↻ Reposted
@kingofallnads the germans also had some superior technology, i’m sure that helped. had the german government decided against babarossa and instead spent three or four years consolidating the dominion they had over all of europe at that point, meanwhile allowing stalin to murder his own in record numbers, the whole story would have turned out quite differently.
as for prussian efficiency in killing that was ingrained for the reason that the germans had spent a long history being out numbered by french, poles, russians, austrians, etc…. the need to over engineer technology to be extra cautious with their limited manpower served them well. when the great war came the russian, british, and french had gigantic empires whom they could draw upon in wartime to bolster their numbers and allowed them idiocies such as Somme. we all remember our grade school and high school text books which had colored maps of the central powers and triple entente…. it looks roughly equal on a european map. zoom out to a global maps to see what the entente could draw upon, including brown labor and bodies which could be discarded with of no great concern and poor little germany stood up to the 1st, 3rd, and 6th largest empires in all of world history, with virtually little to no help from their crumbling and incompetent allies.
