How was Germany able to do so well at the beginning of the world wars considering it was up against huge enemies?

Question

How was Germany able to do so well at the beginning of the world wars considering it was up against huge enemies?

In: 154

Answer 1

From a purely technological perspective, everyone else was in par with germany (except the german airforce, which was slightly ahead of most of their competitors. That advantage wouldn’t last).

However, everyone else was ready to fight WWII on pretty much the same terms as WWI while germany had focused strongly on fighting the next war. German armored and combined arms tactics were well ahead of most of their adversaries, and it took a few years for the allies to catch up in that department.

So. Lets narrow that down to a single aspect to get an idea of how that manifested itself.

Take for example the Panzer III, germany’s top tier tank in 1939* and compare it to France top tier tank (the SOMUA S35). Both tanks have radio (although the french had a shortage of radio equipment) and the french tank is better armored (and has a more advanced armourscheme) and more advanced in every aspect but one. The tank turret. The S35 has a tiny tank turret where the commander is also expected to be the gunner. That would have been fine for a WWI style engagement, but by the end of the war everyone would adopt the larger german-style turrets with a commander, gunner and loader in the turret since that allowed the commander to focus on observing and commanding (necessary for the fast moving and more complex engagements of WWII).

While germany’s tank doctrine would evolve (they didn’t get it quite right and the PzIII would be superceded by the long-barreled PzIV) they were fairly quick in developing what would become the pattern for successful WWII tanks (good mobility, 3-man turret and the biggest and heftiest gun that turret could mount so that the tank had both good anti-tank and anti-infantry capability).

*Later on PzIII would become obsolete since it had a smaller turret ring than PzIV. Which mean that it couldn’t be modified to have a big enough turret to handle the long 75mm gun that became necessary as the war progressed.