The German Army

The German Army was the best fighting force in the second World War. While this little snippet is very supportive of my point in many ways, the most important point is at the end:

"An often-overlooked characteristic of the late-war German Army was the liberal use of machine-guns with high rates of fire and medium- and heavy-caliber mortars. Although German battalions were often smaller than those of their opponents by 1944, they were still capable, in terms of organic weapons, of bringing substantially higher weights of fire to bear than those of their opponents. This discrepancy in relative weights of fire made the dislodgement of defending German units difficult, and often resulted in Western Allied and Soviet tendencies to 'even the odds' through the use of artillery and air support."

The most important point to note here is that the German Army was too difficult for other armies to defeat - because the land forces of the Western Allied and Soviet countries were inferior to the German army, they could not attack entrenched German troops and had to attack with their air forces instead, fighting instead of the Heer the comparatively weak Luftwaffe.

Military Bravery

Take a gander at this little piece of marvelous evidence! The German Army was awarded 65% of all of the total Iron Cross awards given out to all branches of the Wehrmacht, indicating that it was, in fact, better than the other two branches. Take that, other two branches! Looks like the Heer beats you again! You can only have about 20% each!

Importance Pwnage

In view of a certain Nate Charnas' cowardly surrender, I too will be shifting my argument to match and easily overcome him in a new field of argument: that of the Heer's obvious superiority over the Kriegsmarine, as well as over the Luftwaffe, in regards to their contributions to the overall German war effort. This, too, may be an easily won victory for the land army. Just as in an all-out battle between the three the Heer has a simple victory - the air force cannot defend its bases, and the kriegsmarine starves to death in the oceans - so too the Heer is obviously the most important: without it, the Germans cannot conquer territory and they are unable to hold anything, whereas losing the air force results in a minor strategic disadvantage and losing the Kriegsmarine does nothing but allow the US to invade more easily. While the US can surely invade far more easily without the Kriegsmarine, the lack of the Heer means the Germans could not even have defeated the French.
A better argument therefore is which was comparatively better. Was the Heer notably better than other countries' armies? Was the Luftwaffe notably better than other countries' air forces? Was the Kriegsmarine notably better than other countries' sea armies? Which was the most superior? This is an argument that can be sustained, one in which I do not have the extreme and obvious advantage, and one in which the Heer will, of course, still come out completely ahead.

The 88 mm FLAK

"The true German trump card was the feared and respected 88mm FLAK. Its high velocity gun made it an anti-tank threat which could defeat almost any tank armor in the world. Its accuracy also made it a deadly anti-aircraft weapon. The same weapon could serve in both modes without any modifications to the carriage or mount. The 88mm FLAK was 25 feet long overall, had a rate of fire of 8 rounds per minute, a crew of 6, and had a maximum effective altitude of 14,680 meters and a horizontal range of 10,600 meters. A development of the 88mm FLAK weapon was the 105mm FLAK and was mostly used as an AA weapon against Allied aircraft. I had a crew 5 and a rate of fire of 3 rounds per minute. Its maximum ceiling was 12,800 meters."

I am not sure this actually needs any explanation, but basically, this means that the German army's "true trump card" is, in fact, an anti-air weapon. If we just installed some of these all over the place, the pitiful Luftwaffe would have a hard time fighting back against the Heer.

Finally, a Navy Post

The thing about the Heer defeating the Kriegsmarine is that it's something of a silly idea, since the Heer is on the land and the Kriegsmarine is floating like noobs on the water, noobishly. However, I have a solution! Allow me to quote Feldgrau on German long-range capabilities:

"The Germans also had an assortment of rail guns, huge artillery pieces mounted on railroad cars, and self-propelled mortars that crawled about on huge tracked carriages. One such mortar or "Mörser" was the 600mm "Karl" battery. It weighed 132 tons, was 35 feet long, and moved at 3 mph by a 580hp diesel engine. It had a ground crew of 109 men and it could fire a 4,850 pound mortar round that could penetrate 98 inches of concrete or 17-3/4" of armor. The rail guns were even larger yet, the 800mm Kanone "DORA" had a range of 29 miles, a crew of 250 men for assembly and firing and 4,120 men in all. It could fire one 10,500 pound shell that measured 25 feet long plus the length of the case at a rate of 2 rounds per hour. The 280mm KS(E) rail gun was 95 feet long, weighed 479,600 pounds. and could fire a projectile 38 miles. It used a crew of 10 for firing."

Weapons like this can be mounted on the land, but they don't float on the water. And if the Heer can keep the Kriegsmarine out at sea forever, eventually all the Kriegsmarine soldiers will become fishermen instead of soldiers and the German navy will become just a German collection of fishermen with extremely well-armed fishing boats.

Anti-Aircraft Tanks

The Heer was not without its share of weapons with which to defeat the Luftwaffe. While I am still working on the concept of what exactly a land vs sea battle consists of, the Luftwaffe can clearly be fought by the glorious land army. The Heer did not only fight the enemy air force with stones and hope; there were also the Ostwind, Flakpanzer, Mobelwagen, and Wirbelwind. All four of these were highly effective anti-air weapons, developed later in the war, once, I quote wikipedia, "In 1943, due to the waning ability of the Luftwaffe to combat enemy ground-attack aircraft, ground-based anti-aircraft weaponry was becoming increasingly important to the Wehrmacht." Let us note the phrase "waning ability of the Luftwaffe to combat enemy ground-attack aircraft." This statement says something: that the Luftwaffe is secondary, and that the Heer was called in whenever it proved too weak to accomplish actual tasks.

Existentialism

One of the things that I find so interesting about existentialism is that it is both much darker and much more clear than many of the philosophies that had come before it. While books with names like "The Phenomenology of Spirit" may have some kind of academic value, the sheer degree to which it is masked by techniques such as making up words like "phenomenology" degrades much of that value.
Existentialism, on the other hand, strikes me as vaguely sensible - they seem to know what they're talking about, and the absurd, the other, and the idea that you create your own sense of morality are all fairly well-defined. I like existentialism, if in part because it appeals to my sense of the emptiness of conventional, universal morality.