So this question is so ridiculously broad, but I'm going to try to break it down to two different parts, pre-Stalingrad, and post-Stalingrad. I'm also going to focus on conscripted infantry training, as tank training and aircraft is going to vary widely enough that I can't sufficiently cover it, and officer training is a whole different matter that involves going back 300 years in German history. I unfortunately don't know enough specifics about US training procedures to say how it especially similar/different, but I can explain the German training, and say how their troops matched up. Hopefully, someone can come along after me and provide a proper insight into the US training.

Pre-Stalingrad Wehrmacht:

Wehrmacht training essentially began for all German boys from, at the latest, the age of 14 with their required involvement in the Hitler Youth. Boys were taught to shoot, march, went on camping trips, and did basic combat maneuvers. While the purpose of the Hitler Youth was not so much to make future soldiers as much as it was to make future loyal Nazis, it would be remiss to say that any German boy conscripted didn't have some basic military training before training camp even began. Also because of the Hitler Youth's high emphasis on physicality, the Wehrmacht had a generally more impressive finesse than other armies at the time. If you look at [this US military training manual] (http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/wwIIspec/number03.pdf) on German training (see section VII) you can see that US observers were incredibly impressed. Actually, that source itself can give some incredible insight into the German soldier quality, I'd highly recommend taking a look at it to gain a deeper understanding. As for the actual training itself, it lasted anywhere fro 8 to 16 weeks, depending on the year. (1938-1939: 16 weeks; 1940-1942: 8 Weeks; 1943: 16 weeks; 1944: 12-14 weeks;) It was very focused on being as realistic as possible, and everything short of using live ammunition was done to make it seem like actual combat. There wasn't a considerable amount of training on the very basics such as marching or other general exercises to rapidly get the men in shape, as they were already in rather good shape because of the Hitler Youth. Because of this, a majority of their time at camp was spent on advanced combat procedures and just being remarkably all encompassing. There was also a large emphasis on planning, so that nothing was ever improvised, even in the heat of battle. I notice you also asked about marksmanship as well. As you'll notice in the above source, it notes "German training has tended to put emphasis on volume of fire rather than on accuracy". This however was true for every country involved in the war, with the exception of the Soviet Union, which was the only involved country that trained sniper units. This is not to say that German marksmanship was poor, but rather it was probably no better or worse than American marksmanship. Lastly, all the soldiers of every rank were given military literature to read, and to study tactics, something unique to Germany at the time as far as I'm aware.

So early in the war: Likely very superior to the U.S. troops, better trained, more fit, and with little propensity to question orders due to their involvement in military structures since their youth.

Post Stalingrad:

So the above process still was occurring post Stalingrad, however Germany was starting to run out of men. Despite the Soviets pushing against them hard, they had learned from WWI that putting out half trained troops only resulted in more casualties than taking longer to put out fully trained troops. But the caliber of people they were beginning to conscript was quickly declining. In the German army, unlike the US who tended to keep their best in support roles training the troops or directing them from afar, the best and the brightest officers were often on the front lines of the battle. The effectiveness has proven to be in Germany's favor all throughout the war so far, with their troops consistently having good leaders, however for lack of a better way to put it, Stalingrad wasn't a place for tactics, it was a meat grinder. So Germany had lost an incredible amount of incredibly talented men by 1942, with the people now in training being less of fighting age, less medically fit, and less devoted to the Nazi cause. So while the Nazi infantry training didn't rapidly decline as the war waned, their soldiers were still worsening. This eventually culminates in the implementation of the Volkssturm on October 18th, 1944, where men between the ages of 16 and 60 were conscripted to essentially give the Russians more targets to shoot at in hopes the actual soldiers (who were still being trained, but with a severely lacking candidate pool to pull from at this point) would be able to live long enough to do some damage. They had no standardized military training, so their performances were consistently poor with high casualties. (technically the Volkssturm was under the Nazi party and not the army, but it's still worthy of note)

Random side note not directly related to effectiveness: German units were modeled much like the British "Pals battalions" were in WWI, with groups of men from the same area training and fighting together, and even getting replacements from the same region when necessary. Because of this, sometimes battles with high casualties would result in certain villages losing 10 of their sons at the same time. US units however tended to be a massive hodge podge of the entire nation, with men from New York and Arizona serving in the same units.

In conclusion, Germany started the war with one of the best, if not the best, troops in the world, and ended the war throwing untrained civilians at Russians. To answer your question, I feel that the evidence presented demonstrates that the Wehrmacht absolutely had the superior military and training at the start of the war, and the training itself continued to be of high quality throughout the war, Germany simply ran out of quality men to train, allowing the US military to be superior by war's end.

Sources:

http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/wwIIspec/number03.pdf - Used for some specifics on training and for getting a US impression of German training

A Hitler Youth in Poland - Jost Hermand - For insight into the Hitler Youth

Nazi Germany - Jane Caplan - General Nazi history

Also again I appeal to anyone who has a more thorough insight on the US training to fill in the other half of this.

Follow up question, were Wehrmacht soldiers allowed to pick their own job/duty, or was it assigned to them?

Assignment of Jobs

When a US soldier got to the local recruiting station, they would be physically examined and fill out a questionnaire that was several pages long. Included in this questionnaire was information about the man's job in civilian life. Using this, the Army attempted to assign each man a job based upon that. When volunteering still existed (before December 1942) a volunteer could pick his job; over half chose the Army Air Forces, and only 5 percent chose infantry or armor.

Keep in mind that military life and duties are different than those as a civilian; the Army managed to keep most, but not all, volunteers that didn't request a job in a similar occupation. For draftees, the Secretary of the Army used a formula to assign draftees their jobs; out of 1,000 men, it might say that 20 were to be surgical technicians, 45.5 were to be riflemen, and 177.5 were to be truck drivers. The proportion of different kinds of jobs varied in different types of Army organizations; combat engineer battalions had a high percentage of "civilian" oriented jobs, while infantry regiments did not.

As paraphrased from Procurement and Training of Ground Combat Troops, radio repairmen weren't taught to repair radios; they were taught to repair the radios specified per the Table of Organization used in the infantry regiment. When compared to the German Army, the US Army did not attempt to aggressively sort men into positions based upon physical traits like endurance and coordination; there were only two general categories of service; "available" or "rejected." Commanders then assigned men to positions as they saw fit.

Quality

Initially, the quality of men that the Army required for their organization was quite high. In order to not be rejected for service for most of the war (1940-1943/44) a man needed to, among other things;

• Stand at least between five, and six and one half, feet tall

• Have at least twelve of their natural teeth

• Not be flat-footed, have any kind of sexually transmitted disease, or hernia

• Be functionally literate

Initially, fathers were deferred (class III-A; with dependents, not engaged in work necessary to national defense), but beginning on October 1, 1943, fathers began to be drafted; 13,000 in October, doubling again in November 1943; and doubling again in December 1943.

In 1944 as it was realized that the infantry compared a far higher percentage of total Army casualties; (>80%) the scramble for more replacements started. The Army Specialized Training Program (for particularly bright officers) that struggled to produce enough men was discontinued in February 1944 and their personnel sent out to units. The Army also reduced its standards for induction. Men with sexually transmitted diseases were accepted and treated with penicillin. A man could now have no teeth whatsoever, be blind in one eye, missing one or both external ears, or a thumb or three fingers (including a trigger finger) on one hand only. The mental standards were also reduced as well. Additional replacement training centers were set up, to process men unassigned for shipment to units overseas. The training these men received was generally as good as those assigned to divisions from the start, but towards the end of the war the centers began to sag under the workload of processing replacements, and training became shoddier, although nowhere near as bad as the situation Germany was facing at the same time.

Training

For many men, joining or being drafted into the army and traveling to their assigned training location was the first time they had been on a train, or even outside of their county. National Guard divisions in theory consisted of men from several states; many men went through training with others they had known since childhood. Regular Army, Organized Reserves, and Army of the United States (draftee) divisions consisted of men from all over the country. Germany is only about the size of Montana, and operated under the wehrkreis system so as /u/Shino336 mentioned, meeting another man from, say, Hesse or Thuringia in training must not have been that much of a shock compared to if you were a New Yorker who had to deal with men from Oregon and Oklahoma!

The length of the basic training period varied throughout the war, but it generally lasted for 14 to 17 weeks depending upon the time and the position the soldier occupied. In November 1942, the training time for infantry divisions was reduced from 44 to 38 weeks. Officers undertook their training before the division was activated, in order to be able to teach the enlisted men that they would (hopefully) go into combat with in a year to a year and a half.

Infantry division training from November 1942, 38 week schedule;

During 1943, it was realized that replacement training centers and new divisions alone could not keep up with combat losses, it was decided to strip men from 22 divisions still in the United States and send them as replacements;

Every division leaving the United States later than September 1944 contributed, with only the 14th Armored and 10th Mountain Divisions being spared. 91,747 men were eventually withdrawn, the average loss among all divisions being 4,170 enlisted men. The 17 infantry divisions lost, on average, 3,933 infantry privates each. Keep in mind the allotted infantry strength for a whole division in the summer of 1944 was only 6,152 infantry privates.

Source:

United States Army in World War II (The Army Ground Forces); The Procurement and Training of Ground Combat Troops, by Robert R. Palmer, Bell I. Wiley, and William R. Keast (Historical Section, Army Ground Forces)

This question is very broad and difficult to answer. Do you mean at the beginning of the war, when the German Army was enthusiastic and strong and the American Army was small and inexperienced, or at the end of the war when the Germans were giving children rifles and the Americans had some of the best trained troops in the world? Do you mean the average riflemen, or tank crews? Radio operators or officers? What counts as superior?

Another follow up: how did that training change over the course of the war.

Hiya, everyone!

We've so far had to remove almost every single response in this thread because it was either a) a poor top-level response which failed to meet our standards, b) a rapidly-digressing discussion of the nature of OP's question (which, while not without merit, ultimately drifted too far off-topic) or c) asking about where all the comments went. /r/AskHistorians is a actively moderated. Users whose responses fail to meet our standards may find their membership to the Subreddit... revoked.

Please keep in mind this is /r/AskHistorians, not /r/IPlayedWarThunder. We expect answers on this Subreddit to be In-depth and comprehensive and to be provided by those with expert level knowledge, a detailed understanding of the subject matter and with the ability to draw upon and engage with relevant literature. Neither your tenured professorship at the Axis History Forums nor your 450 hours in Heroes and Generals qualifies you to spitball answers about standards of training in World War Two.

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Thank you!

^^^I ^^^mean, ^^^obviously ^^^the ^^^Tiger ^^^is ^^^better, ^^^right? ^^^It's ^^^a ^^^Tier ^^^7 ^^^tank ^^^in ^^^World ^^^of ^^^Tanks ^^^and ^^^the ^^^Sherman ^^^is ^^^only ^^^Tier ^^^5!