What single weapon was the most crucial to Germany?

German weapons, vehicles and equipment 1919-1945.

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trebizond
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Post by trebizond »

Yes, I reckon two Aussie cents is about a pen'orth. :)

And yes, I forgot to mention that Stalin then proceeded to kill off the brightest stars of the Red Army.

Hah, that crazy Josef and his crazy antics.
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Willhelm Gruber II
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Post by Willhelm Gruber II »

well you could then well say that early in "Operation Barborossa" the Germans best weapons were Stalin and his paranoia (thats of course if you want to get technical)lol
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von_noobie
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Post by von_noobie »

OK..........I guess Germany didnt have one weapon that was important to Germany, Becouse all of them were. the U-boats kept Britain short of supplies thus she was able to do few operations against germany.
The K-98 was th main weapon in the german army but the Lee-enfield ws also the main weapon in the british army , whats your point? as was the M1 garand in the american army.
The Pz IV was built in decent numbers and was fielded good but without sloped armour it would never live upto what was needed.
the Panther G and King Tiger were GREAT tanks but were underpowered, Good guns and GREAT armour but still to few were built.
The Flak 88 was a good At gun but was an easy target if not dug-in,
But the ONE most important weapon Germany had at the start was her soilders and Generals, Not to mention Hitler didnt get involved.
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Flak88
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Post by Flak88 »

All the weapons mentioned would win the battle, but only the U-boat could win the War... period.


'... the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril'. - Winston Churchill

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwtwo/ ... c_01.shtml
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Willhelm Gruber II
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Post by Willhelm Gruber II »

one such reason being because the UK is an island that needed shipping to sustain itself, but defeating England does not mean they would win the war, U-Boats would do little for very large countries such as the US and Australia, espicially Australia where most of our coast is surrounded by shallow reefs :[]
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Post by phylo_roadking »

Yes, but what did the U-Boat DO? Its sunk shipping, ended lives - but what did it win or maybe more importantly what did it ever stop happening, as its a denial weapon....Nothing. Yes, Churchill feared it, and so did the British, but it was countered in SO many ways - detection equipment, better maritime patrol aricraft, better convoy escorts, better convy escort TACTICS, better intelligence etc. It was an expensive weapon to build, one depth charge or bomb could blot out do many valuable and skilled lives, and couldn't change tactics readily in reaction to the enemy. It was a submarine - had two methods of attack ONLY, on the surface or underwater. It had two ways of operating - individually or in a wolfpack. It needed resupply, and when in dock was entirely vulnerable unless VERY expensive and obvious countermeasures were taken that said "bomb me". IF tactics and countermeasures had remained exactly as they were in 1939, they might have been a war-winning weapon - but they didnt, and the U-Boats own technology didnt change fast enough.

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Willhelm Gruber II
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Post by Willhelm Gruber II »

yea what he said lol :D
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trebizond
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Post by trebizond »

Hear hear. The Walther boats might have made things interesting, but then you're into the hypothetical (but still mighty interesting) 'What If' scenarios that German science throws up at the end of the war.

Considering the Germans lost, you can't talk about a war winning weapon (say that quickly 20 times), but you can talk about the weapons that got them as far as they got.

If that is the actual question, then I'm going to throw my hat in the ring with inter-unit and inter-arm communication systems. Those Stukas were great, but without the fellas on the ground being able to tell them what to do, they would just have been loud noisy things.

As far as I know, the Allies didn't really surpass this ability until 1944, with the 'Cab Rank' Typhoon system.
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Post by von_noobie »

The only way the u-Boats could have defeated England ws if hitler had had around 250 of them after France was defeated,

When the u-boats first showed up they were in small numbers so by the time the numbers bult up the British had developed there tactics.
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Flak88
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Post by Flak88 »

Simply, I would ask all of you a question... what is a weapon the Germans had that the Allies could not replicate?

Answer: nothing... the Allies could match German weaponry in quality given time... jet fighters? the Allies had them at the end of the war... 88s cannon? the Brits had the discarding sabot round... tanks? the Pershings and Centurions are on their way...and so on and so forth... so in a way, the Germans could not have the lead in a weapon category for long.


I ask another question... what is a weapon that the Krauts wouldn't mind the Allies having even if the latter could match it in quality & quantity?

Supposed that both the Allies and Germany each had a thousand submarines, with somewhat similiar capabilities. It doesn't need a Doenitz to guess how the hell the Allies are going to employ those submarines against Germany.

But a thousand U-boats for Germany? The consequences for the Allies will be, to put it mildly, catastrophic. Put 200 in the North Atlantic convoy route, another 200 in the mid Atlantic and 200 more in the south, 100 for coastal defence and you have 300 in reserve... (loan it to the Japs perharps?) and Britain as the staging area will be thrown back to the Dark Ages... no Tunisia landings, no Anzio, no strategic bombings and certainly no D-Day... and Germany only had to fight a one-front war...

My point?

The Germans had an unfair advantage in geography, it fights a predominently land campaign, and is virtually self-sufficient (save for the war material rubber) in land-locked Europe. No amount of enemy subs are going to threaten the Nazis, while a similar quantity of friendly u-boats will devastate the enemy economy. And remembering that WW2 is fought as a war of attrition, Germany could gladly afford the loss of even a thousand U-Boats in exchange for the fall of Britain.


So anyone knew the answer to my second question?
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Post by phylo_roadking »

Er..... as said above we're talking WAS as in the historical sense, not "what might have been"s

My ha'p'worth thrown in now..... Germany's use of the medium bomber as a tactical weapon. Given that they never successfully created anything approaching a heavy or strategic bomber, the Luftwaffe's use and development of several standard types was quite amazing, particularly the Ju88 - tactical bomber, ground attack aircraft, torpedo bomber, mine layer, night fighter, divebomber - in one variant or another in use from the first day of the war til at least very near the last. It acted as an area bomber in the Battle of Britain, and as flying artillery in every blitzkrieg offensive. The British really feared it, both on land but particulalry at sea when under its range. no weapon type except the really quite limited-use flak88 prompted such regular and unrelenting dislike and loathing.

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trebizond
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Post by trebizond »

I think the problem with the U-Boat arguments is as follows;

Say that the Kriegsmarine had 1000 U-Boats of various capabilities to call upon, and destroyed all hope of convoy traffic across the Atlantic.

The result would have been negligible upon the course of the war, except that Russia would destroy Germany alone, instead of a via a second front. As German advances were turned in '42 and '43, the war was essentially over. This was without the help of the Allies, except for some second-rate armour and deuce-and-a-halfs.

A Heer just shy of 13 million isn't going to beat a 35 million strong army equipped with T-34s.

And that's assuming that Hughes didn't go through with it properly and construct a fleet of HK-1s.
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Flak88
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Post by Flak88 »

phylo_roadking wrote: no weapon type except the really quite limited-use flak88 prompted such regular and unrelenting dislike and loathing.

phylo
ok point noted...
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Willhelm Gruber II
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Post by Willhelm Gruber II »

Flak88 wrote:Simply, I would ask all of you a question... what is a weapon the Germans had that the Allies could not replicate?

Answer: nothing... the Allies could match German weaponry in quality given time
What about the V1 and V2 rockets, the RAF could shoot down the occasional V1 but not the V2, no tactics could be employed against this weapon and during the war there were no such counter measures
didnt see any Allied ones till after the war
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Flak88
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Post by Flak88 »

Willhelm Gruber II wrote:
What about the V1 and V2 rockets, the RAF could shoot down the occasional V1 but not the V2, no tactics could be employed against this weapon and during the war there were no such counter measures
didnt see any Allied ones till after the war
But are the V rockets effective weapons of war? They do nothing other than recreate a mini blitz on London, albeit inaccurately, and expended diminishing German resources, which could have been put to much better use.

And will the Allies want a rocket with no effective guidance system?
True, Nasa took von Braun's design and put a man in space but in 1945, will the Allies expend that amount of resources to do a job that could otherwise be done with strategic bombardment?

The V rockets are spectacular weapons, way ahead of their times, but its value as a useful weapon leaves very much in doubt... more of a Hitler's revenge tool in a time when his armed forces are unable to respond to the Allies.
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