Were the Germans or Japanese better soldiers in World War 2?

Answer 1

first good answer:

The fighting style of Germans and Japanese were very different. German soldiers were very well trained and very disciplined. Their fighting style was very similar to the American army. The Germans would surrender if they felt they were defeated. The Germans had the best tanks, best machine guns and solid training in military discipline and tactics. They had very good leaders and tacticians among their higher ranking officers. Their Achilles heel was Hitler.

Hitler had to be contacted on any major decisions involving sending reinforcements, surrenders, withdrawals, and attacks and many times he overruled his senior officers requests. A couple good examples were during the Battle of Britain when the Germans were doing strategic bombing of Great Britain concentrating of military and industrial targets preparing for a land invasion. The British did a bombing raid of their own on Berlin. Hitler was so upset he started bombing major British cities. This took the pressure off the Royal Air Force bases and they responding by defeating the Luftwaffe and Hitler never got his invasion of Britain.

The second example was Hitler was convinced the allies would start their invasion of Western Europe at Calais France which was the shortest route across the English Channel. Hitler had gone to bed late on June 5th and had taken a sleeping pill with orders not to wake him. When invasion began at Normandy his general there was convinced this was the main invasion and wanted reserve units released to join the battle at Normandy. When the generals called, Hitlers staff refused to wake him. once Hitler was awake he refused to release the reserve units because he was convinced the invasion would still be at Calais. Once Hitler released the reverse units to counter attack on Normandy it was too late. The Allies had established solid beach heads on all five Beaches and had started to move inland.

The Japanese fought differently.. The Japanese people believed their emperor was a god and and would fight to the death and entrance into Heaven for their Emperor. Like the Americans the Japanese Army and Navy had good leaders and were trusted and given the power to plan battles strategically by the Emperor. Many Japanese officers were raised to be warriors. The average Japanese soldier felt it was a great honor to die for their Emperor. The senior officers took advantage of this attitude and weren't afraid to send waves of soldiers to their death while inflicting huge casualties on their enemies.

The Americans and British navies and ground troops were better trained and had superior weapons for the most part compared to the Japanese. The Allies like they did in Europe were also able to break the Japanese codes. The Japanese had invaded the Aleutian Islands in Alaska as an attempt to draw the American fleet toward Alaska so the Japanese could invade Midway Island and then invade Hawaii. The Americans cracked the Japanese code and found out the Japanese were going to attack Midway and were waiting for them defeating the Japanese and taking out four aircraft carriers.

Once the Japanese were on the defensive trying to stop the American invasions island by island on their way to the Japanese mainland. The Japanese garrisons of these islands would basically fight to the death before the battle would end. This was to maximize causalities on the American side because the Japanese didn't think the Americans had the heart to keep losing men. this happened all through the Pacific and was the basic reason the Americans dropped atomic Bombs on Japan. The Americans had predicted it would take approximately three years to capture all the Japanese home islands and over 4 million Allied causalities.

The German grunt soldiers were not Nazis and were not willing to die for Hitler and fought basically a conventional war with conventional tactics controlled by Hitler. He already had the best tanks of the war, well trained soldiers, and very good senior officers he did not trust, but instead of investing in what he had and trusting in his officers, Hitler tried to use German engineering and manufacturing to create secret super weapons like jet fighters that would win the war and rockets that could hit Britain and was building rockets to hit the U.S.A. The Japanese used their grunt soldiers and their belief in the Emperor to send millions of them to their death using, for the most part, inferior weapons.

Second response:

I would add the following comments:

The Japanese soldiers & leaders were very courageous. However (to a man) they were very brutal towards enemy civilians & POWs. This meant that their enemies tended to fight very hard when they understood the risks of surrender. The Japanese Army units were usually not well led or commanded. Many of their combat techniques & tactics were outdated compared to American & European armies. They relied on their troops courage more than good combat tactics at the battalion level and above. They also tended to downplay the importance of having excellent weapons & equipment in comparison to their enemies. They were at their weakest when on the offensive against adequately trained troops, and when logistics were key considerations. The Japanese were very poor in logistics & support of troops in combat areas over long periods of time. They had not learned the logistical lessons required of sustained combat operations. They were at their strongest when defending from favorable terrain without supply or while encircled against a primarily infantry threat. They did not attack or defend well in terrain that favored armored or mobile units. Another unusual discovery during the war was that captured Japanese were much more likely to talk to their captors about the military situation or their situation. European & American troops had been trained to resist giving out military information for as long as possible. The Japanese had not been given this training because they were told not to surrender. Most Japanese soldiers captured had been wounded or incapacitated and unable to kill themselves or resist further. Once healed of their wounds, they were a wealth of information.