The forces of Nazi Germany went toe-to-toe with a wide variety of Allied forces during
the Second World War. But what did the Germans think of the Allies?
The answer to this question is, of course, incredibly complicated and subjective, so in this
video, we're going to look at just a few examples that offer valuable insights into the German
perspective and then offer our opinion on which Allied forces the Germans hated fighting the most.
Unfortunately for the USSR, Hitler bought into a conspiracy theory that Jews were the principal
minds behind the Bolshevik party, so the Soviets were both Slavs and—according to Hitler—under the
leadership of Jews. After he began his invasion of the Soviet Union, Nazi propaganda called for their
extermination. Every single Slavic man, woman, and child had, in Hitler’s eyes, no right to live.
During this offensive, codenamed Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s forces committed
innumerable atrocities against captured Red Army soldiers. Many were put to death on the spot,
while millions ended up in POW, slave labour, concentration, and extermination camps,
where the conditions were obviously horrendous. At least 3.3 million Soviet POWs died in Nazi
camps during the war—that was 57% of all Soviet POWs. The majority died slowly from starvation.
While Hitler's invasion was originally a great success, he failed to stamp out the
Soviets in Stalingrad, and that horrific battle saw the German 6th Army eradicated
and the war on the Eastern Front take a dramatic reversal in favour of the Soviets.
If they hadn't demonstrated it already, the Slavs of the USSR weren't the subhumans Nazi
propaganda portrayed them to be. They could fight, and, by God, they could take a beating.
As German Field Marshal Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist put it, "From the very beginning, the
Russians proved themselves first-class warriors. Our successes in the first months of the war can
be explained by better training. Having gained combat experience, the Russians became first-class
soldiers, and they fought with exceptional perseverance and had astounding endurance."
As the Soviet counteroffensive advanced on Berlin,
German contempt for the Soviets shifted to fear. After all the horrors that German soldiers had
inflicted on the soldiers and civilians of the USSR, it was payback time. The Red Army exacted
revenge for every Soviet corpse and every burned village left behind by the Germans.
Many Germans fled to the Western Allies' front lines so they could
surrender to them instead of the Red Army.
While Hitler viewed the Soviets as Untermenschen, the British,
with their Anglo-Saxon blood, were Aryans in his mind. "England was a natural ally
for Germany." he said. "[The English are] our brothers[;] why fight our brothers?"
When Churchill refused to accept Germany's conquest of Europe, Hitler considered war
with Britain inevitable. After claiming that the British were Aryan, and of "good German stock,"
Hitler needed some explanation as to why the British wouldn't ally themselves with Germany.
He decided that the Jews must be behind it, of course, that they
must be running the show from behind the curtains. This justified his war.
As the war progressed, Hitler saw some of Britain's biggest defeats and still
considered peace with the British. Following the fall of Singapore, he said, On the battlefield,
some Germans perceived British commanders as overcautious, leaving British forces slow to
react. Some concluded that the British were quick to break off attacks in order to consolidate, too,
sometimes to their detriment. After capturing some British officers in the Siege of Tobruk,
German General Erwin Rommel apparently said, "Gentlemen,
you have fought like lions and been led by donkeys." "The British empire will be
doomed after the war unless the English come to their senses and sign an alliance with us."
The Brits were often perceived as hard-hitting and professional, too,
as corroborated in Wehrmacht General Siegfried Westphal's The German Army in the West:
"The hardest, toughest in attack, and most persistent in defence were the
British divisions. The uniformity of the British personnel was most
striking. One saw not so much extraordinary audacity but the absence of failures."
In the skies over Britain, the RAF more than proved their mettle,
and the Germans seemed to respect the Air Force's capacity to build planes.
According to Hermann Göring, Commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, "In 1940 I could at least fly
as far as Glasgow in most of my aircraft, but not now! It makes me furious when I see
the Mosquito.The British knock together a beautiful wooden aircraft that every piano
factory over there is building, and they give it a speed which they have now increased yet again.
There is nothing the British do not have. They have the geniuses and we have the nincompoops."
While he might not have held them in as high regard as the British, the French certainly
weren't what Hitler would have referred to as Untermenschen. As an artist himself, he
respected French culture and had always wanted to visit the French capital. Arriving in Paris after
the Battle of France, Hitler's architect Albert Speer said, "[Hitler] went into ecstasies about
[the Opéra Garnier's] beauty, his eyes glittering with an excitement that struck me as uncanny."
In the lead-up to the Battle of France, Hitler's generals believed his offensive was an insane
gamble. The French had a stalwart defence in the form of the Maginot Line and, overall,
a highly respected military history. German General Franz Halder wrote,
"None of the higher headquarters think that the offensive has any prospect of success."
Even during and after the Fall of France,
many German soldiers continued to hold the French in high regard.
In the Battle of Dunkirk, for instance, German Field Marshal Georg von Küchler said,
"Despite our crushing numerical and material superiority, the French counter-attack in
several places. I fail to understand how these soldiers, fighting sometimes at 1 against 20,
can find enough strength to make an assault: it's just stunning."
German General Walter von Reichenau also praised the French defence at Dunkirk,
simply stating, "The French troops have fought like lions!"
But praise for the French wasn't limited to their performance at Dunkirk.
Free French Forces put up an outstanding defence in the 1942 Battle of Bir Hakeim in Italian Libya,
so much so that they earned the respect of German General Friedrich von Mellenthin, who wrote,
"Some British officers have insinuated that French morale gave way but in the whole course
of the desert war, we never encountered a more heroic and well-sustained defence"
Hitler agreed with von Mellenthin. Speaking to a journalist after Bir Hakeim, he said,
"[This] is new evidence of the thesis I have always defended[:] [t]he French are,
after us, the best soldiers in Europe!"
While Hitler may have respected the French, the Americans were another story.
Nazi propaganda depicted Americans as a mongrel race, diluted with Jewish and negro blood to
produce a nation of gangsters and thugs. In his words, "I don't see much future for the
Americans. [I]t's a decayed country. And they have their racial problem
[M]y feelings against Americanism are of hatred and deep repugnance. [E]verything about the
behaviour of American society reveals that it's half Judaised, and the other half negrified."
As for how Americans were perceived on the battlefield, German opinions were mixed.
Some thought the Americans were "cheating" by making good use of
their industrial capacity and that that, not their skill, led them to victory in the war.
In About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior, author David Hackworth describes
an interaction he had with a German POW. When Hackworth asked the German why,
if the Wehrmacht produced such brilliant soldiers, the German was a POW and not him,
the German replied, "I was an 88-mm antitank battery commander. Every time [the Americans]
sent a tank we knocked it out. They kept sending tanks, and we kept knocking them out, until we
finally ran out of ammunition. The reason I'm here is that the Americans didn't run out of tanks."
Other Germans perceived American soldiers as lacking in discipline, and poorly dressed.
According to one Dr Otto Schranzkmuller, "The American army [is] fine a collection
of individual physical specimens. But from the standpoint of military discipline it is a mob,
pure and simple. The men appear slouchy[;] the officers do not
stand out from the men in appearance as they do in any European army."
Still, other Germans perceived American soldiers to be very honourable foes, as was the case
with General Karl von Einem's Chief of Staff, who—according to an American military report—said,
"I have found your American Army the most honorable of all our enemies. You have also
been the bravest and in fact the only ones who have attacked us seriously in this year’s battles.
I therefore honor you, and, now that the war is over, I stand ready to accept you as a friend."
From the anecdotes presented in this video, we might conclude that, of the USSR, Britain,
France, and the United States, Germans feared Soviet soldiers the most—especially
after the Red Army turned things around at Stalingrad and the Soviets were out
for revenge. And it seems they had the most respect for the British.
Remember, though, this is merely our opinion, and we're interested to know what you think.
So, which nation's warriors do you think the Germans feared
most? Do you have any evidence that corroborates or, better,
contradicts the examples we discussed today? Were there any other nations whose soldiers
struck fear in German hearts? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.