Short answers, pulled from the story.
A total of about 13.6 million volunteers and conscripts served in the German Army between 1935 and 1945. Germany and annexed Austria were divided into 18 military districts, called Wehrkreise, from which all men were recruited and trained.
Blitzkrieg, meaning lightning war, was an operational approach combining fast-moving armored and air units in sweeping encirclements to destroy enemy forces quickly. It was never formally adopted as official Wehrmacht doctrine, and only a small part of the Wehrmacht was trained to execute it. Historians trace its practical development largely to the battlefield decisions of Erwin Rommel and Heinz Guderian during the 1940 Battle of France.
The Commissar Order was issued by the German High Command before the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union and instructed soldiers to execute Soviet political commissars on sight. It was a direct violation of the laws of war and led to the summary execution of tens of thousands of individuals.
Of approximately 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war captured during World War II, an estimated 3.3 million perished from deliberate neglect, starvation, forced marches, and outright executions. These deaths were part of the broader Nazi policy of treating Slavs as expendable.
The German Army used seven ration types. Type I, for combat troops, weighed 1.698 kilograms per day and included seven cigarettes. Type IV, for office personnel and nurses within Germany, weighed 1.483 kilograms with two cigarettes. An emergency iron ration totaled 650 grams, including biscuits, preserved meat, preserved vegetables, coffee, and salt, and was only to be opened when ordered.
At its peak the German medical service employed 341,760 men and women. Wounded soldiers moved through a chain from a forward Verwundetennest, to a battalion-level Truppenverbandplatz, then to a Hauptverbandplatz roughly four miles behind the combat line, and finally to a Feldlazarett or the Army Group-level Kriegslazarett for the most complex cases.