Round 3-Modern Bracket

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Was the attacks on Poland, Norway, Denmark, Benelux and Russia admirable? Highly effective they might have been but not very fitting for noble and gentle men, but very fitting for unmoral unscroupulus bastards of which there were many among the Prussian officercorp.

That's almost amusing. Using the words you used on Panzer earlier:

If you know your history...

...you would notice that these attacks were ordered by a Hitler and Nazi Party who generally shunned and looked down upon the Prussian officers. The officers in question simply did their duty in carrying these attacks out. Granted, there were exceptions among officers, such as Keitel, but among higher ranks especially, these were relatively rare. I would point you to Pierre Galante's book Operation Valkyrie: The German General's Plot Against Hitler (available in French or English), which will inform you that plots and anti-Hitler groups were formed as a cause of these invasions among the officer corps. This clearly states that these groups were being formed as early as 1938 and 1940, when the prologue to the war and the war itself were going very well for Germany.

Sorry, but I have to bring this up:

No other state has put the entire machinery and resources of an industrialized modern nation in the work of extermination. Calculated and planned and executed with the highest of effeciency.

Stalin and Mao both gave it a shot. Of course, the direct aim wasn't mass murder, but they both knew perfectly well it was going to happen, so there's another two states for you.

Or show me his mobile einsatztruppen operating behind the front

Stalin had those too; they were called commissars.

History is one long story of noble and gentle men attacking other countries, no matter how small or large. The question is not who was the most honourable general, but who was the greatest in his profession: that of defeating his enemy as quickly and as easily as possible, and in that, these German generals excelled.

Prussian militarism may well be criticised from our comfy modern point of view, but it was through its devotion to the armed forces that Prussia managed to unite Germany and prevent it from continuing to be Europe's battleground as it had been for the past two centuries.

That is probably the most sensible thing I've read all day. I don't see why we're arguing when we all have officers in our history who can be classified as "good" or "bad", depending on your viewpoint.