How did German soldiers differ from soldiers of other countries during WWII?


 


When people mention WW2, they normally think of the tanks and planes. I've spend a lot of my life reading about it and the real difference for the Germans early on was a concept called Auftragstaktik. In English we refer to this as "Mission Command."

Back then the majority of the armies, such as the British and the Americans, were very strict. If a soldier was ordered to march to a certain house he would go. If that house was on fire, he would stop and wait for his captain's order as to what to do next. This was slow and to the letter, the approach was.


The Germans did the opposite. Their officers would give a goal, like "take that bridge," but they didn't tell the men necessarily how to do it. They believed in sergeants and even corporals to utilize their own judgment. If a road was blocked, a German soldier wouldn't even wait for a radio call, instead he simply found another road right away.


A well known example is the attack on Fort Eben-Emael in 1940. The glider's main officer, Witzig, crashed his glider and wasn't even present for the beginning of the battle. In other armies the men would have awaited orders. Instead, Sergeant Helmut Wenzel came forward, led the attack and took the fort. That is independent thinking and it made the Germans very dangerous early in the war.

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