Word: wehrmachters
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...householder who took his visitors for tradesmen, Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery stood in the door of his motor van and demanded icily : "What do you want?" Facing him, beside a copse of silvery birches on the bleak, rolling moorland of Lüneberg Heath- where the Wehrmacht used to hold maneuvers- stood four German officers: the Commander in Chief of the German Navy, the Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht command in the north, and two members of their staffs...
...Stage I the Wehrmacht was victorious because in every campaign it outclassed its opponent both in quantity and in quality, in manpower and in weapons...
...Odds. Stage II began when Hitler voluntarily gave up one of his advantages. At the onset of the Russian campaign, the Wehrmacht mustered about 150 German and Rumanian divisions to the Russians' 110. In armor and planes the Wehrmacht had even greater superiority. But a month later, in spite of having lost hundreds of thousands of men, Stalin had as many men in the field as Hitler. Hitler never again outclassed his opponents in manpower...
...advantage in weapons remained. By the passage of the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941, the economic weight of the U.S. had been thrown into the scales, thereby giving potential weapon superiority to Hitler's enemies. But the actual weapon advantage was still his. The Wehrmacht rode that advantage for 15 months, but the ride was no longer easy. The Wehrmacht now had to skimp. The results showed clearly in the Mediterranean: the Afrika Korps recovered Italian Cyrenaica but lacked enough power to crush beseiged Tobruk; then lost Cyrenaica again to Auchinleck; finally, reinforced, overran the British army...
Meanwhile in Russia the Wehrmacht fought almost, but no quite, to Moscow; lost some ground in a winter campaign but pushed on again to Stalingrad. In September 1942 the attack on Stalingrad began. The Russians had already lost over half their steel capacity, 40% of their machine-tool industry, the whole fertile Ukraine-and 6,000,000 casualties. The Allies had traded men and miles for time, and they were closed to the ragged edge. That September of 1942 the Germans stood at the Nile and the Volga. The British were digging tank traps in the Khyber Pass, to keep...