Again, the reason I brought up several of the points, including El Alamein, is because they one them decisively, inflicting far greater damage then they took. And, as for Sicily, you should have seen the makeup of the "Italian" and "Vichy French" armies of that point in the war. To be quite blunt, Hitler thought the Italians were going to revolt at the drop of a hat because the only thing they agreed with the Italian Moose at this point was that Dalmatria and Ethiopia were good to have, and not much else, so he had to be careful not to antagonize them more then was necessary.
The Vichy French forces he feared might be a hotbed of Free French support, as they might join up to get training and equipment while planning to go over at a later date.
And, in the paranoid mind of the Fuher, these were both unacceptable risks. So, he drained men previously meant for the German armies, men who had ALREADY BEEN TRAINED, and "persuaded" them to enter into either the Italian or Vichy French armies. There, their moral dropped because of the mindlessly stupid chauvinism that Il Dunce's Political officers showed, and saw them force "Italianisation" on what was by then the majority of their Armed Forces.
Yes, the so-called "equipment" in the Vichy French and Italian armies were crap, yes, and far inferior to German tech, but these troops were, the vast majority of the time, some of the ones who completed their training in full. If the German army really was that good, wouldn't these men overcome the disadvantages to achieve victory? Then why did both behave so poorly even after the introduction of the Germans?
And, to counter Darth Leed's "we have planes and tanks and automatic rifles too, the Amies will not Berlintinople." Argument, have you ever SEEN the production rates of the weapons you mention? The only four that you mention that was produced in truly large numbers, and only two that were build in numbers comparable to those of their opponents. One was the MG-42, and it was indeed good, but it had suffered losses and captures, and the later models of the Panzer IV were good, but were still for the most part inferior to comparable equipment that the Western Allies and Russians were fielding by the time they came out.
The rest were rather low priority or rarer then their WA comparisons. You mention that the STG44, MP40, and G43 were "more than a match" for their comparisons (the former two would be the Thompson , and the Latter would be the Garand.) Let me just say that to say this is debatable is to understate the matter. And plus, even IF the G43 WAS better then the Garand, you seem to fail to notice that the G43 had ONLY 400,000 BUILT! That is, say, about A FRACTION of Garand production. And it gets BETTER. Many G43s made were never used by the Axis, but fell to the Western Allies and were used by them!
As for the MP40 and STG44, the combined total of them were both outproduced by the Thompson.
As for the "Big Cats," have you EVER noticed exactly how small of a percentage they were of German armor at their time, nevermind throughout the war? They were hot commodities because there were so few. The reason there are so many "Tiger Aces" is because the supply-demand problem forced them to hand them out to ONLY the German tankers who were already aces. see Michael Wittman, who fought a good chunk of his career in a PZIV and a Stug.
And that is without delving into the technical problems and the fact that they simply could not stand up to air support.
And the Me 262's literally caused me to laugh. Seriously. German aircraft jet research was not in it's infancy, but it was not terribly far along, either. They built a grand total of 1,430+ of these things, and they were hardly used. They were good where they showed up, but that was relatively rare.
The simple fact remains that, in spite of the romantic view of German WWII "superweapons" most German pilots were still using the aged Bf-109 or, if they were lucky, the Fw-190, most German tankers were using some form of the PZIV, which was becoming more obsolete as time went on, and most German infantrymen had only the Kar 98k, which was slower, had a smaller magazine, and had less stopping power then the M1 and Lee-Enfield, which were the two main weapons the Western Allies had in the war at this period, with the minor allies being equipped with them and other British-American equipment.
And you also fail to mention that I am not bothering trying to exonerate the Soviets, as they did largely win the war through attrition, but I am mainly exonerating the poor image of the Western Allies.
And Also, to Janus, El Alamein did see cases were outnumbered Western Allied units fought against superior numbers with distinction. See the Northern part of Operation Supercharge, where the Aussies go up against the "Italian" (read German in Italian uniforms) Tireste and Bersa Divisions aided by elements of the German 15th Panzer and 90th Light. They were on the offensive in defensible terrain against a foe that outnumbered them, and though they failed to achieve complete victory, they maimed the Axis badly and forced Rommel to divert more than some of his men in the center North to prevent a breakthrough.
And even before El Alamein, you forget another battle Rommel coulden't ace "In spite of his Uberness." Have you ever, in all your years, heard of Bir Hakeim?
Bir Hakeim was a small fort in North Africa, and you can still find it and it's village today if you look closely enough. It detail a story that few know, and that many overlook.
In May of 1942, Rommel had sent the Allies packing again after Gazala, and was chasing them down, with dreams of pyramids in his sleep. however, to continue racing the withdrawing Allies, he had to overcome a little fort he found on the way called Bir Hakeim. It was manned by soldiers of the Free French, and they refused multiple calls to surrender, and so Rommel attacked them with the full might of the forward elements of the Afrika Korps.
The result was shocking. To the suprise of all, the French garrison survived the ferocious onslaught and fought back for 16 days, half a month's equivalent time, inflicting 3-1 losses on the "Uber Rommel", destroying 49 planes, 51 Tanks, and over 100 other vehicles before withdrawing intact in the face of overwhelming enemy forces.
This battle is said to have been a contributing factor in delaying Rommel until the Allies could get ready to hand him his "Waterloo" at a small, barely known railroad junction somewhere in Egypt.
Another factor you claim is that Husky is invalid because "only" 50k Germans were there. This is false, as, like I mentioned, most of the professional "Italian" army were in fact Germans, with most of the Italians in the Axis being diehard Blackshirt units raised ad hoc. So it is valid.
And, as for Colmar, look at the pre-battle OOB. The French First army was fighting the German Nineteenth, and, in spite of the assistence of the US 21st, they were still outnumbered by the German defenders. Combine the fact that this was on the OFFENSIVE, IN THE WINTER, WITH MOST OF THE FRENCH BEING NOOBS due to the unbelievably stupid, racist, and counterproductive policy of "whitening" the French front lines adopted by the French HQ, and it was no picnic.
Yes, it is true that more Allied forces eventually joined the assault, and that they eventually gained a numerical superiority, but that was AFTER the Allies had pretty much decided the outcome of the battle, and it was how bad the end result was going to be for the Axis (and it WAS pretty bad, with the 19th army pretty much evaporating.) So, in other words, the deciding part of it, when the outcome of the battle was decided, was when the Allies were outnumbered by the Germans.
And you cannot remember much about Aachen. Well, let me refresh your memory with this excerpt from Halten bis zum letzten Mann
Kampf um Aachen im Herbst 1944 (yes, I can translate some foreign texts on this old girl, but I will save you the trouble):