Quote Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat View Post
I'd rather say that Germany could pick off a handful of smaller opponents one by one, and the very first time it took on somebody roughly its own size it suffered devastating defeat in a period measured not in years, but months. Some achievement for a Reich as large as France and Britain combined.

The scale of the staggeringly poor performance becomes even more clear when one considers that Germany was supported by half of Europe, whereas the Soviet Union was a second world newly industrialising agragrian country run by a madman who had killed his officer corps, had decimated its restless population with mass starvation the decade before, and had let himself be taken by complete surprise. Far from military overachievement, Nazi Germany deserves the title of 'worst military performance in modern history'.
While I'm not too found of the "Germany was sooo badass" mindset, I don't think saying they outrightly sucked is correct. In 1939, France was widely regarded as having the most impressive military in the western world, and USSR wasn't far behind (if only thanks to the available manpower). On that respect alone, Germany did well: France and her 'mighty' (but outdated) army was trampled in a few months, and the SU would have suffered an even more crushing defeat if it weren't for the sheer size of the country.