To get back on topic...
Sure, every army have there good and bad formations, the Germans consciously weakening some to enhance their 'elite' divisions, ie compare the static divisions guarding the Normandy coast to the panzer divisions which were to arrive later.
Yet for some reason,I've always accepted as 'given' that the Germans possessed finest army of ww2, definately in 1941, perhaps still by 1944. One of the books in my rapidly growing WW2 library is Overlord by Max Hastings (1984), notably a British historian. He quotes a detailed statistical study conducted by American Colonel Trevor Dupuy.
"On a man for man basis, the German ground soldier constantly inflicted casualties at about a 50% higher rate than they incurred from the opposing British and American troops UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES [emphasis in original]. This is true when they were attacking and when they were defending, when they had a local 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."
Make of this what you will.
PasssoP
[ 05-06-2001: Message edited by: PasssoP27 ]