting in any front war for a while then you

fight the Soviet Union without having to worry about anyone on your western flank there on the continent perfect situation

but by 1942 perhaps maybe 1943 you've lost on the Eastern Front and the second front is just opening up in Europe in Italy so you say well why didn't the

Germans cut their losses when you have all this territory in the Soviet Union well in the first world war that's when you make a deal right you go to the Russians and you go listen we all this territory of your ISM we're gonna stay

here but what you give us a good peace deal we'll pull back a little you know you can negotiate from that right but the Nazis were hemmed in by their ideology they

can't make a deal here this isn't a battle you know for the best deal we can get this is in Hitler's mind a life or death struggle the plans that the Nazi

leaders have for this area then the East requires them to move millions of people eastward maybe have a starvation plan to start calling the numbers and then

inserting German farmers into this hole I mean the the entire thing there is no plan B here there is no place for

compromise and what's more the extreme brutality that Nazi racial superiority and the ideology that pushed for a

brutal campaign in the East pretty much made the people on the other side in no mood to be cutting any deals with anyone once again didn't have to be that way

the German military's always tough on people throughout history right remember Belgium in 1914 you know they're there they're not a lightweight army when it comes to justice ever

but the crimes of the Nazis because of the ideological question were so much greater that there was nobody willing to

compromise so in my opinion you take the Nazis you pry the infestation out of the German military and all the influence that it had over the equipment tactics

doctor and strategy and approach of the German military and you instantly get stronger you put the first world war leadership an ideology you know what there was it was an aristocratic kind of

an ideology in 19th century ideology but you put that in charge of the second world war German army and I bet it's better let me end my attempt at making a

case here by once again turning to general Heinz Guderian who was not afraid to go up to Hitler and ask the kind of questions that might get some

people you know hanging from the end of a meat hook so it pretty gutsy but of course we don't know if this really happened or not this is a man's memoirs but he says that after he watched Hitler basically you know

yelling the face of Goering that he was a disaster Guderian walks up to him and says oh so why is he still here he writes quote as a result of this conversation meaning the dressing-down of Hermann

Goering I urged Hitler to act according to what he now realized and to appoint some competent Air Force general to succeed the reichsmarschall I told him that we dare not risk losing the whole

war on account of the incompetence of one man like Goering but Hitler replied now this is Hitler talking and he's showing why the ideology Trump's merit

Hitler according to Guderian's said quote for political reasons I cannot do as you suggest the party would never understand my motives end quote so if

you can't fire Hermann Goering in 1944 near the end of the war for political reasons well that might explain why your military is less formidable than the

first world war military right there remember we didn't even mention that Goering isn't just in charge of the German air force he's in charge of the German economy when the four-year plan is going on you could make an argument

that at least Goering has a background and fighter aircraft and all that stuff because he did but why would you put that guy in charge of the German economy and who is good enough even among the

uber competent to be in charge of both and of course we only chose Hermann Goering because he's the most obvious target the tip of the iceberg the Nazis

had people like this up and down as we said the leadership chain mixed with a lot of uber competent people we should point that out otherwise the Germans are not as formidable as they were in the Second World War

lots of traditional German competency that's why I compared these Nazis to their war effort like like some sort of parasite an infestation sucking some of the blood of competency out of them

leaving them still very competent but weaker than they otherwise would be compared for example in my opinion to their First World War version now in my

account for brevity's sake not really my strong point as you know I left out a lot of stuff we didn't even deal with things like the Navy you know in comparison First World War German Navy

second most powerful Navy world Second World War German Navy nowhere near that mean there's no comparison there and in the airforce I mean let's remember to get back to

Goering again this is an Air Force that continually delayed the influx of new equipment in terms of new designs which as we pointed out earlier is critical right the technology changes during the

the war itself because they're changing things like well do we want this new jet to be a fighter or a bomber or a fighter ball I mean back and forth and every time they change their minds they lose months and months of production time

could have had jet aircraft years earlier perhaps gorings the guy who told Hitler to have his armies stop and not annihilate the British who were trapped

at Dunkirk in 1940 because the Luftwaffe would finish them off they didn't gorings the guy that said he could supply the encircled German troops at Stalingrad don't worry we'll do it by

air couldn't and you can't fire him in 1944 well to me in my opinion as I said

that is Exhibit A right there that the German First World War military would have been a more formidable opponent to face in its day than the Second World

War German military was in its day you