I'm currently working through an article by Omer Bartov of Brown University and author of Hitler's Army and found this wounderful quote on the German Army, the issue of discipline and resistance from within the army:

"Discipline alone, however, rarely suffices to explain conformity; on the contrary, when administered in disproportionate doses, and especially in conscript armies, it may well cause rather than prevent mutiny. (...) [In the German Army] there were other important aspects to the transformation of martial law which both encouraged compliance with combat discipline and enhanced troops' sense of common destiny, purpose, and guilt. As policy combined with unforseen circumstances, the Wehrmacht created a mechanism that allowed the increasingly brutalized soldiers to vent their anger and frustration at targets other than their superiors and then tied them to each other with terror of the enemy's vengeance in case of defeat

I rather liked this quote and thought it rather relevant to the issues we frequently discuss on here, especially since the whole "the best and most disciplined fighting force in the world" thing comes up often and needs to be dispelled resp. discussed within the political context of Germany at the time.

For anyone interested, the source is:

Omer Bartov, The Conduct of War: Soldiers and the Barbarization of Warfare, in: The Journal of Modern European History, Vol. 46, Supplement: Resistance agains the Third Reich (Dec. 1992), pp. S32-S45