It is difficult to explain what I am saying.
I'll do my best.
Nazis Germany nearly conquered the world in WW2 and everyone agrees it was extremely powerful. However, I look back to WW1 and am more impressed with Imperial Germany than Nazi Germany.
They fought a war on two fronts at the very start rather than halfway, and did very well against Russia and France and fought the UK, France, Russia, Belgium, and other nations all at once and despite being heavily outnumbered and never taking Paris, managed to deal them several crushing defeats and drag their enemies down and nearly shattered the French Army and the French morale during the war was overall low, same with Russian morale. Germany was arguably the only competent military power that had good enough generals on it's side to win great victories. It provided a great deal of officers and troops to Austria-Hungary, the Turks, and maybe even the Serbs. Germany fought what some considered the three strongest nations at once for 4 years and kept them at bay and came close to winning several times during the war, including during the Ludendorff Offensive, Battle of the Marne, Verdun, etc.
The majority of brilliant victories was thanks to German troops and/or staff, and the Turks and Austro-Hungarians relied heavily on Germany to help them in their wars. While the allies certainly had incompetent leaders the central powers were often driven back more than allied powers except when german generals or troops helped them. WW1 Germany overall fought against greater odds for it's day, and was able to win a war that would normally be suicide for any other country of that period even if it was UK or France in it's place they would have fared more poorly than Germany did with the same allies and same enemies.
Now Nazi Germany has some impressive feats-Beating France, Yugoslavia, the Low Countries, and Greece all within a month of when they started their invasion of each country. But They had better odds due to having more allies like Hungary and Romania as well as Bulgaria, Italy, and Imperial Japan. While Italy in both world wars were incompetent, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria in WW2 were actually passable allies, better in track record than Austria, Turkey, and Bulgaria.
And if you had put Imperial Germany in the same WW2 style situation they likely would have succeeded. WW2 Germany's generals often came from the old Imperial Germany but they had learned new tactics. The WW1 German High Command would have won against the USSR due to a better strategy than Hitler, and WW1 Germany had overall the better strategists, and these strategists were passed on to WW2 Germany when WW2 started.
Now let us look at the tech differences. Nazi and Imperial Germany were both extremely industrialized and technologically advanced for their days, but, for the time, I'd say Imperial Germany was slightly more advanced for it's day in terms of war technology.
Thoughts/agree/disagree?
