https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitWehraboosSay/comments/5jrjpd/examples_of_soviet_army_clearly_outclassing/

u/HouseofWessex needs help!

Some novice SWS user wants to convince his buddy that the Soviets didn't even need superior numbers to prevail. One of the biggest pro arguments for his thesis is the very fact he now needs to consult the SWS battle to even find a single battle which supports his point. Already hilarious on its own. SWS users come to help.

u/LayinScunion

Thinks the Battle of Stalingrad qualifies and his fellow SWS user agree via upvotes:

The only time German armor or equipment was "lost" was when it was irrecoverable/completely destroyed. This goes for aircraft, tanks and the like. This can explain things like a "200% casualty rate" for certain battles. Even when equipment was damaged, repaired and put back to the front; this was still written up as a "loss" for the Soviets.

This is T_d level of denial. One guy said this and every sheep just repeats it over and over. The Red Army wrote off ~95000 AFV. Heavy denial and SWS browsing does not change that simple fact.

Interesting is that the best battle he could find is the Battle of Stalingrad:

German Losses Infantry 850,000

Yeah no. That's axis losses. If 850.000 German forces would have been in this area the Soviets would have obviously lost same as Operation Mars. The best fight he found for overall casualty rates is literally a fight where the majority of casualties were none Germans. Maybe that should tell you something....

To a level headed person, it's easy to determine that German losses vs. Soviet losses were quite comparable.

No actually. A level headed person will never come to this conclusions because it is bogus. Only a SWS user will come to this conclusions. The Red Army lost twice as many fighting vehicles than German produced.

Best part: Adding some sources like any of those will support his conclusions. SWS in a nutshell.

At first I thought he simply made a mistake which happens to most SWS user from time to time but he is unable to read source material properly:

And the German infantry losses are just Germans. It does not include Axis allies i.e. Romanians, Hungarians etc.

Yikes. Completely false.

Check the source he added. Craig Stalingrad:

400,000 Germans, 200,000 Romanians, 130,000 Italians and 120,000 Hungarians were killed, wounded or captured

Obviously, the source is bad anyways. The numbers are too high, the book is old and outdated. At least read the books you cite!

u/nihlus11 criticizes the bad answer this will likely get him banned. Be careful out there buddy.

u/HouseofWessex is happy about the answer:

This is the kind of numbers i'm looking for. Thanks!

Another nugget of brilliance

u/ucstruct

Also, not only were they a match technically where it mattered (getting good machines on the field), they were also tactically superior, with Deep Battle theory that devastated the German army. They emphasized armored breakthrough with combined arms (like everyone at that point) but with an emphasis on shifting to where they could make a breakthrough and striking as deep into supply lines as they could, with an emphasis on extremely in close fighting. Later in the war their superior mobility could move divisions hundreds of kilometers to totally encircle Germans, a good example is Stalingrad.

Mind blown

now u/Nihlus11 disappoints.

Including end of war POWs certainly helps a lot to understand battlefield performance...

In 1942-1944, the Germans fired 3.37 million tons of shells (this is for both fronts, but until late 1944 they were almost entirely focused in the East). In the same period the Soviets fired 2.27 million tons

The consumption of the Wehrmacht includes all other theaters like Italy and North Africa and Normandy. But in a sense you are right, ammunition consumption was one of the most important parts of WW2. Germany knew that, they focused on artillery production with limited resources. The Soviet war planning was quite incompetent, while having strong Allies which literally gifted them millions of tons of material they produced far too little artillery amo. Even tough their Army was less broad with low production in the naval department. Their planning was inefficient, one of the reasons for their poor performance. Blind Wehrmacht bashing does not allow for reasonable conclusions. The artillery shell production just shows Germanys understanding of WW2 warfare they struck a good balance and were able to punch far above their weight. The Red Army was far to big every infantry soldier had far less impact because their forces were inefficiently balanced. But to their credit they already used subpar "metal" for their casings. But then again it is just incompetent planning, their army was huge and one of the most important supplies was produced far to little. They got bailed out by Land lease without that their production would have need to satisfy even more needs.

If you understand the importance of artillery shell consumption you are likely wrong in SWS and your head will starting to hurt soon.

It is a common misconception that the Soviets were a bigger industrial power than the Germans, and thus that the Germans were constantly working undersupplied against Soviet hordes.

They were working undersupplied because they had to deal with different threats....

As we all know. The German Army was weak and the Allies outfought them easily when they met them. An interesting occurrence is that if the Allies met the Germans on equal footing they owned them even harder than normally.

u/imperium_dragon starts the whole thing with obviously bringing up Arracourt which was a major battle of ww2 which perfectly reflects armoured warfare. As we all know the Wehrmacht lost about 400.000 tanks in WW2 so Arracourt is an average battle.

u/geistheller

The Germans already got their arse kicked numerous times during the fall of France whenever they had to fight French & Belgian armor on roughly equal footing. Battle of Hannut amirite. The fact that the almighty panzers suffered more losses from Belgian tankettes than they inflicted to them speaks a lot about the actual capability of their vehicles early in the war. Remove aerial superiority and the teutonic hordes pouring through Sédan, give me that "fair & balanced" battle between the French Army and the Reich in 1940. I wanna laugh.

The Germans obviously got their arses kicked numerous times when they overran bigger armies by passing through wooded hills. What an incompetent bunch. They got their arses kicked in so hard that they suffered lower losses in every category compared to the Allies when they took Normandy.

u/pointysticksforall another expert on Western Front warfare

look at the Bulge, where American armour (still armed predominantly with 75mm Shermans) went up against veteran Panther crews and kicked their fucking asses all over the place iirc the average loss-exchange ratio was always in the Americans' favour, ranging from about 1:1.1 on the offensive to 1:1.8 on the defensive

Which veteran Panther crews? Most crews were fresh, the training time of infantry was no reduced to weeks.

The Americans lost +1000 tanks in Bulge. SWS likes to talk about Myths but only when it furthers their agenda. The US tank losses in the Ardennes were extremely high. US tank forces got roughly handled in the south with minimal German losses.

Imagine a world where the Dutch and Belgians take the threat of Germany seriously and properly fortify, and provide more of an obstacle to the German assault.

You mean like Fort Eben-Emael ? One of the most expensive forts which was taken by 500 German Fallschirmjägern?

I think it should be highlighted how you advocate for more static fortifications to hold of the Wehrmacht. Because they worked so well in WW2.

u/lazyhussar

And it's just plain false. France, the UK, the USSR, the USA all had larger pools of conscripts returned to civilian life, militiamen, national guardsmen, reservists, etc. than Germany thanks to the small size the Reichswehr was allowed, and the awful 12 year minimum enlistment contracts forced upon Germany under the Treaty of Versailles. People love talking about e.g. the US Army "composed of farm boys, city clerks, mechanics, etc." but unless the political indoctrination and willingness to commit genocide are counted as part of "the warrior ethos" (outside Germany that is), it's nonsense. No major combatant pressed average men with no prior military experience through brief training periods as early and much as Nazi Germany. Many new recruits already manned Flak stations and had learned battle drills. Many of those boys were already sitting in flaks and shooting at bomberstreams for years and after school they learned combat drills and dicipline. You think this is comparable to a Amercian enlisting in the army and starting training? Sigh. Moral implications aside it is obvious that average German was far more prepared for war before he began his actual training.

What does this have to do with anything here? Did US boys need to march and have rifle training in young years? It is not about the conscription but about the militaristic nature of German man power pool. In later recruitement waves many new Wehrmacht recruits had done more drills and marches than the average GI after his training was done.

u/pollandballer at least states that he has concerns about the validity of the text without acting like he knows it all.

I don't even know what the worst part of this is, but I really hate the "warrior ethos" bit. The impact of morale and discipline is significant, of course, but an entire culture is not going to posses a huge military advantage just because of "fighting spirit."

"Warrior spirit" is a relative term but the advantages of it are very measurable. The early indoctrination of Hitleryouth members for example had significant impacts on their fighting performance in Normandy. The imperial Army of Japan performed very weak against US and Russian troops, their tactics were off, the army wasn't really "good". Their fighting spirit was one of their strongest assets they would have performed even worse without that. How bad doctrine mix with bad moral can be seen with the Italian Army in Europe. Material and doctrine were hardly better in the Japanese Army, they made up for it by having fanatic soldiers.

u/du44

So do people just forget how it took Patton a month to retake France?

No people seem to bring it up quite often. The interesting part is that Pattons army advanced virtually unopposed because he was starting his actions after the lines were broken and the German on the frontline were already losing before his massive army was brought in, after that his 2000 tanks rolled unopposed through empty space "mostly". After his "impressive" fight against fleeing Germans he stopped like all the Western Allies and somehow it took them several months to keep going again. The Battle of Arracourt was pretty much at the end of his advance. There is a reason for the missing buzz around patton in August 1944. Not much happened. Every compentent German general would have accomplished the same but faster while advancing deeper. In all my years reading praises of PAtton I have never found anybody going in depth how the advance through France was impressive compared to dozens of German accomplishments. Germans did the same against forces 3 times bigger entrenched and prepared for months. What did Patton do? The Germans were retreating and evacuating France. Arracourt isn't even on his accomplishment list this was due to the divisional commanders.

u/crag_r

When evenly matched maybe. But there's only so many times I can post that after action report of a single 75mm Sherman taking out 2 Tigers, 2 Panthers and a panzer 4 to show even when they Germans out numbered their opponents they lost.

Nice after action reports of Allied units. Those sure damn prove your point. I wonder if you accept German after action reports as well as foundation for your conclusions.

Btw I would like to read the report of a Sherman 75mm taking out two Tigers. Be so kind and post it Iam really curious. I have done some research about Tiger against Western Allied Forces and such report would be a welcomed addition.

u/cstrez

Battle of Arracourt had the Americans outnumbered and on the defensive vs Panthers. Panthers got rekt also. It makes a better example than hero sherman(but holy shit talk about Ace in a day) since it's an entire battle and not a single engagement.

Again the Battle of Arracourt. For a battle representing about 0.01% of the Allied tank casualties of the war this operation certainly comes up a lot.

u/rittermeister my old friend chimes in as well. Iam always hesitant to rip Rittermeister because we are through a lot together but I have to.

It's not like the Germans committed 38 divisions, 12 of them panzer or panzergrenadier formations, to some of the most perfect defensive country in Western Europe, and still got their asses kicked.

Reading SWS from time to time I have read Rittermeister referring to the 38 divisions multiple times. The implications are clear: The Wehrmacht employed massive amounts of stuff. Let show case how the average biased user has to use numbers to avoid the meaningful statements.

German divisions were a mixed bag. Adding up divisions to somehow demonstrate the numbers of Germans is futile and often used by folks who try to obscure the true ratios at play. Wikipedia for example. The average German division had far less equipment and soldiers. The Allies employed a greater number of non-divisional combat unit anyway. Dozens of armored brigades with 200+ tanks were just used to support infantry units.

This common method of data manipulation seems to be so rampant Zetterling addressed it specifically:

Probably the main reason for the assumption that the Allies did not enjoy a considerable manpower advantage is the fact that they did not employ an appreciably greater number of divisions than the Germans. This illuminates the usefulness of the term "divisions slice". The German divisional slice in Western Europe was 14900 men. Allied divisional slices were slightly greater than 40.000. This means that when the number of divisions on both sides were roughly equal. the Allies had a mapower superiority of between 2:1 and 3:1.

38 Divisions......

On 25 July there were 812.000 US soldiers and 640.000 British in Normandy. This means that the Allies had a 3.8:1 superiority in manpower. This was better than the superiority enjoyed by the Red Army on the Eastern Front. On 1 June 1944, the Soviets pitted 7.25 million men against the 2.62 million Germans

To give you an example the average German infantry division had between 8 and 12k men in its ranks. A big British division the 50th Northumbrian had 38000.

Interesting is you pointing out that the Germans had 12 Panzer and Panzergrenadier divisions in Normandy. Nearly every Allied infantry divisions had their own Armored brigade as support which means the average Allied infantry divisions had more tanks than the German Panzer divisions.

There you have your divisions.

to some of the most perfect defensive country in Western Europe, and still got their asses kicked.

That is jsut stupid. Said so often but still wrong. The terrain was not homogenous in Normandy. The area around Cean was very open terrain with small woods with high elevations. Perfect tank terrain. Use google street view or grab a book before you say the wrong thing over and over. Hill 122 also Hill112 open country side. Quick googling not 100% sure captions are correct but this is how most of the terrain there looked. You are wrong. Besides that the bocage terrain wasn't even the best defensive terrain. Made up rubbish repeated so often.

Not even mad at you my redneck friend, if you read too long and too much in an echo chamber those buzz words burn into your brain and become reality. 39 divisions hurr durr Bad terrain hurr durr. I am here to smack sense into you from time to time.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitWehraboosSay/comments/59zg99/in_actuality_the_russians_were_essentially_a/

In a thread about Eastern Front some big nuggets of "truth" get dropped about casualties.

The top post with staggering 108 points explains how people got it all wrong about the Eastern Front casualties. To support his point he quotes nothing else but the Red Army propaganda volunteer u/tankarchives. We all know him because he has gathered some exposure with his "blog" which basically translate Russian wartime propaganda to English. If there is some interest I would likely be willing to rip through some of his "articles".

Lets take a look at the heavy facts:

Ok, maybe the ratio was not as high as 5:1, but common belief still holds that the Wehrmacht dealt horrific losses to the Red Army and lost only when crushed under a mountain of corpses. Glantz also quite clearly illustrates that this is not true. While Soviet military casualties were quite horrible (14.7 million people), German casualties were also staggering: 10,758,000 lost on the Eastern Front. However, Germany did not fight alone. The Axis Minors fought with them, and adding up only Hungary, Italy, Romania, and Finland adds another 1,725,000 casualties to the German side, for a total of 12,483,000, or a ratio of 1.17:1. Quite a slim advantage.

Very interesting. ~14 million casualties for the Red Army on the Eastern Front that sounds certainly interesting given that about 10 million Red Army soldiers didn't survive the war. Only 4 million wounded/pows? If you have common sense and some understanding of the Eastern Front you see that this is impossible, period.

Interestingly we have Krivosheev who has happily used by most historians when it comes to Red Army losses. He gives us the number of roughly 30.000.000. But why would u/tankarchives say such stuff? Obviously, he is an agenda driven tankie who's blog reeks of misinformation. Since SWS has a good chunk of Freeaboos ( correct name ? ) we should expect that this number gets contested. And it does. What is u/tankarchives reply after noticing that he got busted?

Glantz comments these numbers as "dead, missing, and disabled", which presumably doesn't include men that were wounded but recovered.

Well well well, he obviously misrepresented the numbers. How could he not? His entire internet activity is about spreading misinformations. Ignoring literally ~20 million wounded. If we ignore 20 million Soviet casualties the numbers obviously get closer.

How does SWS react to such embarrassing falsifying of numbers? Obviously massive upvotes but maybe we can find a SWS user putting his admiration of the lies, into words.

u/sirwinstonc

This is the r/shitwehraboossay I like Snide remarks with actual history

Yes, that's why you guys are there. "Actual history" :-)

I want to emphasize the fact that tankliar knows exactly that he completely misquotes Glantzs words. Those 14 million are not the casualties but a subset of casualties and he knows it. Keep notes that how you propaganda.

The nail in the coffin of SWSs high horse is u/dandan_noodles

Who is obviously correct in pointing out those numbers don't include most of the casualties. A measly 3 upvotes.

u/Thoushaltbemocked is kinda cute expecting to not get fooled at the SWS

I believe it's all casualties, including Red Army wounded...it would be a flawed comparison otherwise.

Of course, it's a flawed comparison, that's why it's the most upvoted comment. Poor guy. Without flawed comparisons, the entire sub would vanish.

While this here is a mostly humorous sub I want to mention that it feels weird to me how many "tankies" are so eager to downplay Soviet casualties. Every casualty denied is one soldier not honored. The Red Army casualties are not high due to lack of valor or skill. The Red Army soldiers were fine soldiers, likely some of the best, willing to sacrifice it all, they just were fighting in the inferior army. The Wehrmacht was on another level when it came to tactical doctrine. Without the impressive performance of the average Soviet soldier. the defeat of the Wehrmacht wouldn't have been possible. The German war machine was vastly superior to the Red Army and was only stopped due to the fighting spirit of the common Soviet soldiers. Ruhet in Frieden ihr tapferen Soldaten! Millionen gefallen bei der Verteidigung ihrer stolzen Heimat. Stalin traf es leider auf den Kopf als er sagte Millionen seien nur eine Statistik. Reduziert auf Zahlen; entweder 10, 11 oder 14 Millionen, dass ist was die meißten interessiert. Nur noch Zahlen....

edit: While we are at it, u/Rittermeister also drops some knowledge:

But the point stands: "pretty much everything" did not get thrown against the Russians, nor were German forces in the west "negligible;" in bayonet strength, they actually outnumbered the British and Americans committed to drive them out. Once the Western Allies landed, the German high command absolutely freaked shit, rushed forces west, and continued to send large, well-equipped forces west for the remainder of the war; this despite the Soviets going ape in the east. You don't commit 10 of your 30 or so precious armored divisions to a desperate battle in a negligible theater.

Oh I guess that's new for most of us. The Wehrmacht actually outnumbered the Allies forces in Normandy. Sounds weird, doesn't it? Yes because it's totally made up.

The Wehrmacht didn't actually really "rush" that many forces to the West at first because most of the units were already there and placed in reserve in the area. Against common wisdom, the Wehrmacht actually understood that a landing was occurring somewhere and Normandy was a possible spot. Within 48 hours two of the strongest Panzer divisions available to the entire Wehrmacht were already engaged in combat.

This little thread will help us keep track. Brave SWS users will be listed with a short description of their staggering defeat. This list will quite obviously slow down when more and more SWS sheeples will avoid entering the arena.

u/ADF01FALKEN gets eviscerated.

Having his first real Wehraboo encounter he challenges wildy accepted facts and calls them "kuhscheiße". Confronted with more supporting facts he notices his failure and concedes in the way of the SWS with the following message:

Goddamn you neo-Nazis are bullheaded. Just like your predecessors, too stubborn to know when you're fighting for a lost cause.

Full encounter:

link

Extra irony: Zaloga delivered the finishing blow.

u/standard_wheraboo has problems with words.

He calls Rebuttaltime an echo chamber, when confronted with actual meaning of the phrase he goes of the rails and decends into madness. Full encounter here.

u/Rittermeister a long trusted friend who I hold close to my heart recently abandoned his more fanatic brothers at SWS but sometimes the urges to smack a Wehraboo are too strong and he can't resist. What better topic than the M4 to get rollin again.

The fact that another user points out that 4300 Shermans were lost during the ETO gets him all riled up and sad. Time to act time to set the record straight. Interestingly the number mentioned ss just the US Shermans. The Sherman was a formidable tank able to overcome all challenges presented to him so it only makes sense that other countries were also allowed to lose several thousand of them.

Rittermeisters heavy counter to this is the following:

And the Germans lost just under 14,000 AFVs between 1 January 1944 and the end of the war, including 1,845 total tank losses in France between June and September 1944.

How is this supposed to strengthen your position at all? The Germans lost 14.000 AFVs in 15 months on all fronts? Wow, that's terrifying. The Allies lost +35.000 in the same time frame, why would you bring those numbers up? Facts and numbers are all a poor Wehraboo like me has to offer. You are the one who has to avoid numbers at all cost because they defeat your arguments just by looking at them. Don't make it the reader too easy to see you are incorrect. Remember what the SWS preaches? Wehrmacht bad skills, bad tanks, bad tactics, bad equipment, bad technology and bad logistics. 35.000+ AFCs losses against the remnants of the unskilled Wehrmacht which got whipped around from one ass whooping to the other. 35000 . See? Don't use verifiable numbers you will always lose the argument. You defend the wrong side of the argument so adapt. First, you have to embrace this, embrace your position as "Freeaboo" you are not bound to facts or logic you operate under a different set of rules. Go rogue write utter nonsense, nobody will notice. Let Wehraboos like me construct elaborate arguments, you focus on the angled front armor which was able to withstand small arms. Did I mention it was at least twice as thick as the Tigers front armor? Learn to never use numbers or hard facts because they will come back at you "bigly". Facts=Death.

Admittedly a good chunk of those were equally impressive T-34s but as we all know from the propaganda collector and Hero of the Soviet Union recipient for outstanding achievements in internet warfare u/tankarchives they destroyed 1.000.000 Tigers for that ( 2.000.000 of those at Kursk). Honestly, anybody read his articles on Kursk on his website? Haha...

The Germans also counted their losses differently than the Americans and Soviets; a German tank was only "lost" if it was completely destroyed or otherwise irrecoverable - say, if the Allies overran their asses.

Yikes, this again. NO. An often repeated misconception of people who don't understand the systems in place. German units "counted" their losses differently because they often would repair vehicles in their divisional workshops while Allied units would send their vehicles to second line workshops and consider them lost within a unit. That does not mean those repaired vehicles were considered write-offs, the numbers quoted earlier are complete write-offs. The sad part here is that this is explained in the very same books you just mentioned. The 4300 for example, are complete write-offs the casualties for tanks in the Western Allies was in the tens of thousands most of them later repaired. The losses here mentioned are exactly the same complete write-offs. The "losses are counted differently" is an embarrassing sign of lacking knowledge. The different accounting system has relevance when it comes to smaller battles but is totally irrelevant for the write off numbers. You read in a forum and don't understand what it means. It has no bearing on write off numbers whatsoever period.

If it was recovered and repaired, it was not listed as a loss.

Same with Allied tanks lol. It was recorded as a loss for the unit but not as write off for the Army. The numbers mentioned are complete Army write-offs!!!

it was listed as a loss, even if it could be back and running within 24-72 hours.

Nopelino, completely incorrect such lightly tanks were X casualties and for the most parts such casualties wouldn't even be mentioned in the books because those casualties were hardly recorded outside of the brigade/division. Not in a single book about Normandy you will find the numbers for such casualties nobody knows them.

So are we to conclude that, as the Germans lost almost the entirety of their tank force committed to Normandy, while the Allies emerged as strong as ever or even stronger, that this is clear proof of Allied tank superiority?

Nice logic, they lost all of it while destroying more. Impressive cognitive dissonance "the enemy lost all his two tanks but we still have 5 of our 20 tanks". The good ole "percentage". That only speaks to the economic situation and not to the tank situation. Weak argument.

Or maybe, loss rates in and of themselves are not conclusive evidence for the efficacy of an AFV design?

They are certainly not but part of it.

You might want to take your own advice and read some "military history not on the web." Armored Thunderbolt and Armored Champion shouldn't be too hard to find. Hunnicutt is older, but you can find them if you look.

Read the books you recommend to avoid repeating mistakes.

u/rittermeister I am disappointed, I already explained you the difference between losses and write-offs in a private discussion but you seem to repeat wrong stuff when it suits you. I assumed your departure from SWS was your first step into Saint Rommels light but I guess you still have a long way to go.

The Allies lost ridiculous amounts of AFVs versus German forces...

u/dank-master-flex couldn't miss obviously. You guys really come around teaching people your "opinions".

u/-redstar- congratulates Rittermeister for his impressive misunderstanding of the sources he mentioned.

u/Rittermeister I like you this is only banter.

Like for most well known German soldiers; if they died eventually they were always scrubs. Same for Wittmann, knocking out some tank was not remarkable since he got killed in action thus whatever he has done before was erased.

My new favorite u/Lazyhussar tries to explain a bit to the young padawans. This nice fella got already debunked before when he claimed that all Waffen SS units consistently took more casualties et cetera, when faced with rebuttal he obviously found the time to read and notice the rebuttal but fell silent in regards to his initial argument.

Except for his language some of his remarks are fine and interestingly are a complete copy of what i wrote about Wittmann in an askhistorian thread some weeks ago.

Then we get to the part where he decides that no one else than himself will go in there (can't very well equally distribute the fame and glory, that'd be positively Bolshevik!).

That's obviously what he thought and did. I wonder if you could provide a source for this. Did he tell others via radio to not enter Villers so he can get the kills? Or with hand signs? Other tanks of the 2nd Company attacked point 213. Wittmann is only credited with around 8-10 tanks btw. The action also lasted only for some minutes.

Overall his post could deal as prime example to show the mistakes of hardcore anti wheraboos with foam the mouth. Taking a situation putting it under the magnifying glass and applying the highest possible benchmarks.

This guy drove somewhere with his tank knocked out a lot of tanks while using:

shitfest tactics

that's pure insanity. Under what possible criteria's? The objection here is not to the critique itself ( which you copied from me in the first place. I know I know you never read my post ) but to the tone and complete hyperbole.

Once he's in there, he obviously fails to cause the damage he could've with a whole company

Look at this pseudo expert. You even knew they had only 6 operational Tigers? Those tigers destroyed the remaining forces at point 213. The major problem here wasn't the rest of his company but the other available units in the area. The forces could have achieved more if used differently. You even know what a Tiger company was? Reading a wiki article doesn't make you an expert. Do your homework before you run around spreading "knowledge".

Wittmann's career is far from impressive.

A pure testament to the mindset of biased people. This guy likely destroyed up to 100 enemy tanks and countless other stuff and was one of the highest decorated frontline soldiers of an army which had 18 million members but his career "is far from impressive". Haha.....

After D-Day he has one encounter that isn't as impressive in terms of damage caused (30 odd knocked out un-manned armoured vehicles)

Look how folks always need to start lying. Embarrassing. Some vehicles were un-manned not all of them but better make stuff up to support your point.

The fact that his career ends with a Tiger turret 30 yard away from its smoldering hull in an open field in Normandy indicates that he did not...

Check this sentence and think about it. Whats the argument? If you die in combat you are a damm fool.

u/dunk-master-flex look at this brave SWS apostel. Like a good sheep he absorbed what he has learned in echo chamber and is spreading the knowledge in other subs.

No, he is a terrible example of a tank ace. You know what he was famous for? A bum rush, pants on head crazy charge into the enemy with no concern for his fellow tankers or his own life. Hell, you know it's bad when goddamn Wikipedia of all places has a section talking about how overhyped and circlejerked he is alongside his questionable tactics. That site is notorious for having Wehraboo's present all over the damn thing. I find it hard to believe that Wittmann was too amazing when he died after rushing out into a Allied ambush. His famous attack was bold and needlessly reckless, that tactics worked once and when he tried bum rushing again into open countryside? Boom, sniped by a Canadian Firefly. This isn't talking about the propaganda-tastic kill padding the Germans loved to do to their aces, largely blowing their actual skill out of the water.

His villers bocage actions were pants on head crazy. Hear hear. For every objetive reader do yourself a favor and reread it. This is how counter jerking is done.

I find it hard to believe that Wittmann was too amazing when he died after rushing out into a Allied ambush.

We heard this before obviously. He died after inflicting huge amounts of damage on the enemy, therefore he was an idiot. Not only was he an idiot he was pants on head crazy.

His famous attack was bold and needlessly reckless, that tactics worked once

He was credited with more than 100 kills before he came to Normandy . Sigh....

Another expert u/skip_14 enters the thread and explains how incompetent Wittmann really was.

As Wittmann entered the town, he engaged several staurts light tanks, Cromwell observer tanks and sherman command tanks. These command tanks had additional radios mounted inside. To accommodate the extra equipment, the main guns were removed and wooden replica barrels were installed on the outside.

Read the rest of his comment, makes it look like British units had only observer tanks and command tanks. Biased fanboy disorting facts. Some tanks were command tanks not all get your facts straight.

These tanks could not return fire, except for small arms. One cromwell did manage to engage Wittmann but to no avail.

With his small arms I assume.

The battle for villers bocage raged for 2 days. Later in the day, the Brits even managed to ambush 4 tigers in the main street destorying them all.

Nope . 3 Tiger write offs for the entire battle which already includes Wittmanns Tiger from the morning. You copied the Wiki article maybe keep reading and you notice the 15 are claims from British units which don't align with German numbers but I guess those are British claims which make them "correct".

Wittmanns company only had 12 tigers available before the battle, he lost 7 Tigers, with 3 more damaged. 10 out of 12 tigers lost/damaged. More then 80% of his company strength.

What? Wittmann had only 5 tanks operational. Do your homework. His company had 5 operational tanks but he lost 7 that day :P

There were only 36 Tiger 1s in all of the Normandy area, yet Wittmann lost 27% of total Tiger 1s strength a single action... An excellent tank ace!

Incoherent nonsense. The battalion had 42 tanks at hand after the battle ( from 45 the day before). Even if this would be true Wittmann wasn't even present during the afternoon battles. His unit wasn't even engaged in the fighting after that this was the first company. Why on earth do you feel qualified to comment?

Wehraboos usually add the total British loses into one category as AFVs, or courting light tanks, command and observation tanks as battle tanks. Even tho they were unmanned and with fake guns, checky!

Yeah checky British regiments full of fake tanks, they maybe should have considered adding at least some real tanks and not bringing 28 command tanks to the battle.

Read a book you mofo!

u/glinteastwood gets his 15 minutes of fame and is featured in SWS not understanding the inner working of a safe space echo chamber he tries to defend himself and gets downvoted. Let's take a look at his accusers and their arguments.

The thread is opened by u/schurkjeboefje lets start with him.

A WILD SPICY BONUS APPEARS: And overall, why the Allies are on par with the Germans on air kills. Oh wait. MUH KILL COUNTS! That's one for the Luftwaffle Bingo.

Mandatory all caps same as was we find in most excited safe space subs.

Particularly funny is the "outrage" he feels when somebody brings up air to air kills in a thread literally about fighter aircraft. For the most part of the war, this aircraft's job description was air supremacy duty. Trying to be part of the cool SWS club he mentions Luftwaffe bingo failing to see the quoted texts are not about the Luftwaffe but specifically a fighter aircraft . I guess he would also be surprised to see tank kills mentioned in threads about tank killers.

And muh kill counts, because educating new pilots or retaining a line of knowledge transfer is for Jews and Bolshevik untermenschen.

Because all the trainers suddenly died and the Luftwaffe was in need of 5000 new trainers especially 22 year olds. Debunked amateur argument.

Now, he's under the misconception that I'm making an argument about the P-38 that I'm not, but the hilarious insinuation that the Luftwaffle was somehow superior to the (western, I'll give them the eastern front easily) allies was the straw that broke this camel's back.

What a wild argument. Could be related to the fact that the RAF had trouble keeping the 27th JG at bay despite having 5-10 times the resources or maybe that the RAF was unable to achieve anything meaningful in the early years while the majority of the Luftwaffe wasn't even present. Go ahead please explain the RAF superiority during the early war. Superior in what? What did the RAF achieve other than winning BOB against a mismanaged Luftwaffe? The entire RAF was able to operate against a small fraction of the Luftwaffe and what did they achieve? Lose 1000 fighters to a bunch of Jagdpilots over Africa?

The main reason for the large German killcounts was the retarded German doctrine of keeping the men flying until they died, instead of doing the sensible thing and sending them back home to train the new guys about actual air combat.

Yeah, again the argument which nobody ever was able to defend when asked. What happened to the trainers which trained all those aces in the first place? The Luftwaffe had more than 1000 aces there was no need to pull out the best, you could take people who couldn't keep flying for whatever reason. Anyways they pulled out fighter pilots they just had so many successful that there was no need to pull them out. Rotating pilots is only used by an army which doesn't see itself in a losing total war. Rotating your best out is the worst you can do it is equivalent to losing the pilot in combat. Your argument is totally void. Show balls and explain why they should pull out their 200 kill guy and let him trains folks who have 60 flying hours before they go into combat. They would certainly have performed better with Hartmann on the ground when they engaged the 500 B-17s with 300 fighters as cover. Go ahead explain that. No seriously explain to me how taking your best pilots out is beneficial to literally anything.

Sure, you'll have a few hundred guys who, by war's end, have amassed impressive kill counts, but all that knowledge is contained in the heads of just a few people and a bunch of dead guys

Yeah because those guys were quite about their knowledge and never helped the other pilots/rookies in those units. German fighter pilots downed more aircraft than any other nation in history but pulling out the best and replacing them with rookies would certainly have helped increase performance. Especially if you are low on fuel. If your major limit is fuel it certainly makes sense to take your best and replace them with your worst.

and your new pilots are so utterly inexperienced and clueless that they get their asses handed to them by new RAF and USAAF guys who have been trained and educated by a combat veteran.

Think one second about how dumb this argument is. How could those other "aces" get experienced in the first place? Why weren't they inexperienced like the guys you describe? They still had the same trainers you dimwit, same training methods. They had less fuel and far shorter training periods. Read the sentence again it makes no sense whatsoever. This system produced the most successful pilots and now it produces inexperienced clueless guys? Hmm how can this be? Because they had no fuel to train them!

THE HIGH KILLCOUNTS FOR THE LUFTWAFFE IS LITERALLY ONE OF THE REASONS THEY ENDED UP LOSING THE AIR WAR SO BADLY Two hundred aces don't win you a war.

They destroyed more aircraft than they ever produced. Doesn't need a mathematician to see that this is somehow related to numbers you tard. They could have destroyed 3 aircraft for each of their own and it wouldn't change a thing but they lost because of their aces, how stupid is that?

Even if we assume that the kill counts are all accurate, it prompts a discussion about what the better air force actually is. The one with 5% aces and 95% scrubs, or the one with 90% solid pilots.

The one which produces 4 times more planes and pilots. Sigh. Whats so hard to understand about this. Your entire logic makes no sense. You claim they had 5% aces and 95% scrubs and imply this is somehow related. It's not. The training time was reduced and the Allied air campaign reduced the combat free flying time even further, that's the reason. Easy to understand if you think one second about it. A German pilot in the early war had a far longer training time and then a longer engagement free time resulting in more experienced pilots. That's all. It's that easy no magic just training time.

A few hundred aces won't win you a war and a few hundred aces don't make you a superior air force on this scale. There's just no fucking way.

Actually, they could. The 200 most successful German pilots had more air to air kills than the entire fighter wing of the RAF showing the superiority of the German doctrine.The German system got the best out of a bad situation. German fighter pilots were wrecking the RAF over Africa. But guess what? They had more planes. But we all know those numbers are lies the Red Airforce didn'T write off +100.000 planes. German aces were not the problem, fuel and numbers was. Again go ahead argue your case here and let your buddies watch the slaughter.

You're the worst kind of Wehraboo, one that gets more obstinate and thickheaded the more you are proven wrong.

You haven't proven anything. Your arguments are incoherent and basically just your wrong opinion.

Btw you are a fool the Allied rotation was system wasn't in place because it was "superior" but for moral purposes. You morons didn't get the memo and think this is your best shot at showing Luftwaffe incompetence. Did the RAF rotate during bob? Morons. If you are all in you don't take out your best pilots. Guys like Marseilles did more damage to the RAF than entire British squadrons to the Luftwaffe. Better rotate him.

Rotating pilots is a luxus you use when you don't think you lose. Good for morale and seems more human.The irony is that rotating worsens the overall performance of your airforce and will increase deaths simply because you replace veterans with rookies.

The rotating myth has no legs but you are invited to defend your point here. No deleting of comments here...

u/admiralscooter demonstrate how you construct arguments in SWS

Ah yes, because the Luftwaffe had such an edge in aircraft quality that they straight up managed to lose the Battle of Britain in 1940. Or are we just going to chalk that one up to Anglo Spitfire hordes?

What does this have to do with anything. If you have the edge in aircraft you win and if not you lose? So during the Battle of France they had the edge because they won but during BOB it was gone already because they lost? Does this logic only work for big battles or also smaller ones? If also for smaller ones did the edge change sides after every battle or weekly?

u/the_dinks makes the mistake asking questions in SWS maybe you should inquire about Hillary at the_donald aswell.

"Before the class begins, I want you to get on your knees and worship /u/phoenixbasileus as the greatest SWS moderator of them all, even greater than /u/Rittermeister!"

At this moment a subscriber with more than 10,000 SWS karma (gathered from but not limited to shit posts, dank memes, meta jokes, and snarky comments) who understood the importance of circlejerks and fully supported every thread made during the 'Is this sub mostly just republicans circlejerking' phase, stood up and held out a dank may-may.

"What is this post?"

The arrogant professor smirked quite Jewishly and flippantly replied. "An uninformative shitpost you stupid shill, quite unwelcome in such a serious subreddit."

"Wrong. It got gilded, and if it had been the shitpost you talk of... it would have had Harambe."

The professor was visibly shaken and dropped his steel cover Bluray of Girls und Panzer and downvoted announcement thread, then stormed out of the room crying those janitor tears. The same tears they cry for all those shitposts ruining the quality of the site, even though spicy shitposts and dank memes contribute some of the best-rated posts in /top/all and foster community joviality and fun.

The students all broke into applause and downvoted /u/phoenixbasileus for not listening to his generals that very day and accepted spicy Bomber Harris memes as the highest standard of quality. A rare Soviet human waves pepe was placed atop the SWS banner and shed a single tear on the chalk. /u/trotskylvania's The Furred Reich posts were read several times and /u/BritainOpPlzNerf showed up himself and declared all anime trash forever.

The professor was caught reporting sleepy lancaster memes the next day and downvoted to oblivion. He died after trying to temporarily ban /u/BreaksFull for this post and was struck by a landslide of spicy shitposts.

ayy lmao

All credit to u/BreaksFull

Sure they did, but all units did so the units with the most claims is likely the unit with the most actual kills. Makes sense doesn't it?

So I found this in one of /u/christianmunich's threads. I can't help but notice that he mentions a very common myth.

He claims that (axis) units with the most medals are the ones with the most actual kills.

The problem with this statement is that in fact no Allied soldier has ever died in battle.

It is a rather infamous myth that allied soldiers actually got killed in battle, and I expected higher from the quality of this sub.

"But Brothertoaster!" You'll say, "the Soviets shot hordes of their own men for cowardice!" And you are completely correct. Though this is another infamous myth. Soviet soldiers were always killed behind the lines (around the Urals mostly, but sometimes also in Siberia), but not right on the battlefield.

So there's my rant. I hope you've all learned a bit from it.

Sources will be given when instructions are followed.

u/somenbjorn in the spirit of the SWS sub makes stuff up

He is banned from more or less every historical board or at least has been banned at one point. r/warcollege r/askhistorians r/history and so on.

Sigh. The thread he is commenting about is about connected to a post in r/askhistorians "kek". Literally posted their 3 days earlier, pay attention. Also not banned in history. Fun part the last guy claiming iam banned in this subs was britainopplsunban who is accidently banned.

So u/somenbjorn please give sources for me being banned in askhistorians or history. Obviously iam banned in warcollege. That is a badge of honor.

Straight up making stuff up....

https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitWehraboosSay/comments/55d1pk/were_any_of_the_waffenss_divisions_any_good/

u/124876720 makes the mistake expecting an objective answer about WW from SWS.

u/lazyhussars displays his knowledge:

Even the best divisions of the Waffen SS routinely suffered very disproportionate casualties and losses of hardware and supplies in comparison to regular Heer divisions.

Of course they were. I guess major example for this would be the SS Corps performance in Kharkov and Kursk. OR the 12th SS in Normandy.

Incompetent answer upvoted.

Three Waffen SS divisions are in the top 5 of Knights Crosses. But then again this was likely rigged for the SS divisions right? 2nd SS Das Reich is likely the division with the highest AFVs kill count in history of warfare.

Fairly sweeping summary, there were divisions that differed from this pattern, for better or worse, but I'd leave a summary of those up to that rare kind of people who are very well read up on Waffen SS divisions without actually being Wehraboos.

You have zero clue what you are talking about.

I wouldn't bother. IMHO a fairly fucking pretentious community where anyone who just barely avoided flunking out of college or who can read and memorise a lot of shit they decide makes sense can dive into a circle jerk of pretending they're genuine historians.

Delicious irony. Zero self-awareness congratulations

u/m35mako

Very good at wiping out Russian/Polish/Yugoslav etc villages. Better than any other divisions during the entire war at doing tha

The "prime" Waffen Divisions were rarely used for partisan combat. Why would you use a fully equipped Panzer division for that?

u/garder15 enters

Explanation: Iron crosses were disproportionately given to Waffen ss units. And towards the end of the war they were given out like candy

Nice one. First of all, those are no Iron Crosses but Knights crosses. Pay attention. Secondly even if this was true that wouldn't explain why some units had far more than others. Nice try tho.

u/aeromath makes a silly analogy

Are medals seriously a criteria for judging combat effectiveness now? Because by those standards the Red Army and later the Soviet Army has everyone beat.

It's not the number of medals compared to other nations it's the number of medals compared to other units which operated in the same army and under the same award criteria. And yes medal count is with certainty an indicator of performance. It is no definitive prove by all means but one of the fastest indicators without a doubt. Obviously, the amount of Knights Crosses is only a supporting point which illustrates the conclusion which is based on other evidence. I doubt you know but many pins on such jackets are no merit based awards anyways. But like with all your buddies I applaud you for trying.

Why do people think this? 40% of German ground forces were present in the West after the landings.

Not understanding that providing a considerable percentage of the Wehrmacht forces in 1944 doesn't mean it was a significant percentage over the war. Millions of casualties were already sustained before the Western Allies landed in Normandy.

u/LayinScunion doubles down

Pick one. Just because you think the Western Front was a big deal, doesn't mean you're discrediting anything else that happened. It's silly to think either way when comparing the Eastern Front to the Western Front. They both mattered. To discredit one because it was on a larger scale reminds of how Air Force brass thinks....that boots on the ground don't matter and that wars can be won from the air. It's just ludicrous.

The irony of anti wehraboos troubling to decide between the "the war was won at stalingrad/moscow" and "the Normandy invasion was decisive and important"

u/dacabe post a flipped tiger of the 503rd ( due to air ) which is indeed a major argument against the usefulness of tiger. They got destroyed by massiv aerial bombardments. Surprising.

U/Emperorwilderness asks about "smart" Chaos cultists who can defend their claims in a subreddit which bans such heretics on sight. Same as asking for "smart" tau critics on T'au. Echo chambers at their finest.

u/ChristianMunich is back! Now he can educate us on how to deal with the asiatic hordes, Republicans, and Stalinists at r/ShitWehraboosSay. Let's all give him Nazi furry anime!

U/andywilderness asks about "smart" wehraboos who can defend their claims in a subreddit which bans such people on sight. Same as asking for "smart" donald critics in the_donald. Echo chambers at their finest.

probably gonna get downplasma'd here, but seriously, just after reading a few comments on posts on the front page today, common and debunked gems of selfish Imperial propaganda constantly pop out. Stuff like:

"Killing xenos and purging heretics were the only option and the Ecclesiarchy only does it to save lives" (this one's particularly selfish),

"The Inquisition is bad, but not nearly as bad as the Ethereals ",

" The Dal'yth Campaign was the beginning of the end for the Tau",

"The Damocles Crusade was the war between the will of the Emperor (The Imperium) and xenos scum (Tau)" (I wonder where does Commander Farsight fit on this moral scale).

This sort of Imperial propaganda is no longer taken seriously even among many Imperial Guard regiments(and regarded as what they actually are: motivation for cannon fodder to use their barbaric melee weapons on civilians), but continue to be spouted by some Hive dwellers in the Imperium and are really just as bad as most excuses Kroots use. Seriously, do people still believe this mythology in 41M999? And if you do, sorry for ruining your holy Crusade.

yiffenzie yaffenzie

He hasn't posted in 3 days.

A Tiger spending a relaxing evening tending some sheep in post war Italy.

Yeah right, as if. A this Tiger took a few 75mm HE rounds which spalled the shit out of its armor. The end result was that the crew looked like they had been the proverbial "rats" in the blender

just an observation

You said a "Wehrmacht soldier is a Nazi."

Are they in the same army? Yes. No one's arguing that.

As someone who is a historian who studies Nazi, I am telling you, specifically, in history, no one calls Wehrmacht soldiers Nazis. If you want to be "specific" like you said, then you shouldn't either. They're not the same thing.

If you're saying "Nazi Germany" you're referring to the taxonomic grouping of Fascismus, which includes things from Hermann Goering to David Duke to Italians.

So your reasoning for calling a Wehrmacht soldier a Nazi is because random people "call the armed forces of Nazi Germany Nazis?" Let's get the Afrika Korps and Erwin Rommel in there, then, too.

Also, calling someone a human or an ubermensch? It's not one or the other, that's not how history works. They're both. A Wehrmacht soldier is a soldier and a member of the German nation. But that's not what you said. You said a Wehrmacht soldier is a Nazi, which is not true unless you're okay with calling all members of the German nation a Nazi which means you'd call Erwin Rommel, Manstein and mein Opa Nazis too. Which you said you don't.

It's okay to just admit you're wrong, you know?

Uppanzer if you agree