German generals had discovered something that the leaders of other armies had not figured out — that airplanes and tanks were not weapons but kinds of vehicles. Vehicles could carry armor, guns, or people, making possible an entirely new military system built around them. Armies could consist of troops carried by airplanes or dropped from them, or of self-propelled forces containing tanks, motorized artillery, and motorized infantry. Air forces could include tactical aircraft, such as dive-bombers, that functioned as aerial field artillery, or strategic aircraft with long-range and heavy bomb-carrying capacity that could bomb the enemy homeland.
Heinz Guderian had built the panzer arm on the teachings of two English experts, J. F. C. Fuller and Basil H. Liddell Hart, whose ideas of concentrating armor into large units had been largely ignored in their own country. The German high command was as hidebound as the British leadership on this point, and fought Guderian’s ideas. It was the enthusiasm of Hitler for tanks that gave Guderian the opening to establish the army doctrine of putting all armor into panzer divisions, instead of dividing it into small detachments parceled out to infantry divisions, as remained the practice in the French and British armies.
In addition, Guderian won acceptance of the doctrine that panzer divisions had to be made up not only of tanks but of motorized infantry, artillery, and engineers, who could move at the speed of tanks and operate alongside armor to carry out offensive operations wherever the tanks could reach.
Erwin Rommel, who would become famous for his campaigns in North Africa, produced the best one-sentence description of blitzkrieg warfare: “The art of concentrating strength at one point, forcing a breakthrough, rolling up and securing the flanks on either side, and then penetrating like lightning deep into his rear, before the enemy has had time to react.”
This was a revolutionary idea to the armies of the world. Most military leaders thought tanks should be used as they had been employed in World War I — to assist infantry in carrying out assaults on foot against enemy objectives. For this reason, the best Allied tanks, like the British Matilda, were heavily armored monsters that could deflect most enemy fire but could move scarcely faster than an infantryman could walk. German tanks, on the other hand, were “fast runners” with less armor, but able to travel at around 25 miles an hour and designed for quick penetration of an enemy line and fast exploitation of the breakthrough thereafter into the enemy rear.
[…]
The radical aircraft the Germans developed was not much to look at. It was the Junker 87B Stuka, a dive-bomber with nonretractable landing gear, an 1,100-pound bombload, and a top speed of only 240 mph. It was already obsolete in 1940, but the Stuka (short for Sturzkampfflugzeug, or “dive battle aircraft”) was designed to make pinpoint attacks on enemy battlefield positions, tanks, and troops. And, since the German Luftwaffe (air force) gained air superiority quickly with its excellent fighter the Messerschmitt 109, the Stuka had the sky over the battlefield largely to itself. The Stuka functioned as aerial artillery and was highly effective. It also was terrifying to Allied soldiers because of its accuracy and because German pilots fitted the Stuka with an ordinary whistle that emitted a high-pitched scream as it dived. The Allied air forces had not seen a need for such a plane and concentrated primarily on area bombing, which was much less effective on the battlefield.
From his detailed accounts of all the main tank actions of the First World War Guderian explicitly draws the following lessons: (a) tanks are of little use when penny-packeted and should be massed; (b) they should not be wasted on unsuitable ground, as they were by the British GHQ in the swamps of Ypres, but saved for use on good going; (c) that the greatest results can be achieved when massed tanks are used with the benefit of surprise.
[…]
In what may be regarded as one of the most significant paragraphs in the book, he explains that Allied aircraft in 1918 created disorder in the German rear areas, hindered the movement of reserves and brought German batteries under actual attack.
‘All of this was of material influence on the course of the ground fighting, especially when they were acting in co-ordination with tanks. Aircraft became an offensive weapon of the first order, distinguished by their great speed, range and effect on target.’
[…]
Readers will notice that nowhere does Guderian use the term ‘Blitzkrieg’ — often thought to encapsulate the German approach to war in the Nazi era. In fact the term seems not to have been used in Germany before the Second World War when it was picked up from the foreign press. Its first known use occurs in a 1939 article on the Polish campaign in the American Time magazine.
[…]
On the subject of British influence, some readers will be surprised that there is not more reference to Basil Liddell Hart, the famous military journalist and author. He is mentioned only once — in connection with the Experimental Mechanical Force of 1927. Since the late 1970s military historians specializing in this period have been aware that the well-known passage in Guderian’s memoirs, in which Liddell Hart is extolled above all others as the inspiration behind the early victories of the panzer forces, was put there at Liddell Hart’s own request at a time when Guderian was in various ways indebted to him. Significantly this passage does not occur in the original German edition.
There were 70 million or so Germans in 1940. There were 130 million Americans and 50 million Brits and another 20 million in the dominions. The. Brits were richer than the Germans and the Americans much richer. There was no realistic way for the Germans to win the war against such foes, even before you add Russia to the mix or reckon against the clock that was ticking down to August 1945, when the nukes start dropping.
And yet Germany would now be ninety years into its millennial dominion had not noted Austrian lover of animals, environmentalist, and anti-smoking advocate, one Herr Hitler, personally precipitated the single greatest catastrophe since the Younger Dryas Event: that of declaring war on the United States. His inconceivably rash declaration ruined far more than Germany; the several States would still be Anglo-Saxon otherwise. World history loving its ironies, the man against time’s sole enduring success of statecraft was in the founding of Israel in Palestine, not that being the preeminent founding father and first patriarch of the Jewish State is terribly bragworthy. Today, as everyone who has unfortunately attended any “American” government school can attest, everyone hears to no end all about the six million (not one more or less) but very little about the greatest story never told. Someone at Langley should dispatch Septuagenarian Spielberg to get on that right quick: we need to force-download another quasi-documentary black-and-white movie-memory into the collective unconscious. It’s a matter of national security.
Here’s the funny thing, not sure whether the book mentions it – I am pretty sure Polish officers wanted to share their experiences but French ignored it, thinking they are safe behind the Maginot and they have much better army.
From Polish armed forces, 1400 Poles died during 1940 campaign, and I’ve read accusations that Polish units were sometimes fighting while French ones were withdrawing, leaving our guys alone. Only 27.000 Polish soldiers out of 85.000 strong army were evacuated. Some of the other were interned in Switzerland.
Szopen,
Yes, the Poles tried to warn the French Army.
Who didn’t so much ignore them as file it with the inertia that gripped the French in 1940, as they were pretty much ignoring everything…
Marc Bloc “Strange Defeat” explains it best as he was there, it was basically selfishness of most of the Frenchmen – what does this mean for me? – and ‘hardening of the arteries” meaning their leadership was all old and tired.
The French didn’t ignore the Poles, the French were bureaucratically hidebound and old, they really never got going.
There was also a great deal of political instability in France in the 1930s that bled over into the military – one government had one program, the next another. In 1940 the French Air Force fighters were perfectly capable in numbers and quality but never exceeded a 25% sortie rate.
Why?
Because they didn’t have enough fighter *pilots*.
They had put their bet on Bombers.
Sitting safe behind the Maginot line is an overrated myth – it was more they incompetently put their whole army and the BEF [With no reserves !!] into Belgium as soon as the Germans moved. After that too slow and too old.
When the Germans had the flank of their westward thrust exposed the French were about to attack into it [which the Germans feared] and then the French Switched commanders. The new Commander ordered a Staff Review of the plan and lost 2 critical days in May 1940. When the French General said after 1940 “it was all a matter of hours” he was right – they had their chance and choked.
That’s bureaucracy and lifelong creatures of bureaucracy for you. Our present government and military are even worse above the Brigade level.