Assessment of the Armies

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British tabloid newspaper "The Sun" reports on the Israeli study with the words: “The best men didn't win!”

The Assessment of the Armies of the World Wars was a comprehensive and well-founded study of the IDF General Staff of the State of Israel from 1958 of the highest military historical value. The study of tactics and military theory concluded that German soldiers were by far the best in both WWI and WWII.[1]

History

They were incomparable: Successful assault by specialized assault troops (Sturmbataillone) on Hill 265 (Dead Man or Toter Mann) with stick grenades (Stielhandgranaten) and flamethrowers at the Battle of Verdun on 14 March 1916.
Fliegertruppe flying ace Manfred von Richthofen
Seasoned face of a German WWI veteran
General der Panzertruppe Rommel, commanding general of the Afrika Korps (de) and supreme commander of the Panzer-Armee „Afrika“ (de)
Tragedy of the Fallschirmjäger Brothers von Blücher
“Fallen soldier in a snowy landscape”, oil painting by the former master student under academy Professor Hans Adolf Bühler and later a master artist himself, Carolus Vocke (1899–1979) from 1942.
SS-Fallschirmjäger (wearing Splittertarn) on guard duty after the successful Operation "Panzerfaust" (de) in Budapest, 16 October 1944
German infantrymen in Normandy defending the French State (État français) against the Anglo-American invasion of northwest Europe
Battle of Berlin 1945

The study

The Israeli General Staff, which attracted worldwide attention with actions like Entebbe, based the training of Israeli troops on in-depth studies of the armies that participated in the First and Second World Wars. According to a report from Tel Aviv dated 10 May 1958, more than a thousand military specialists were interviewed in detail about the quality of the various armies.

"At the end of the 1950s, the Military History Department of the Israeli Army surveyed more than a thousand military specialists from around the world about which army they considered the best in the world, which soldiers were the bravest, the most combat-ready, the most disciplined, the most adaptable, the most proactive, and the most skilled."[2]

Participants

High-ranking officers from all nations, such as the late US General George C. Marshall, French General Marie-Pierre Kœnig, and British military writer Basil Henry Liddel Hart, participated in this survey. These military experts commented on the questions of which army they considered the best, which soldiers fought with the most discipline, and which possessed the greatest initiative. Based on these criteria, the Israelis compiled a ranking list. This list reveals which units and formations were considered the best based on their military performance in combat.

Result

The Israeli study ranked the Germans as the bravest soldiers of both World Wars. They were followed by the French for World War I and the Japanese for World War II. The German armed forces were ranked as the most disciplined in both wars, both individually and collectively.

Questionnaire

The questionnaire included, among other things, the following items:

  • Which army do you consider the best?
  • Which soldiers do you consider the bravest?
  • Which soldiers were the most adaptable and the most disciplined?
  • Which soldiers possessed the most initiative, and which the greatest personal skill and combat agility?
  • Which units or formations rank at the top in terms of military achievements and combat experience?

Each answer had to be explained in detail and substantiated by the respondent.

Elite troops

The following troops were highlighted as elite troops of World War II:

Score (results)

In WWI, the Austrian Army (k.u.k. Armee), Bulgarian Army (Central Powers) and the Italian Army received so few points that they were not included in the list. The overall score, which allowed a maximum of 100 points for both world wars, is as follows:

WWI

World War I
Imperial German Army 86 Points
French Army 65 Points
British Army 59 Points
Ottoman Army 52 Points
United States Army 49 Points
Imperial Russian Army 45 Points

WWII

World War II
German Wehrmacht[3] 93 Points
Imperial Japanese Army 86 Points
Soviet Red Army 83 Points
Finnish Army 79 Points
Polish Army 71 Points
British Army 62 Points
United States Army 55 Points
French Army 39 Points
Italian Army 24 Points

Quotes

George S. Patton
  • George Warrington (G. W.) Steevens, British journalist, author and war correspondent in the "Daily Mail" (1897):
"The German Army is the post perfectly adapted, perfectly running machine. Never can there have been a more signal triumph of organisation over complexity. The armies of other nations are not so completely organized. The German Army is the finest thing of its kind in the world; it is the finest thing in Germany of any kind. Briefly, the difference between the German and, for instance, the English armies is a simple one. The German Army is organised with a view to war, with the cold, hard, practical, business-like purpose of winning victories. And what should we ever do if 100,000 of this kind of army got loose in England?"
"I have great respect for the German soldiers. In fact, the Germans are the only decent people living in Europe."[4] [...] No. SS rune.png means no more in Germany than a democrat does in America—please don't quote me. I mean that, initially, the SS men were special sons of bitches, but as the war progressed, they ran out of sons of bitches, and then everyone was drafted into the SS. Some of the top SS men may be treated as criminals, but there is no reason to accuse someone who was put in an SS uniform.[5] [...] I would like it much better than being a sort of executioner to the best race in Europe."[6]
  • The French General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny told the Swiss diplomat Carl Jacob Burckhardt in 1946:
"What the German soldiers have achieved is exemplary."
  • The US military historian and author Colonel (Ret.) Trevor N. Dupuy, a graduate of the elite American military institution West Point, an artillery officer in World War II, later a professor at West Point:
"The Germans were better soldiers than we were." The work of the German General Staff must be considered one of the greatest achievements in history. The German General Staff represented the embodiment of what could be called "military genius." To characterize the German Wehrmacht soldiers, the US military scientist even uses the term "supersoldiers." In conclusion, he declares that "the German Wehrmacht was the outstanding armed forces in World War II, securing a top place in history due to its exceptional achievements."
On a man for man basis, the German ground soldier consistently inflicted casualties at about a 50% higher rate than they incurred from the opposing British and American troops UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. This was true when they were attacking and when they were defending, when they had a local numerical superiority and when, as was usually the case, they were outnumbered, when they had air superiority and when they did not, when they won and when they lost.[7]
Trevor N. Dupuy: A Genius For War – The German Army and General Staff, 1807–1945, Prentice Hall, 1977[8] "When the whole world gets together to stop you... you are the best."
Max Hastings: The Wehrmacht was the Better Army, in: "Strategic Studies", Volume 8, No. 4 (Summer 1985), pp. 92-98
Heinz Höhne, in: Die Waffen-SS. Eine Bilddokumentation by Herbert Walther, pp. 238 f.
Field marshal Wellington (left) and Generalfeldmarschall Fürst Blücher von Wahlstatt (de) congratulate each other after their victory over Napoleon on 18 June 1815 shortly after 9 p.m. south of the dairy near the inn "La Belle Alliance" (which fittingly is translated as "the beautiful alliance") a few miles south of Brussels. The War of the Seventh Coalition (Siebte Koalition) ended with the Battle of Waterloo.
"The German soldiers were inspired by a strong sense of duty and discipline and fought bravely and tenaciously everywhere. They maintained their high morale until the very end. The Germans are born soldiers. We fought against the best soldiers in the world!"[10]
  • Reginald Thomas Paget (1908–1990), British lawyer:
"Whether we encountered the Wehrmacht in Africa, Italy, or France, we always found in it a decent opponent. The German soldier displayed a great deal of restraint and discipline under conditions of unimaginable cruelty from his opponents. As for me, I am glad about that. If Europe is to be defendable at all, these decent soldiers must become our comrades."
  • The contemporary historian Heinz Höhne wrote:
"Never before have the soldiers of a unit carved themselves more powerfully into the pages of military history than the men of the Waffen-SS. Demyansk, Rzhev, Lake Ladoga, Normandy, Ardennes – each of these names signaled the military achievements of a unit that enjoyed a legendary reputation on both sides, a reputation that ranged between envious admiration and superstitious fear. Friend and foe agreed: the Waffen-SS fought with a warrior spirit that was unmatched or even surpassed by any other military unit. The Waffen-SS had become an unparalleled epitome of soldierly steadfastness and aggressiveness."[11]
  • Major General (Ret.) John Frederick Charles Fuller in his book "The Second World War 1939–1945":
"In their 1919 peace treaties, the victors of the First World War sowed the wind and, as surely as night follows day, reaped the storm in the Second World War. They learned nothing and forgot nothing, and filled with envy, fear, and greed, they repeated their evil deeds and inflicted injustices on the vanquished a second time. So they have again sown the wind and will again reap the storm. Evil breeds evil, and if you are blind like Samson when you pull down the pillars of your enemy's house, its ruins will crush you."
  • Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, Chief of the British Imperial General Staff from 25 December 1941 to 25 June 1946, and the highest-ranking British officer, wrote in his diary on 23 May 1940:
"The Germans are without question the most wonderful soldiers!"[12]
  • British Under-Secretary of State Sir Cadogan noted:
"The Germans are splendid fighters, and their General Staff consists of true masters of the art of war."[13]
"The fighting ability of German soldiers and officers, their professional training and combat education, reaches a high level in all branches of the military. The armored forces and the air force deserve special recognition. The German soldier knew his duty and was persistent, self-confident, and disciplined."
  • General Humberto Benedetti Miranda, Chief of the General Staff of the Peruvian Army in World War II:
"The achievements of the German Soldiers – patriotic, capable, self-sacrificing – command my admiration.”[14]
  • François Mitterand, French President:
“I have experienced the virtues and courage of the German people. Regarding the German soldiers who died in large numbers, I hardly care about their uniforms, or even the ideas that defined their spirit. They had courage. They marched into this storm, risking their lives. They accepted its loss for a wicked cause, but how they did it has nothing to do with the cause. They were people who loved their fatherland, and we must recognize that. [...] Let us bow before the Germans who fell in this battle. Their sons, like ours, bear witness that a new era is beginning.”
  • Michael Carver, British Field Marshal:
"There is no doubt that the Germans of all ranks understood their military craft better than the British. Their knowledge of the weapons at their disposal and their application was superior in almost all cases. They were tough, decisive, and well-disciplined soldiers. Their standards were only occasionally surpassed by some of the British troops."
  • Vernon A. Walters, US Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany, said in 1984:
"I take my hat off to the German soldiers. I fought against you at Anzio and in Normandy and can only say: Your soldiers were first-class! What you Germans need is more self-respect and patriotism! You have the right to do so. You are a great people who have given the world immeasurable cultural treasures. In the Wehrmacht, you had an army that the world admires."
  • Israeli military writer Martin van Creveld:
"The German army was an excellent fighting organization. In terms of morale, enthusiasm, troop cohesion, and resilience, it was probably unrivaled among the armies of the 20th century.”[15]
  • The English journalist and military historian Sir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings stated:
“It is an inescapable reality of the battle for Normandy was that whenever Allied troops met Germans on anything like equal terms, the Germans nearly always prevailed. [...] The Allies in Normandy faced the finest fighting army of the war, one of the greatest the world has ever seen.”[16]
When I wrote Overlord, I caused quite a lot of controversy by saying flatly that man-for-man, the German Army was the best in the war. This claim is generally accepted now, but when I first made it in 1984, it wasn't. British and American veterans took umbrage. When I was writing Armageddon, my assessment of the German Army was confirmed. The evidence is so clear: again and again small numbers of Germans managed to hold up for hours, days, weeks much larger numbers of Allied soldiers. But I also realized that there was an important corollary: if we wanted British and American soldiers to fight like the Waffen-SS, they would have needed to become people like the Waffen-SS. [...] In the main, these veterans never thought of themselves as warriors. They were bank clerks, laborers, train-drivers, and so on, thrust into uniform to masquerade as warriors for a time. They wanted to do their duty and do it right, but equally they wanted to live to come home and share the fruits of victory. All this is very admirable, but of course you do pay a price because it takes much longer to win a war against German fanatics.[17]
“I was surprised, to put it mildly, as I was going through the hallways of West Point, because there I saw photographs and art work of a large number of German Waffen-SS soldiers. Included was the Waffen-SS General Felix Steiner, commander of the famed SS-Division Wiking. When I expressed my surprise, I was informed, that the tactics of the Waffen-SS were being taught not only in West Point, but in many countries, including Russia and Israel. When I told them, I had been a member of the Waffen-SS, American officers questioned me eagerly about the SS and the Russians. I was treated as if I had been the hero of Guadalcanal."
"The victory went to the Allies, the military glory to the Germans."[18]
  • Pfc. Benjamin P. Walker of the 82nd Airborne Division, veteran of the Normandy invasion and the Battle of the Bulge, holder of the Silver Star, who would rather fight 100 Italians than just one seasoned "German front-line bastard" (according to his son, Jim Walker, 2 September 2016):
"The German’s were the toughest sons-of-bitches ever known on a battlefield. I would rather fight 100 Italians rather than one seasoned German grunt."[19]
  • Dr. Alexander Gauland, AfD (September 2017):
"If the French are rightly proud of their Kaiser and the British of Nelson and Churchill, we have the right to be proud of the achievements of German soldiers in two world wars."

Their Wehrmacht Was Better Than Our Army (Max Hastings)

PROPAGANDA IS AN inescapable ingredient of modern conflict. In the Second World War, it was considered essential for the struggle to defeat the German army that the peoples of the Grand Alliance should be convinced of the qualitative superiority of their fighting men to those of the enemy. One dogface or one tommy was worth three wooden-headed krauts. Hitler's robots could never match the imagination and initiative of Allied soldiers on the battlefield. [...] Most men of the Allied armies were openly contemptuous of the fantasies about themselves peddled by correspondents, with such notable exceptions as Bill Mauldin and Ernie Pyle. This reaction makes it more remarkable that for a generation after the moment of victory in 1945, so many myths were perpetuated not only by popular historians, but within the military institutions of the West. In 1950, the great British military writer Capt. Basil Liddell Hart wrote a paper in which he reflected upon the vast Allied superiority of forces in northwest Europe in 1944, and the reluctance of postwar military critics in Britain and America to draw appropriate conclusions about Allied performance: There has been too much self-congratulation and too little objective investigation, he said. Liddell Hart is not alone in challenging the conventional wisdom about the war. Critics have questioned some of the theories of the controversial American military analysts Col. Trevor Dupuy and Martin Van Creveld, who have subjected the respective performance of the American and German armies on the battlefield to detailed statistical study. But none has yet faulted Dupuy's conclusion that on almost every battlefield of the war the German showed best [...] The inescapable truth is that Hitler's Wehrmacht was the outstanding fighting force of World War II, one of the greatest in history. For many years after 1945, this seemed painful to concede publicly, partly for nationalistic reasons, partly also because the Nazi legions were fighting for one of the most obnoxious regimes of all time. A spirit of military narcissism, nourished by such films as "The Longest Day," "A Bridge Too Far" and "The Battle of the Bulge," has perpetuated mythical images of the Allied and German armies. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of battlefield memoirs published in Britain and America concern, not surprisingly, Allied battlefield experience. They dwell upon fears, difficulties and triumphs of Allied soldiers as seen from Allied foxholes. We learned a great deal less -- indeed, nothing at all -- about how the German soldier maintained an effective defense in Europe for 11 months under constant and unchallenged air attack, bombarded daily by devastating artillery concentrations, facing heavy odds, sustained by a fraction of the supplies and firepower available to the Allied soldier.
Now, our vision of World War II is changing. The historical and global perspective that was absent for so many years is at last being attained. Russell Weigley's magnificent and monumental study of the American army in northwest Europe confronts quite frankly the failure of Eisenhower's forces to generate the combat power to smash through numerically much inferior German forces until these had been worn down by 11 months of attrition on the western front, compounding the huge drain on the Germans of four years of warfare on the eastern front fighting the Soviets. Germany's titanic struggle with the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1944, which killed more than 2 million German soldiers -- arguably, the best 2 million -- provided the western Allies with an extraordinary luxury for nations at war: time to train, to prepare, to plan to meet the enemy on the battlefield under conditions of their choosing, at a moment carefully selected by the warlords of America and Britain. From the battle of Normandy to the very end in Germany, the British army's performance was profoundly influenced by inability to withstand heavy casualties. Montgomery was repeatedly warned by his superiors in London about the scarcity of manpower. Within days of the landings in France, British battalions were being cannibalized to provide replacements. In 1945, whole divisions were broken up for the same reason. Since the war, far too much critical attention has been focused upon Allied generalship in northwest Europe, and far too little upon unit fighting performance. Allied senior leadership was, on the whole, not inferior to that of the Germans, hampered by the dead hand of Hitler. Montgomery may have been cautious -- not least for the reason mentioned above -- but he was certainly not incompetent. The sluggish performance of his British formations in Normandy and after was principally attributable to war-weariness and reluctance to accept further heavy loss when final victory was within sight. Yet for the Americans, manpower was not a problem. From beginning to end of the campaign, their willingness to accept casualties to gain an objective was acknowledged, respected and envied by their British allies. "On the whole, the Americans were willing to go at it more toughly than we were," declares Field-Marshal Lord Carver, in 1944-45 an armored brigade commander under Montgomery. How was it, then, that the U.S. Army found it enormously difficult, indeed often impossible, to defeat Germans encountered on anything like even terms?
[...] Interviewing war veterans, in marked contrast to Europeans who generally acknowledge respect for their officers, American private soldiers lavish regard upon good NCOs, but seldom reveal much for their unit commanders. Many American privates in northwest Europe cannot today recall the name of their battalion commander. I have seldom met any European veteran of whom this would be true. [...] Although infantry made up only 6 percent of the entire service -- an alarmingly low proportion -- they were suffering more than 80 percent of American casualties in Europe. Although 54.3 percent of the German army was composed of fighting soldiers, this figure fell to 38 percent in the U.S. Army. About 45 percent of the Wehrmacht was committed to combat divisions, against 21 percent for the U.S. Army. The Americans possessed a far higher proportion of officers to men: yet many more of those officers were employed in rear areas rather than with fighting formations. [...] It was probably fortunate for the future of Western civilization, but greatly increased Eisenhower's difficulties, that few Allied soldier saw themselves for a moment as other than civilians temporarily in uniform, while their German counterparts possessed an uncanny ability to transform themselves from butchers and bank clerks into natural tacticians. One of the more absurd propaganda cliches of the war was the image of the Nazi soldier as an inflexible squarehead. In reality, the German soldier almost invariably showed far greater flexibility on the battlefield than his Allied counterpart. "The Germans were willing to act -- always," said the British Major- General Brian Wyldbore-Smith. They seldom failed to seize an opportunity offered by Allied error. They were masters of rapid counterattack after losing ground. They would hold a position to the last, then disengage masterfully. Not every German soldier was a superman, not every formation of equal high quality. After the Battle of the Bulge, for all intents and purposes the Wehrmacht's last gasp in the west, the western Allies never again faced German units of the highest caliber. But throughout 1944, amid the monumental errors of Germany's high command, at regimental level the German soldier achieved miracles.[20]

Germany's greatest field generals (Professor Citino)

Robert M. Citino, Professor of European History at the University of North Texas and author of numerous books, including "The German Way of War" and "Death of the Wehrmacht," wrote in 2012 in the highly respected journal "The Quarterly Journal of Military History" about the ten greatest German generals and listed them with detailed explanations. Professor Citino recognizes the "genius of war" par excellence in Prussian-German military history. Such lists have been considered highly suspect in postwar Germany since "Hitler's War" (referring to the Second World War unleashed against Germany).

"The performance of a [German] general in the German-Soviet War is now judged almost exclusively by how many prisoners of war and civilians in his area of ​​command were starved to death or killed; military merit and performance are no longer considered." — Johannes Hürter, military historian[21]

The list

According to the American historian, the ten greatest field commanders were, in ascending order:

See also

WWII

External links

Videos

References

  1. ↑ Die Deutsche Wehrmacht im Urteil ausländischer Fachleute ("The German Wehrmacht in the judgment of foreign experts"), Das Adelinde-Gespräch, 18 May 2017
  2. ↑ Georg Meinecke: Bundeswehr ohne Tradition und Vorbild 2017
  3. ↑ Including foreign volunteers and conscripts
  4. ↑ Im Gedenken an General Patton, leuchtturmnetz.com, 24 April 2019
  5. ↑ At a press conference in Regensburg on 8 May 1945, immediately after the Wehrmacht's surrender, Patton was asked whether he would treat captured SS troops differently than other German prisoners of war.
  6. ↑ Original from his letter to his wife Beatrice dated 29 September 1945, in "The Patton Papers" (1996) by Martin Blumenson, Volume 2, p. 786: „The noise against me is only the means by which the Jews and Communists are attempting and with good success to implement a further dismemberment of Germany. I think that if I resigned as I threatened to do yesterday, it would simply discredit me to no purpose ... This august lady [Fifteenth Army] ... has the job of reviewing the strategy and tactics of the war to see how the former conformed to the unit plans and how the tactics changed. Were it not for the fact that it will be, so far as I am concerned, a kick up stairs, I would like it much better than being a sort of executioner to the best race in Europe. Later when people wake up to what is going on here, I can admit why I took the job. Am I weak and a coward? Am I putting my posthumous reputation above my present honor? God how I wish I knew ... P.S. No one gives a damn how well Bavaria is run. All they are interested in now is how well it is ruined.“
  7. ↑ Six Armies in Normandy
  8. ↑ Military review: Students of modern military history will agree that one of the most influential elements of the modern command system in most if not all countries has been the legacy of the German General Staff System, developed under the auspices of The Reformers (Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Clausewitz, Grolman and Boyen) following the collapse of the Prussian military at the Battles of Jena and Auerstadt in 1807. Dupuy’s work traces the development, institutionalization and influence of this system on the German military and, by extension, State up to the end of 1945. This is a brilliant analysis of the staff system. Revolutionary in scope and visionary in implementation; it served to transform the Prussian and German States from a third rate power to the standard by which other militaries were measured. While the narrative is clear and logical, there are three elements which stand out as being key to the success and ultimate failure of the German military. The first two and the foundation of the system (and that which gave it such resiliency and capacity) was the Founders success at “Institutionalizing Military Excellence”. This entailed ensuring the development and maintenance of a military as free as possible from the ‘vagaries of change’ resultant from human fallibility. In effect ensuring military excellence regardless of the influence of changing leadership. Dupuy provides an insightful and concise discourse on how the Germans developed a process of ensuring an Army of consistent and reliable ‘Organizational Genius’ while concurrently providing the structure within which leaders of ‘Operational Genius’ were developed. Additionally, the military leadership was to remain aloof and disconnected to the political machinations of the State. The third aspect that they endeavored to implement, but were ultimately unsuccessful, was ensuring that the military and its leadership were seen and understood to be tools of and accountable to the people of Prussia and ultimately, Germany. Where this failed was in the relationship between the Kaiser and the Reichstag (or Parliament). The Kaiser insisted upon an Army that was loyal to and controlled by Him. Thus it was that the leadership and the Army swore fealty to the Kaiser and not to Germany (as represented by the people). The book goes a long way towards providing an explanation as to why the German Army remained an effective, focused fighting force right up until the last days of the Second World War. It also, by extension, explains why the military did not intervene with the rise of Hitler and also swore an oath to him. Dupuy’s analysis shows the strength of the system that the Germans had created and how it translated into such an effective military force. Additionally, the dangers of providing such an effective tool to an individual as opposed to an accountable entity is also made abundantly clear. This is a great book, logically laid out and comprehensive in its scope. It serves as an outstanding review of the strengths and weaknesses of the German Staff system.
  9. ↑ "The destruction caused in Cassino to roads and movement by bombing was so terrific that the employment of tanks or any other fighting vehicles has been seriously hampered.The tenacity of these German paratroops is quite remarkable, considering they were subjected to the whole Mediterranean Air Force plus the better part of 800 guns under greatest concentration of firepower which has ever been put down and lasting for six hours. I doubt if there are any other troops in the world who could have stood up to it and then gone on fighting with the ferocity they have. I am meeting Freyberg and the Army Commanders tomorrow to discuss the situation.", in: Closing the Ring – The Second World War, Volume 5 by Winston S. Churchill, p. 509
  10. ↑ Norman Polmar / Thomas B. AllenWorld: War II – The Encyclopedia of the War Years, 1941–1945, p. 417
  11. ↑ Heinz Höhne, in: Die Waffen-SS. Eine Bilddokumentation by Herbert Walther, p. 238
  12. ↑ Generalmajor (Ret.) Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof in a keynote speech at the 50th anniversary of the Order of Knight's Cross Recipients on 16 October 2004 in Hameln
  13. ↑ Nicholas Tarling: Britain, Southeast Asia and the Onset of the Pacific War, p. 197
  14. ↑ Allan R. Millett / Williamson Murray: Military Effectiveness, Volume 3, Cambridge University Press (2010), p. 328
  15. ↑ Fighting Power: German and U.S. Army Performance, 1939–1945, 1982 (also in German, 1st Edition 1989, 2nd Edition 1992)
  16. ↑ Overlord – D-Day and the Battle for Normandy, New York Times, 18 May 1984
  17. ↑ The Moral Complexity of War – A conversation with Max Hastings, 2005
  18. ↑ BOOKS OF THE TIMES, The New York Times, 18 May 1984
  19. ↑ Is it true that the Germans are considered to have been the best soldiers of World War II?
  20. ↑ Max Hastings: Their Wehrmacht Was Better Than Our Army, The Washington Post, 5 May 1985
  21. ↑ in: Hitlers Heerführer – Die deutschen Oberbefehlshaber im Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion 1941/42, p. 351
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