A few Italian units did come off slightly better in the judgments of their allies. The Italian paratrooper division “Folgore” may have been poorly equipped, “but at least they were men.”658 And there was one situation in which Italian fighters did perform up to scratch: “Under German leadership they (the Italian soldiers) are excellent,” a Sergeant Funke reported about the battles in Tunisia in April 1943. “At ENFIDAVILLE in the retreat they received the order: ‘Young Fascists will die where they stand.’ Thirty Italians held out there for three days.”659 Some POWs also mentioned poor Italian equipment and supplies as mitigating factors. But of the eighty-four German generals interned at Trent Park, only one brought this up. The ratios were similar at other British facilities and in American POW camps.
No doubt, the negative view of Italians as soldiers, which established itself as early as 1941 and which was also on ample display in official files and in field posts and soldiers’ diaries, exaggerated the situation. But it was not entirely untrue. The stereotype was based on experiences on the battlefield, where Italian units often crassly failed to live up to German standards, or British ones for that matter.
Military virtues were also the criteria German soldiers used to evaluate their other allies. Slovak soldiers were second only to members of the Wehrmacht; Romanians were “very good, notably better than they were in the last war”660 and “not at all bad soldiers.”661 Spanish mercenaries also came in for praise: “The Spanish Legion is very good—the only thing is that they’re a frightful mixture, but from the military point of view they’re good soldiers.”662 Hungarians, however, were deemed “a worthless lot” since they were perceived to have simply run away from the Russians.663
German soldiers used the same reference frame to judge their enemies. Wehrmacht soldiers had the greatest respect for the British, who were seen as “tough and brave opponents” who fought fairly.664 In Dunkirk and Greece, British troops had fought fantastically. They were “excellent airmen”665 and “tough guys”… “like us.”666 “Put a British soldier in a German uniform and you won’t notice the difference,” one soldier for the Wehrmacht’s Afrika Korps thought.667 Yet higher-ranking officers didn’t always join in the praise: “If the English get a few hits, they just clear off, and they don’t go to it—like our people do, and when they do, they’re very clumsy.”668 The commander of the Wehrmacht’s 1st Paratroop Division even opined about Allies in Italy: “In their whole attitude toward the war, the masses of the enemy won’t be able to absorb heavy losses in the long term.”669
American troops were less admired than the British because their victories were allegedly only the result of their material advantages, which Wehrmacht soldiers considered unfair. As soldiers, U.S. troops were “cowardly and petty”;670 they hadn’t “any idea what real hard warfare means”;671 “they cannot endure privations”;672 and they were “inferior to [Germans] in close combat.”673 “The American swine,” scoffed one POW, “take to their heels if they’re really attacked.”674 Again in conjunction with fighting in Italy, one general concluded: “Generally speaking, the Americans, with a few exceptions, are considered poorer fighters because they lack driving force and have no desire.”675
By contrast, German soldiers had enormous respect for their Russian adversaries, whose capacity for sacrifice and brutality was a source of fear. A sample of opinion: “Those people have a terrific toughness of spirit and body”;676 “They fight to the very last, the Russians, my God, they can fight”;677 “You wouldn’t believe how fanatically the devils fought.”678 Nonetheless, precisely because they seemed to display such contempt for death, Russians often struck Germans as soulless, oxlike, fighting beasts. Crüwell related: “Near UMAN, in that first battle of encirclement in the UKRAINE, my tanks literally had to crush the people to death because they wouldn’t give themselves up. Just imagine that.” 679 Still, Crüwell had high regard for Red Army soldiers because they fought so brutally. Higher-ranking German officers still thought there was no way a soldier who battled tirelessly and fiercely for his country could be a bad soldier. That was in keeping with the militaristic ethos of the Wehrmacht. A Major Blunt from the Luftwaffe related how 125 Russian bombers attacked a German bridgehead over the Berezina River near Bobryusk in 1941. German fighter pilots shot down 115 of the planes. But for Blunt, the Russian attack was neither senseless nor insane. On the contrary, the incident only proved what “grand fliers” the Russians were.680
