German Army Studies

A U.S. Government study regarding the conscription policies of the German Army during World War II. Attention is paid to the development of this policy from it’s earliest days in 1935, when the draft was introduced, to the total mobilization scheme that followed the battle of Stalingrad.

After five and a half years of ever growing battle against ever-stronger enemies, the German Army in 1945 looks, at a glance, much the worse for wear. It is beset on all sides and is short of everything. It has suffered appalling casualties and must resort to old men, boys, invalids and unreliable foreigners for its cannon fodder…Yet this shabby, war-weary machine has struggled on a in a desperate effort to postpone it’s inevitable demise. At the end of 1944 it was still able to mount an offensive calculated to delay for months the definitive piercing of the Western bulwarks of Germany.

The introductory essay from the U.S. War Department’s intelligence manual concerning fascist Germany:

Total war is neither a contemporary invention nor a German monopoly. But total mobilization, in the sense of the complete and scientific control of all the efforts of the nation for the purpose of war, and total utilization of war as an instrument of national policy have been developed to their highest degree by the German militarists.

To gain some understanding of the nature of total war, you might want to click here and read about how the American cosmetics industry of the 1940s was forced to alter their production patters.

A one and a half page study on the training of the W.W. II German soldier – the soldier’s oath and the rigorous system of discipline that he had to adhere to. Also discussed is the German salute (Heil…), and the German Army’s understanding of soldierly duty.


Also discussed the German Army’s alternate pledge penned especially for atheists.

From Amazon: Soldat: Reflections of a German Soldier, 1936-1949

A one and a half page study on the training of the W.W. II German soldier – the soldier’s oath and the rigorous system of discipline that he had to adhere to. Also discussed is the German salute (Heil…), and the German Army’s understanding of soldierly duty.


Also discussed the German Army’s alternate pledge penned especially for atheists.

From Amazon: Soldat: Reflections of a German Soldier, 1936-1949

A one page study of German World War II tactics that was created by the United States Department of War two months prior to the German surrender:

…the Germans have placed a considerable reliance on novel and sensational weapons such as the mass use of armor, the robot bomb, and the super-heavy tank. Their principal weaknesses in this regard have been their failure to integrate these new techniques with established arms and tactics –German field artillery, for example, did not maintain pace with German armor -and their devotion to automatic weapons at the expense of accuracy.