Why Btonze Age?

[abaris]

I think the notion that the German army was led by brilliant strategists at the beginning of the war is taking the point much too far.   The officers of the German army arguably never had any significant opportunity to exercise real Independent strategic judgement between the first day of the war and the last.  Hitler was always the first and last word in German strategy.

You seem to forget that the Germans had reason to evaluate their strategies. They lost WWI and some of them, even before Hitler came to power, went to great lengths analysing why they lost. So they came up with new strategies. And the one that stuck was close cooperation between ground and air forces. They also, although they had tanks of their own, saw the importance of using them as independent units instead of just infantery support.

There was the so called black Reichswehr. Officers not officialy in service, to circumvent the terms of the Versailles treaty, but still very active in planning for the future. It's a little know fact, that under Hans von Seekt, the Reichwehr trained a future airforce in Soviet Russia. In close colaboration with them.

Fact is, they were tactically superior to other armies at the start of the war. The allies adapted pretty quickly, within two years. But at first, they were indeed on top of their game.