"Wehrmacht penis envy"

[Crossroads]

American Blitzkrieg
Loving the German War Machine to Death
By William J. Astore

"Why do people have a fixation with the German military when they haven’t won a war since 1871?" — Tom Clancy

I did not want to start a new "Myth" thread, and as it's within the spirit of this thread :chin:, here's another one from armchairgeneral:

Otherwise, I would have named the thread as:

"The Myth of German Superiority in WWII ETA"

a.k.a. (from the article):

“A Righteous A**-kicking.”

a.k.a. (ie. what the article actually is called):

"Remembering The Heroes of Arracourt"

http://greathistory.com/remembering-the-...acourt.htm

Among other things:

When the sun set that evening, the result hardly qualified as a battle at all – more like a massacre. But Combat Command A was not the victim. Walking the battlefield the next day, the Americans counted forty-three knocked out German AFVs, almost all of them Panthers. The Germans admitted to losing more than that, but a number were towed away and later repaired. The two battalions of panzergrendiers had been shattered as well – overrun, scattered, and then mopped up except for a few survivors who escaped to the east, probably suffering between 500 and 1,000 casualties.

And what price did the Americans pay for this victory?

Six soldiers killed.
Thirteen soldiers wounded
Three tank destroyers and five Sherman tanks knocked out.

There is a theory which has been abroad for some time that the U.S. triumphed in World War II solely based on material superiority, that superior German soldiers and superior German equipment were worn down by sheer numbers and weight of firepower, airpower, and manpower. I think that theory is flat-out wrong and the battle of Arracourt is a powerful counterpoint to what is presented as the “typical” clash between German and American mechanized forces in the autumn of 1944.