Max Hastings' item in The Wasington Post, dated May 5, 1985: "Their Wehrmacht Was Better Than Our Army"

"Their Wehrmacht Was Better Than Our Army" by Max Hastings, The Washington Post, May 5, 1985

The above is an interesting item written by British journalist and military historian Max Hastings and published in The Washington Post on May 5, 1985, doubtless to mark the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.

Hastings contends in this item that the battle effectiveness of the Wehrmacht soldier was on average on a man-for-man basis markedly superior to that of his enemies' soldiers among the Western Allies and he cites the statstical analyses and assessments of Trevor N. Dupuy and Martin van Creveld in support of his contention.

This is doubtless likely to raise the nationalist hackles of some or perhaps many Americans, Canadians, and Britons who would stridently deny the man-for-man superiority of German soldiery over their own respective soldiers during World War II. Nationalist biases figure prominently in these sorts of discussions about the proficiency of one country's armed forces relative to another country's in wartime. But one would think that there must be some element of truth in the qualitative battlefield superiority of the German Wehrmacht's soldiers over their Western-Allied adversaries if disinterested, impartial, and suitably qualified parties have reached this conclusion.

Discuss this as I would like to read the views of those more knowledgeable on the matter than I, who is a dilettante in this field at best.

P.S.: Excuse the typing error and misspelling for The Washington Post in the heading of this post.