How was Germany able to do so well at the beginning of the world wars considering it was up against huge enemies?
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Since everyone is taking about WW2, let me be the one to give some context on WW1.
The German Empire was formed by the forcible unification of various Germanic states. The state of Prussia was really the core of this. Highly militarized doesn’t really do Prussia justice. It’s said that ‘Prussia is not so much a state with an army so much as it is an army with a state.’
Due to their history, the army of the German Empire was arguably the most competent of the European armies in 1914. Also very important to note that their enemies were…troubled. They’d fought France 40 years ago in the Franco-Prussian War (last step of German unification) and won quite handily. The Russian Empire was so plagued by internal issues that they couldn’t mount any sort of effective technique and were basically a paper tiger.
It was getting the highly competent British forces involved earlier than was strictly necessary where Germany really started to drop the ball as the British army was quite competent and their navy outstripped everyone else’s.
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