Superior technology cannot replace fleet mass indefinitely

Did a belief that superior technology could overcome mass drive German overengineering?

Partly, but technical superiority can compensate for only a limited numerical disadvantage and often brought serious maintenance costs.

Better equipment can reduce the effect of being outnumbered within limits. Quality cannot compensate for every scale of material disadvantage. German engineering culture also resisted merely adequate solutions, pushing systems toward complexity and perfection. Those choices made equipment harder to produce, repair, and keep in service. Design culture therefore affected fleet availability as well as peak performance.