Emperor Trajan

Well the real question is could the Roman army have defted Germania if Juluis Ceaser would have continued his campain into Germania? The Roman army was in Germania for a few days if you watched Engenering an Empire then you would know how they got in.

Tapio, the king of forest

They were so wild that it would take a while before they truly realized the power of the Roman people.

Frank81

In the long run, No. It happened.

Romans conquered Germania during the years of Augustus. Large naval and land expeditions were sent into the heart of Germanic lands



As you know, the conquest ended in disaster.


The problem of Germania was not on the Roman generals, neither on the Germanic capacity. It was logistical. Germania had not cities, extensive agriculture, important trade or easy routes. Roman armies and administration needed them in order to work properly, otherwise they faced impossible problems of supply and organization. That was the problem.

Salah

Rome was stretched to far, and had a few spurts of bad luck. One-on-one, the Romans could have easily defeated Germania (which was a word with cultural and geographical, not political relevance at the time).

As I've said many times before, the 'barbarian' tribes did not kill Rome. They just scavenged on her corpse.

Rocksteadyeddie

It depends on the General. Caesar could have as he was into murdering whole peoples so that would have done it.

Emperor Trajan

He would probally would have burt down villiages

Salah

Oh yeah, butchery was Caesar's personal, unique trademark or something

Rocksteadyeddie

No not really but he was just bloody good at it and was probably the most brutal of the Romans bar none. His personal ambition and the fact he could make a fortune out of the slave trade would motivate him to do horrendeous things in order to intimidate and demoralise the Germans.
After all that's exactly what he did in Gaul so he had the experience as well as the motivation.
He was quite simply an evil bastard but also a miltary and political genius.
He wouldn't have fell for the scam Varus fell for woud he?

Mangekyou

Defeated? Yes. Occupied? No

Too much dangerous land ideal for ambushcades, too much chance for constant rebellion which would have stretched the resources. Holding Gaul was hard enough. Punitive expeditions every now and again were the right options for Germany. They could use friendly tribes for this.

The Amyclae

The Roman expansion had, perhaps, less to do with any individual general (no matter how inspired) or Caesar. The ruthless and efficient Roman machine was more ferocious than all except the 20th century's worst totalitarian governments. Some historians believe a million Gauls lost their lives, a million more were carried off into captivity and, essentially, a whole generation was lost to Rome. But, as many Romans were fond of pointing out, Rome was not Persia: it didn't rule over slaves. It needed their respect. As James Wilson observed as early as (iirc) the early 1800s Rome was not great because it was great at pouring itself across the world, it was great because the world poured itself into her. The lack of Roman, or even [I]talian emperors in the later centuries perhaps proves his point (Trajan, Severus, Diocletian and so forth). Rome was most successful in the areas that were already 'Roman.' As Claudius observerd, Romulus could and did naturalize a conquered people in one day.

It's not so much, then, that the Romans could have defeated Germania as no German, for reasons that quite a few scholars have gone into depth on, would ever stand up like Saint Paul and say (with no apparent sense of irony) "Civis Romanus sum."