(Very minor inexpert points on military history, I agree with the overall point there can be various asymmetries, not all of which are good—although, in fairness, I don’t think Scott had intended to make this generalisation.)
1) I think you’re right the German army was considered one of the most effective fighting forces on a ‘man for man’ basis (I recall pretty contemporaneous criticism from allied commanders on facing them in combat, and I think the consensus of military historians is they tended to outfight American, British, and Russian forces until the latest stages of WW2).
2) But it’s not clear how much the Germany owed this performance to fascism:
Other fascist states (i.e. Italy) had much less effective fighting forces.
I understand a lot of the accounts to explain how German army performed so well sound very unstereotypically facist—delegating initiative to junior officers/NCOs rather than unquestioning obedience to authority (IIRC some historical comment was the American army was more stiflingly authoritarian than the German one for most of the war), better ‘human resource’ management of soldiers, combined arms, etc. etc. This might be owed more to Prussian heritage than Hitler’s rise to power.
3) Per others, it is unclear ‘punching above one’s weight’ for saying something is ‘better at violence’. Even if the US had worse infantry, they leveraged their industrial base to give their forces massive material advantages. If the metric for being better at violence is winning in violent contests, the fact the German’s were better at one aspect of this seems to matter little if they lost overall.
(Very minor inexpert points on military history, I agree with the overall point there can be various asymmetries, not all of which are good—although, in fairness, I don’t think Scott had intended to make this generalisation.)
1) I think you’re right the German army was considered one of the most effective fighting forces on a ‘man for man’ basis (I recall pretty contemporaneous criticism from allied commanders on facing them in combat, and I think the consensus of military historians is they tended to outfight American, British, and Russian forces until the latest stages of WW2).
2) But it’s not clear how much the Germany owed this performance to fascism:
Other fascist states (i.e. Italy) had much less effective fighting forces.
I understand a lot of the accounts to explain how German army performed so well sound very unstereotypically facist—delegating initiative to junior officers/NCOs rather than unquestioning obedience to authority (IIRC some historical comment was the American army was more stiflingly authoritarian than the German one for most of the war), better ‘human resource’ management of soldiers, combined arms, etc. etc. This might be owed more to Prussian heritage than Hitler’s rise to power.
3) Per others, it is unclear ‘punching above one’s weight’ for saying something is ‘better at violence’. Even if the US had worse infantry, they leveraged their industrial base to give their forces massive material advantages. If the metric for being better at violence is winning in violent contests, the fact the German’s were better at one aspect of this seems to matter little if they lost overall.