In the Ruhr, however, the US Army lived the dream: establishing full-spectrum dominance to win decisive victory at minimal cost. World War II was messy and unpredictable, and plans rarely worked out the way the generals conceived them. The battle of the Ruhr Pocket has never won the attention it deserves, but it was something rare in military history. In 1945, all these advantages came together in the greatest American victory of World War II. By 1945, the US Army may have been the most effective ground force in history. Finally, US commanders had waves of fighters and fighter-bombers like the P-47 Thunderbolt or P-51 Mustang that made it nearly impossible for the Germans to move in daylight. The amount of artillery the Americans rained down on their enemies never ceased to shock the Germans, whose own artillery had to be more selective about what they obliterated. If an American unit found a seam in enemy defenses, it could slash through like lightning, and once in contact, could hurl more brute firepower than any force in history. Bristling with modern equipment and vehicles-tanks, halftracks, self-propelled artillery-the US Army was both mobile and lethal. was "the best-paid and best-fed soldier" of all time. Their material support-weapons, fuel, ammunition, food-was lavish.
Wehrmacht victory march professional#
By 1945, however, the Americans were as seasoned and professional as anyone in the field. The US Army joined the war late and stumbled in its debuts in North Africa and Italy. Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, German supreme commander in the west, once complained that leading German armies this late in the war was like "playing a Beethoven sonata on an old, rickety, out of tune piano." German weapons-Tiger tanks and ME-262 jet aircraft-might be quite advanced, but the men at the front rarely saw enough of them to make a difference. By 1945, losses were soaring, replacements weren't keeping up, and much of the German army consisted of Volkssturm (People's Assault) units, old men and boys from the Reich with sketchy training and equipment. The German Wehrmacht dominated the fighting early, but had gone downhill ever since. Think of World War II as a tale of two armies.
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