Well, if you look at Kasserine Pass, for instance, you see a US army that is poorly commanded and can't respond fast enough to the German attack. That may purely be bad leadership, but I see it as at least partly lack of independent thinking.

Don't read too much into my answer. I'm not an expert, and I hadn't even thought about the question until my first reply on this thread. It's an off-the-cuff impression, not a well-thought-out position.

As a german history student, I think this is the pretty commonly held view. I think the best German example was Ludendorff. Early in the war, as a fairly junior officer, he bluffed the citadel at Liege into surrendering all by his lonesome. It set him up for the eastern command with Hindenberg and then later as the proto-Hitlerian dictator of Germany at the end of World War I.

That said - the word on initiative and discipline is right. Prussian military tradition gave German officers very wide latitude to make their own decisions, until it interfered with the political state or their superiors commands.

That said, even great officers can't win against overwhelming odds and opponents with dramatic material superiority.