Recently I got into a back and forth on FB with my friend Ty Bomba (Decision Games, Counterfact, Command Magazine) who is designing a game to simulate a modern conflict between NATO and Russia.
I noticed he gave the German armored division (think about that THE German armored division) a really strong combat strength. I pointed out to Ty that I thought he was severely over-estimating German capabilities. His reply, not unreasonable I should ad was, 'C'mon, Will, we're talking about the Germans.'
Well, I recently read this:
However, the army is forced to do so with a record low number of soldiers, and outdated and malfunctioning equipment.My, how far Germany has fallen.
"We are short of almost everything," said the SPD politician. "The army is at the turning point. It cannot take more cuts."
Germany currently has 177,000 soldiers, down from some 600,000 at the end of the Cold War. In 2011, Berlin decided to save money by providing only 70 percent of required equipment for some branches of the military, such as armored divisions.
Look, I'm a Jew, so the idea of a military prostrate Fatherland has a certain appeal to me. Still, we're talking about the Krauts here. As I once explained to my class, Germans are the best at everything. If the Germans decided they wanted to sell shower flipflops, within 5 years they'd be making the best shower flipflops in the world.
I mean, even after WWII the Germans had the best army in Europe, both East and West Germany. They just couldn't help themselves. They're Germans. That's what they do.
No longer, I guess.
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