How were German armored divisions so much more elite than their US counterparts

Excuse me while I research this on Google so I can come back and look like I know what I'm talking about.

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they portray the German tiger tank as nearly impenetrable by US tanks

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it was, at least for the tanks earlier in the war without the higher velocity guns. germany's equipment was top notch. they weren't fricking around.

inb4 Hitler should have won the war but had a lot banker money against him and went into Russia like an idiot.

I would explain but Darth will be here any minute, I'm sure.

It was true. The American tanks were light on armor and were gas engines while German tanks ran on diesel. The M1 Abrams coming online helped tremendously.

It took quite awhile to get to that point. They were very adept at tactics as well. Rommel was a genius.

They nearly pulled it off though.
They didn't expect Britain and the U.S. to be an enemy.

Just guessing but maybe because they had been seriously preparing for war for something like a decade while we were trying our best to stay away from war.

Heck, I think Roosevelt had to go through all kinds of maneuvers to get any kind of bills through to build up the military. (Saw something about that on one of the AHCTV shows the other day).

ETA: I think when we established air superiority it negated a lot of that advantage though.

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Just guessing but maybe because they had been seriously preparing for war for something like a decade while we were trying our best to stay away from war.

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This doesn't really touch on technological superiority.

Well, the division being "elite" and the equipment being superior are 2 different things.

German units had been fighting since 1939 (in some rare cases, 1938) - a handful of our guys saw action in N. Africa and Italy in 1943, but most of our guys had, at most, 8 to 10 months of combat by April 1945.

As far as equipment, the Tiger was getting to be obsolete by the end of the war, it was heavy, difficult to maintain, less maneuverable than the Shermans to the West and the T-34s to the East, and those tanks were getting incremental improvements in armor and firepower all the time.

Ultimately, it is a common Hollywood trope - German tanks superior to American and Russian tanks - in particular the mythical Tiger. It was a solid, heavy tank with a big gun, but the real prize among the German tanks was the Panther - in a twist, copying ideas from their Eastern Front foes, German tank designers incorporated the best features of their own tanks and those features they admired in the T-34, plus their lessons learned to that point when designing the Panther (Panzer V - whereas the Tiger was the Panzer VI).

They still had light, medium and heavy tanks as distinct categories back then. The Panther was the medium serving alongside the Tiger as the heavy.

Anyway, the Panther is often considered the "best tank in the world" until 1955. The German problem was one of logistics. By the time 1945 arrived, their factories were producing approximately 60 Panthers per month (and fewer of the more resource intensive Tigers) - while the Russians were making ~1,000 T-34s. Plus, we built ~4,100 M4 Shermans with the 75mm, and almost 11,000 M4s with the 76mm gun in 1944 and 1945, alone (the initial years of production).

When you consider that American and Soviet combat vehicle production (all types) approached 1/4 of a million, and German tank production was less than 45k - that's the numbers problem they had.