How do Axis Divisions (Primarily German & Italian) compare to a commonwealth division?
How long is a piece of string ?
British infantry divisions were very standardised - 3 brigades of 3 infantry battalions each, plus an artillery brigade, AT & AA regiments, MMG, armoured recon and engineer battalions. The divisions tended to grow in strength as the war went on and more support units were added, starting around 13,000 men and ending around 18,000.
German infantry divisions were anything but - some had 3 brigades/regiments, some had 2, some had 3-battalion brigades, some had 2-battalion regiments. There were about 5 "standard" organisations at any given time and things only got messier as the war went on. Unlike the British, the Germans reduced the nominal strength of their "standard" divisions later in the war as the manpower shortages began to bite and support units were increasingly "what was available". Also unlike the British, who were disbanding units to keep the remainder up to strength, the Germans tended to raise new units while letting existing ones wither, so from 1942 on German units were chronically understrength. By 1944, the British in Normandy were facing everything from 20,000-man SS divisions with the best of everything to 8,000-man "static" divisions with no armour or transport, obsolete artillery and a rifle strength largely composed of unenthusiastic non-Germans.
There are some discussion and comparisons here:
https://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/services/dropoff/schilling/mil_org/milorgan_99.html
Italian divisions were small - Mussolini liked lots of divisions, so they reformed from 3-regiment division to 2-regiment "binary" divisions so he could have more of them. They were generally weak in support arms and short of artillery compared to the British/Americans/Germans. The Libyan divisions the British chewed up in 1940 were only around 8,000 men each. Later in the war the Italians attempted to reform to a larger base division with more armour and motorisation.
In general, man-for-man the Germans outperformed everyone else in combat and the Italian underperformed, so in the mid-war a 15,000-man British division was the rough combat equivalent of a 12,000-man 2-regiment German division. significantly weaker than a 15,000-man 3-regiment German division and substantially stronger than a 10,000-man 2-regiment Italian division. Panzer and panzergrenadier units tended to rip everyone up until about 1942-3, largely because they were practising effective combined-arms tactics and everyone else was still learning.
