I have been reading up on some WW2 events and battles, and often, there are speculations that the Germans did have a chance, but messed up in intelligence, or some unexpected events happened.
But I am wondering, judging purely by military strength, and ignoring all the other aspects that changed the tide of the war, did the German army actually even have the military potential to win the war as they planned? Or was it like they did stand a chance in a world war, and other things that contribute to a war weakened them to the point of collapse, not the lack of military strength? By military strength, I mean the number of soldiers, the degree of their training, the quality/standard of their weapon, number and amount of support available, etc.
I apologize in advance for any too simplistic view I have about this matter, but I just read too many texts pointing out how the German army underestimated their enemy or made a mistake, making it sound like they had a chance from the beginning, but eventually went bad for them due to other reasons outside of pure military strength.
No, and they never intended to fight a world war at all. Hitler meant to accomplish his vision of eastward expansion through military conflicts of limited duration and scope (when it could not be accomplished through bloodless annexation). His plan went off the rails almost immediately though with the French and British declarations of war following his invasion of Poland. This was an unintended development, as he had hoped the French and English would judge Poland too peripheral to their interests to justify the shedding of blood. So the invasion of France in 1940 was itself a departure from the programme which was then put back on track in 1941 with the invasion of the U.S.S.R., but another wrinkle followed with the entry of the U.S.A. into the war after Pearl Harbor. At that point the war had spun completely out of control and was pretty much hopeless in any case. Source: Hillgruber, "Germany and the World Wars"