re: Which country had the best all around military in world war 1?

Germany

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America tries to have the largest and strongest navy in the world

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In today's world of aircraft carriers in particular, you can project your power . The US has 10-12 carrier groups as such we can project power with efficiency and ease. In WWI the Royal Navy had the advanced dreadnaughts and frigates armored with big guns. But, I would also argue that having the large Empire/Commonwealth helped them out. If you are able to call up 1 million men from India alone that certainly helps and another 250,000 from Australia/ New Zealand. Add that to the Canadians and native Brits/Scots and it becomes a huge advantage

Also do not discount the petroleum angle, that was huge. British ships ran on oil by the middle of the war and German ships were reliant on coal

Best Army Germany.

Best Navy UK.

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Now that my dad is no longer with us and me being in OEF I wonder if I can find any records of their service.

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Unfortunately the Army records held in National Archives St Louis were almost entirely destroyed in a huge fire. Your best bet is looking for his DD214 or finding his service card from the state Archives. Louisiana has service cards of every returning soldier from WW1.

The U Boat angle was certainly important, but they needed refueling stations and they did not have a sufficient set up of colonial possessions to help facilitate the supply angle mainly because the British and French too their African possession by 1916 and The Japanese took out some of their Pacific Island possessions

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we couldn't have won it without them

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that is highly debatable. If we fully mobilized we would have been a deadly adversary for anyone in the world from around 1880 and onward. By that time the industrial might or the us was matched by none. People forget how many of the greatest inventions have always came from the u.s. and the production value we have had since that time period.

We may have eventually been able to win but There wasn’t a whole lot to mobilize at the time. A lot of the army that fought was created from scratch. Any victory would have come from Brits and French wearing down the Germans.

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They were efficient to the point of it interfering with their evil plans.

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No, they were efficient all along. In fact, they never even entered total war economy until 1943, so most of their successes came while their industry and economy were not on a total war footing. Albert Speer came in and began getting maximum production out for the war effort after Germany's strategic situation had already become virtually impossible. So their military successes were being achieved without the full capacity of the German industry and often while having inadequate equipment.

In reality, their brutal measures actually helped their war effort because they absolutely did not possess the necessary labor resources they needed while also maintaining adequate forces in the field.

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If WWI leadership had WWII's army, they would have dominated.

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This is absolute and utter nonsense. Completely unsubstantiated and nearly unfalsifiable. Many of the old guard Prussian generals were actually those most resistant to the modern combined arms era of bewegungskrieg and the bold, daring actions it required. So in actuality, if any argument could be made regarding the WWI style leadership, it should be that they'd have failed terribly in the much worse strategic position Germany faced prior to the outbreak of WWII. In fact, Hitler purged many of these old guard from the leadership ranks in the mid and late 30's to make way for commanders with the daring he saw as necessary. This led to the career advancement of men like Guderian, Rommel, Manstein, etc who lacked the timidity and old mindset of the existing general staff and officer corps.

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Hitler was crazy and maybe the biggest gambler in modern history. It worked, sure, but it was a nuts idea.

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Yes, Hitler was a gambler. This resulted initially in Germany's greatest successes and ultimately in it's utter demise. That being said, you said he could have just rolled through Russia if he hadn't been so brutal against the locals but now it was a nuts idea that he only succeeded through gambling. Those are direct contradictions.

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If Hitler hadn't diverted from Moscow, I think he would have beaten Stalin. The WWI leadership and generals would not have made this same mistake.

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Ignoring your first sentence because that's an entire discussion unto itself, you have no basis for the second. The second statement is again, silly and totally unfalsifiable. It could just as equally be argued that they'd never have put themselves in such a position to succeed in the campaign in the first place.

But we're getting off track, there was NO "easily plowing through Russia" under any scenario. And mistreatment of locals had nothing to do with the advance stalling in front of Moscow or the success of the massive Soviet counteroffensive on the 5th.

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The US wasn't in the war at that point, and what happens once Nazi Germany has mass oil and rubber supplies?

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I'm aware of when the United States came into the war, less than a week after the beginning of the Soviet counteroffensive. If the Soviets had been knocked out in one blow, then the entire dynamic of the war would have changed. Not sure where that was being discussed. We were discussing Germany's "inefficient" military and how easy the campaign in Russia should have been.

The point of mentioning the United States was to highlight how absolutely efficient the German military was to continue their resistance for 3 and a half years even after the United States joined in.

Thanks