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Man for man though? I'd say US and Commenwealth troops were far better trained than the average Russian soldier and probably most heer units conscripted towards the end of the war.
Certainly if you take the German soldiers conscripted in 1945, that would be true. But that's not realistic. The status of German manpower in 1945 was a result of the war. You have to take an average from the entire war years, or compare the western Allies at the peak of their power to the Germans at the peak of theirs. Even American platoon officers were getting a mere 21 days training late in the war, so I doubt you can call the average American soldier well-trained. And there was very little chance of the Allies fighting the Germans man for man. Air power tipped the balance. Whenever air power wasn't really a factor (Market Garden and Wacht am Rhein) the Germans were the better troops.
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One of the main reasons the ardennes offensive failed was the US infantryman's determination to not give up or retreat, exactly the opposite of what Hitler had predicted.
Quite untrue. The American line broke in the Ardennes, and the troops retreated en masse. The only thing that stopped the Germans was lack of fuel, giving the 101st and other US reserve units the chance to use the lull to move up to Bastogne and other strongpoints. Even then, the Germans were unable to use their panzer groups to crush the defenders because they hadn't fuel.
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In a numerical and equipment equivalent battle would the fallschirmsjager have an advantage over the US airborne or the red devils? I'd say it'd be pretty equal if not an allied advantage, because as mentioned german standards slackened towards the end of the war
The airborne units of all the warring nations were more or less equal in quality, but that's due to the special training and unit cohesion these units have. Training & kit was far advanced to that of the average soldier, where national qualities are more a factor due to lesser training.
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The same could be said for Rangers or cammando's against the SS, not a lot in it.
Here you're comparing apples to oranges, James. You're comparing special forces to elite infantry. Would you compare the SAS to the Paras or Marines? Of course not. The German equivalent of the Rangers and Commandos would be the Brandenburgers or Skorzeny's mob. You would have to compare the Guards Brigade to the Waffen-SS, and I doubt the Grenadiers or the Coldstreams would have been a match for the Leibstandarte or Das Reich, which maintained standards right upto the end.
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My point was that you take a man from any part of the world and give him the same training, he will be the equal of the other.
I couldn't disagree more. As an Irishman yourself, you should know that certain nationalities (particularly in the past) are better at war than others. It's the reasons Pathans, Gurkhas, Germans, Nung Chinese, Australians and other peoples have the reputations they do. This is less apparent today, where education, information, healthcare, nutrition, and other factors are more or less standardized across the First World, but it wasn't so in the mid-20th Century.
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My Other Favorite myth is that ALL german soldiers were Nazi's
Oh, very far from the truth.
If you mean members of the Nazi party, no, they weren't. But most German servicemen (and most of the civil population) truly believed what Hitler and the Nazis stood for -- ie racial superiority, Leibensraum, hatred of the Jews, etc (heck, most of Europe and the USA didn't really like Jews very much either).
