Romans vs Germans

 For the vast majority of the time the Romans had the upper hand, there was the disaster at the Teutoburg in 9AD but in a pitched battle the Roman legions could smash almost any force in the known the world and the Germanic tribes atleast for awhile were not the most difficult army to face.

 During the crisis of the 3rd century when the Roman empire was collapsing coordinated invasions from the Goths, Vandals, Franks, Alemanni and many many more tribes still couldnt break the Romans and at the Battle of Naissus in September 268 a massive army of Goths was annihilated.

 At the same time when the Roman army was smashing the Goths at Naissus the Alemanni the big threat to the west had occupied parts of northern Italy, however at the lake Benacus in November 268 the Emperor Claudius II Gothicus with some 35,000 men crushed an Alemanni force of 100,000 leaving half of them dead of captured and the rest running for their lives.

 Soon the Roman empire was reunited and the Germanic tribes expelled from imperial territory. A sure sign that the Roman empire was far from dead and was more than capable of resisting the barbarian threat.

 The Germanic threat then dwindled for some time and although invasions still occurred it didnt reach the chronic levels of the 3rd century again until the late 4th century when the eastern Roman armies were smashed at Adrianople in 378 by the Goths, not long after that the western empire began to seriously unravel and the tribes simply could not be held back any longer.  

 So army V army in a pitched battle the Romans were highly likely to win, if however there was incompetance in the leadership of the Roman army like at Adrianople then the Germanics could take advantage of it and their often superior numbers began to tell as the Imperial army rushed from one crisis point to another.

 Many successes of the Germanics coincided with internal chaos for the Roman empire which the Germanics exploited, civil wars, corruption and the decaying of the Imperial army meant it was eventually unable to hold the frontiers on a regular basis and the empire fell away as the tribes were pushed westward by the seemingly unstoppable Huns and the frontiers collapsed, the pressure on the empire was then irresistable and destruction was inevitable for the west.

 The general rule is I think that a well led Roman army would probably defeat anything the Germanics could throw at them, a good example is the Roman/Byzantine reconquests in which the Vandals and Ostrogoths were defeated by small but extremely well led Roman armies. There are also many examples of superior Roman tactics overcoming Germanic numerical superiority, however as the Roman army slowly decayed the Germanic army advanced and the balance was broken.

 I still strongly believe however that the Roman legions were superior to the the Germanic armies and that view is justified in the various examples ive pointed out, even when in dire crisis the Romans were able to defeat and expel the Germans. Also had the Germans been superior the Roman empire would surely not have survived as long as it did.

  Even though the Germans obviously contributed the collapse of the empire the internal decay was far more serious than the common invasions from across the Danube and Rhine. They only added to the chaos the empire was already in and eventually helped tip the balance and the empire was unable to recover.

 The last century or so of general German superiority was one out of 4 or 5 centuries of general Roman dominance.