1

Blitzkrieg

Blitzkrieg: A Revolutionary or Evolutionary Doctrine?

By

Robert Wettengel

2

Blitzkrieg

The doctrine that came to be known the world-over as Blitzkrieg, did not develop in a vacuum, nor

was it some radical departure from Prussian-German military thought. In its simplest construct,

Blitzkrieg involves the utilization of mobile forces for the purpose of achieving a break-through, which

would then exploited through a rapid penetration into the enemy’s rear areas. This concept was not

revolutionary in and of itself, as maneuvering behind the enemy and taking him in the rear or via a flank-

ing attack has a proud tradition in Prussian-German military history going back to the Great Elector him-

self.

Was Blitzkrieg more evolutionary rather than revolutionary? What are the optimal conditions for a

Blitzkrieg campaign?

What is Blitzkrieg?

Some time must be spent on this word Blitzkrieg. When was it first used? Unfortunately, the history

of the term is not easy to pin-down. Some historians have ascribed the coining of the term to Hitler,

while Hitler ascribed it to the Italians1; others, including John Keegan and Matthew C. Cooper ascribe the

term to American journalists with Time magazine2, and there are still a variety of other claimants owed

to truly atrotious mistranslations of German to English.3 Fanning was only able to locate two instances

of its use in Germany before September 1939: an article which appeared in the Militär-Wochenblatt and

a speech given by General Georg Thomas, who was effectively the Chief Quartermaster of the Wehrma-

cht.4 Fanning maintains that usage of the word prior to September 1939 was purely confined to the

conceptualization of the “knockout blow” against the enemy’s fielded military center of gravity. Though

the terms—“blitzkrieg”, Überfallskrieg or attaque bruquée—were different, they all described “a sud-

1 (Fanning 1997), p. 287-882 (Fanning 1997), p. 283-843 (Fanning 1997), p. 288-904 (Fanning 1997), p. 290-91

3

Blitzkrieg

den, rapid strike against an enemy;” a strike which would, “in a matter of hours or days” shatter the en-

emy’s will to resist, morale and compel his suing for peace in hopes of still having some bargaining

power.5

Yet, it must also be remembered that much of what “blitzkrieg” conveyed before the outbreak of

hostilities was not being written about by military professionals or historians. The journalists utilizing

the term were using in the context of a single, surprise, knockout blow and, Neville Chamberlain was

able to maintain—utlizing this very limited, psycho-military definition of blitzkrieg as a “knockout

blow”—that “there was no chance for a surprise ‘Blitzkrieg’ for Britain’s military had been “preparing for

a long time.” The Christian Century had even predicted that Blitzkrieg had been still-born, for the assault

on Poland gave the British and French time to prepare to ensure that a German “sneak attack” would

never materialize.6

What these writers collectively failed to grasp is the fact that there are different levels to warfare and

each level is capable of having its own element of surprise. Yes, after the declaration of war upon Ger-

many by the French and British, Germany’s ability to launch a “sneak attack” in the sense that the West-

ern powers were still at peace with the Third Reich was no longer applicable. However, this does not

rule-out that the element of surprise could still be maintained and exploited on the tactical and opera-

tional levels. Chamberlain was proven wrong, for Case Yellow was an operational knock-out blow which

eviscerated the highly-mobile British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and trapped the best units of the Anglo-

French forces within a huge cauldron encompassing Belgium and the Channel Coast. The BEF and the

French were unprepared to face the principal axis of the German assault, the speed with which the

Panzers of Army Group A would advance and the uncertainty and disorder this would cause for their

5 (Fanning 1997), p. 2926 (Fanning 1997), p. 300

4

Blitzkrieg

own military forces to mount an effective defense. This operational knock-out blow had the strategic

effect of reducing Vichy France to a German satellite and ejecting the BEF from the continent.

Two definitions have been chosen: from Barry Posen and Robert Citino. Posen defines Blitzkrieg as:

The Blitzkrieg stressed mobility and speed over firepower, although in the form of the tank, the dive bomber, and high-ve-locity antitank or antiaircraft gun it aimed for great firepower at decisive points. Blitzkrieg welcomed encounter battles. It em-ployed concentrated air power offensively and defensively, to prepare the way for advancing armor. Like German doctrine after World War I, Blitzkrieg stressed infiltration tactics and flanking movements for both infantry and armor. As in the classic pre-World War I doctrine, the new doctrine sought single and double envelopments, it aimed as much at the disorientation and dis-location of the enemy command system as it did at the annihilation of enemy forces. This was to be achieved by deep penetra-tions into the rear area of an enemy army. It was believed that if dislocation could be achieved, the battle of annihilation might be avoided, or at least easier.7

Citino defines Blitzkrieg as:

. . . a German phenomenon based on the traditions of German military history. As a doctrine of employing mechanized units (including air units) on a grand scale to defeat, pursue, and destroy sizable enemy forces within a two-to-four week span of time. Divisions, corps, and armies would use their armored spearhead to create opportunities for warfare at the operational level, in order to achieve the maneuver onto the enemy’s flank and rear, leading to the envelopment and destruction of his en-tire military force. Forces maneuver to place themselves in an advantageous position to wear down the enemy, at the greatest possible speed in other words destroy him, and to do it with as little loss as possible.8

The commonalities in these two definitions stress maneuver, speed, envelopment and destruction of

enemy forces in a decisive fashion. Blitzkrieg stresses combined-arms warfare to achieve penetrations

into the enemy rear for the purpose of achieving a grand Kesselschlacht. Posen’s definition is far wider

than Citino’s who attaches two curious qualifications: the Blitzkrieg would have a one to two week dura-

tion, and that the “entire military force” of the enemy would be destroyed. Posen’s definition is far

more realistic than Citino’s, who, by adding these qualifications, appears to be talking more of an ideal

Blitzkrieg, as opposed to one that was actually practiced by the Wehrmacht, which never succeeded in

destroying the entire military establishment of a rival.

Luttwack provides descriptions of Blitzkrieg on the tactical and operational levels in which he reveals

the tactical-level vulnerabilities and vast potential for failure and contrasts this with the success of

7 Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars (London: Cornell University Press, 1984), 86 cited in (Gukeisen 2005), p. 38 Cited in (Gukeisen 2005), p. 3

5

Blitzkrieg

Blitzkrieg upon the operational level. Luttwack’s contention that a “narrow breach in the front” is highly

vulnerable to envelopment and that instead of “marching to victory” the assaulting combined-arms bat-

tlegroup could be “advancing to its own destruction” because its logistical tail would be highly vulnera-

ble to disruption, which would have rapidly robbed the division of both ammunition and the ability to

maneuver as its fuel reserves ran out. Due to the narrowness of the breakthrough, enemy forces to its

immediate left and right would be available to simply pinch the gap closed, thereby trapping the enemy

spear-head in an envelopment.9

It must always be remembered that divisions are parts of corps, corps are parts of armies and armies

are parts of army groups. The operational employment of an entire panzer corps or Panzergruppe

would enable for multiple penetrations along the front, which would serve to confront the enemy with

multiple foci of advance, thereby causing him to have to divide his attention to several different sectors

of the front simultaneously, which means reserves would have to be doled-out to multiple sectors sim-

ply to maintain a contiguous front, or an organized withdrawal would have to be ordered to fulfill the

same purpose. Either way, the focus of the enemy’s efforts would be on the defense, of using reserves

defensively to either fill gaps in the current front or to establish a new defensive line at which withdraw-

ing units would have sufficient protection to reorganize. The defender would not commit his opera-

tional reserves without knowing where the enemy’s operational center of gravity is focused, to ensure

that a counter-offensive would actually have any effect at all and raise the potential for inflicting some

of the psychological angst the defender is experiencing upon the attacker.10

Psychologically, this would lead to confusion in the enemy headquarters, which, while being sub-

jected to air and or artillery attacks, would be attempting to conduct an organized withdrawal coordi-

nated with neighboring units, while at the same time attempting to get the best picture of enemy

9 (Luttwak 2001), p. 12110 (Luttwak 2001), p. 128-129

6

Blitzkrieg

strength, location and intentions, which would be far from easy under the chaotic circumstances of the

combined-arms assault. These factors are what lead to the “disorientation and dislocation of the enemy

command system” that Posen references and the “grand scale” mentioned by Citino.

Situating Blitzkrieg Within German Military History

Throughout its existence Prussia-Germany has had to wage wars that are “short and lively” due to

the political unit’s precarious position in Central Europe. Bordered by France in the West, Austria in the

South and Poland or Russia to the East, a military well-suited to quick, mobile operations was a prerequi-

site to the survival of the State as an independent political unit, since it did not have the necessary man-

power reserves to win a war of attrition against a coalition of its neighbors.11 These wars had to result in

a decisive victory which would keep the enemy from choosing to launch a new offensive12 and to keep

any other neighbors from getting involved in the conflict. Bewegungskrieg (“maneuver doctrine” or

“war of maneuver” or “the war of movement”) thusly served both an offensive and a defensive purpose:

destroying the blatant threat in a rapid campaign and due to the rapidity of the onset and conclusion of

offensive operations, actively discouraging other neighboring powers from getting involved, lest they

suffer the same fate, especially given that Prussian (or German) forces would have been fully mobilized

and ready for action.

Blitzkrieg did not evolve from out of nothingness. Guderian’s originality comes from his fully embrac-

ing the potential of the new weapons which debuted in World War One: the tank and the aircraft. He

did not develop a whole new doctrine from whole cloth, rather, he took existing Prussian-German doc-

trine, which had always been focused upon mobility, and revealed how tanks and aircraft could aid in re-

gaining operational mobility upon the twentieth-century battlefield. Certainly, his work was radical, yet

11 (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005) p. xiii12 (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005) p. xiii, see note 5

7

Blitzkrieg

just how revolutionary was it? In terms of military tradition, Blitzkrieg is Bewegungkrieg, simply with the

new weapons previously eluded to being utilized to achieve their full operational potential for the pur-

pose of aiding and promoting the break-through of the enemy front. Blitzkrieg was merely updating ex-

isting doctrine, not seeking to supplant it. The radicalness comes from a wish to invest heavily in new

equipment that had a particularly so-so record in the First World War, largely due to it being first-gener-

ation, new and untested equipment and thereby totally displacing the cavalry, which had had a proud

tradition of service in European armies going back centuries.

Frederick the Great

In 1927,then-Major Heinz Guderian wrote about Prussian operations during the winter of 1678-79,

which he labeled a “complete success” and attributes the success not to successful battlefield victories,

which he indicates were “either indecisive or entirely unfavorable,” but to the “moral effect of the re-

lentless pursuit,” which thereby placed enormous strain upon the enemy’s lines of communication and

the “tremendous speed of the . . . advance convinced the exhausted Swedes that only the fastest possi-

ble retreat could save them from destruction.” Frederick William’s troops had covered 540 kilometers

from January 18th thru February 2nd and did so “despite bad roads, snow, and ice.” The icy weather

made river crossings easy, since the “sleds of infantry and artillery sleighs . . . could both advance rapidly

and preserve their strength. [Italics mine] The drive brought Bewegungskrieg directly to the enemy.”13

Averaging 36 kilometers per day would be a fine rate of advance for a modern operational unit; for

an army in the 17th-century such an incredible rate of advance would have been downright miraculous

and it is no wonder that the Swedes were compelled to retreat as rapidly as possible in the face of such

13 (Guderian 1927) Cited in (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 33

8

Blitzkrieg

an advance. Yet, Guderian noted that the advancing columns tended to disperse and spread-out along

the roads, which limited the ability to bring concentrated fire to bear on the decisive point. 14

Frederick the Great “usually saw one path to victory, and that was fixing the enemy army in place,

maneuvering near or . . . around it to” gain a “favorable position for the attack, and then smashing it

with an overwhelming blow from an unexpected direction.”15 Furthermore, “[t]he King was also more

consistently willing than any of his contemporaries to seek decisions through offensive operations.”16

Frederick “loved soldiers and uniforms and guns.” The army was his “obsession,” and he trained and

drilled his men meticulously. This meant that Frederick’s army was capable of loading and shooting

faster, change formations more rapidly and more cohesively and engage tactical maneuvers with rela-

tive ease. Frederick once wrote that his infantry were capable of “forming up more rapidly than any

other troops on earth.”17 This emphasis on drill lead to increased efficiency on the battlefield that was

unmatched by any potential adversary and the ability to bring increased rates of firepower to bear upon

the enemy due to Frederick’s army being able to fire four to five rimes per minute, while their adver-

saries may only, at best, have been able to achieve only half that.18

Yet, training and drilling are only going to get an army so far, as conducting actual operations is a dif-

ferent matter from marching to and fro about the parade grounds. During the Silesian Wars, Frederick’s

army had been consistently outmaneuvered by the opposing force and the learning curve for both king

and army was steep. At the Battle of Mollwitz (1741)19, a victory had been achieved, but it was indeci-

sive. The indecisive nature of this battle had left Frederick wanting, for he wanted decisive victories and

14 Ibid, p. 3315 (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 3616 (Showalter 1996), p. 67 quoted in (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich2005), p. 3617 (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 37; the Frederick quote comes from (Duffy 1974), p. 88, quoted in (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The ThirdReich 2005), p. 3718 Ibid., 3719 For an account of the battle see ibid, pp. 38-47

9

Blitzkrieg

this meant an emphasis on speed and mobility. Frederick downsized his cavalry arm in regards to the

height of the troops and the size of their mounts to increase the speed, and thereby the striking power,

of his cavalry.20 The artillery, too, was to stress nimbleness via the use of lighter three-pounder guns;

two would be attached to each infantry regiment in order to provide additional firepower “at the point

of contact.”21

Frederick came to eschew the linear tactics of the day in favor of the “oblique attack,” in which com-

bat power would be concentrated along a single wing and used to take the enemy in the flank or engage

his weakest point.22 Essentially, Frederick was advocating turning one wing of his army into a “hammer”

with which to strike the enemy and the other would be the “anvil” and sandwiched between hammer

and anvil would be the enemy army.

During the Seven Years War, Frederick made effective use of operating along “interior lines,” due to

his French, Russian and Austrian foes being arrayed in a semi-circle around Prussia. The difficulties of

conducting coalition warfare at a time before modern communications meant that a larger force, much

more so one that had some members speaking French, some others German and still others Russian or

Swedish, along with their own distinctive military cultures meant that the chances of Frederick facing a

coordinated offensive were remote, so Frederick was able to march against and engage them in turn.

He was able to remain close to his lines of supply, while the enemy—especially the French and Russians

—were quite distant from theirs and would have required a far greater degree of living off of the land,

which would ultimately grow exhausted, thereby forcing a retreat or rash offensive decisions.

In 1757, Frederick wished to knock Austria out of the war and embarked upon a campaign to seize all

of Bohemia.23 He had deployed his 115,000 men into four columns that were spread out over 210 kilo-

20Ibid. , p. 4921 Ibid., p. 4922 Ibid., pp. 50-5123 Ibid., p. 67

10

Blitzkrieg

meters; surprisingly “[c]oordination problems on the march were few” and the entirety of the Prussian

force arrived at Prague, fought the Austrians outside the city, drove the survivors back into the city and

laid siege to Prague. At Prague, the terrain was poorly suited to large-scale operational maneuvers with

its marshes, drained ponds and silt. This meant that the maneuvers were conducted more slowly than

Frederick would have preferred and the Austrians had sufficient time to properly analyze and react to

his actions. The Austrians were able to redeploy and strengthen the endangered flank. While the Aus-

trians retreated into the city, casualties for either side had not been light: 24,000 Austrians and 18,000

Prussians were killed. Frederick then received word of an approaching relief force and chose to take his

force out to attack it at Kolin. 24

At Kolin, Frederick’s greatest problem appears to have been a lack of adequate reserves coupled with

poor reconnaissance. Prussian “attacks were irresistible and cut great gaps in the Austrian ranks oppo-

site them.”25 Yet, deprived of reserves due to the losses at Prague, Frederick was incapable of exploiting

this potential tactical break-through and Austria had adequate reserves to plug gaps in the line as soon

as they formed. Frederick’s lack of reserves meant that the Austrians were free to react to his move-

ments without undue stress being placed upon their own forces.

The French and Imperial forces advanced through Thuringia, making use of the best road network in

Europe which would expedite their advance and clearly identify them as the greatest danger to Prus-

sia.26 Frederick’s army has covered the 170 miles from Dresden to Erfurt in 13 days.27 With the painful

lessons of Prague and Kolin still in his mind, Frederick seems to have chosen to become somewhat

sneakier, since his army was still numerically-weak and he could not afford to engage in another frontal

assault into a well-prepared position ala Kolin. Up to this point, all of Frederick’s maneuvering had been

24Ibid. , p. 68-6925 Ibid., p. 7126 Ibid., p. 7227 (Weigley 1991), p. 183 cited in (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 73

11

Blitzkrieg

tactical or grand tactical in nature; now, whether by design to preserve his force as much as possible or

via some momentary inspiration or intuition, Frederick chose to engage in his maneuvering beyond the

view of the enemy. Enemy forces cannot engage what they cannot see, and Frederick’s troops were

able to maneuver with minimal or no harassment. Frederick the Great was now thinking operationally.28

At Rossbach, The Franco-Imperial forces chose to break camp and seek Frederick out, but their intel-

ligence was imperfect as to his location. Their decision to abandon their prepared camp meant that

Frederick would not have to worry about launching another frontal assault and likely sustain casualties

his army could ill-afford. The Franco-Imperial army took its time to break camp and begin to deploy, yet

Frederick believed the Allies were in fact retreating, not moving to engage him. He had received reports

of enemy cavalry movements, but dismissed them as nothing more than prudent reconnaissance mea-

sures to would most likely have served the purpose of gauging how strong of a rear-guard should be left

behind, but when a patrol “clearly identified infantry formations on the march” Frederick knew that the

allied force was not in retreat; he chose to hit the Allies on the march, achieve complete tactical and op-

erational surprise and destroy them before they would have a chance to fully deploy. 29 The Allies still

believed the Prussian army to be in retreat; as such, there forces would be deployed more to support a

pursuit, and would not be ready to fight from any sort of prepared or carefully-chosen positions.

Complete surprise having been achieved due to utilizing the terrain as cover, Seydlitz’s cavalry

slammed into the Allied cavalry; the enemy cavalry retreated in disarray and panic, Seydlitz’s forces hot

on their heels. The Franco-Imperial cavalry even retreated through their own lines of infantry, thereby

disrupting their formations and serving to confuse the infantry’s ability to discern friend from foe.30 The

Prussian infantry was not far behind their cavalry and added to the chaotic situation facing the Franco-

Imperial infantry, with the more forward units fully or partially deployed for battle and the units coming

28 (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 8229 Ibid., p. 7830See map in (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 80

12

Blitzkrieg

up still in march formation. Prussian infantry, cavalry and cannon savaged the unprepared enemy col-

umns inflicting casualties of 10,000 dead for the loss of a mere 169 of their own with 379 wounded.31

The maneuver that Frederick conducted at Leuthern32 involved a cavalry feint towards Borne, while

the entirety of the rest of his army wheeled to the south and then the south-east, covered the whole

time behind mountains, in order to attack the unprepared enemy left wing, while elements of the en-

emy force advanced towards Borne, but with every step they took they were that much farther from be-

ing capable of providing aid to their left wing when the Prussian infantry launched their assault. This

now meant that the entire Austrian battle-line was hopelessly out of position and had to redeploy ninety

degrees to the south, something that would have been difficult enough to do without having to conduct

a portion of it under enemy fire. This meant that Austrian forces would not have been ready to be com-

mitted as a cohesive force, since the Prussian momentum had to be stopped; the piece-meal commit-

ment of Austrian forces meant they were marching to their doom.33 Prussian losses numbered 6,00034

and the Austrians lost 12,000 with an additional 15,000 taken prisoner.35

At Zorndorf, Frederick attempted to prosecute Bewegungskrieg against the Russians, who had finally

made their presence known operationally by invading East Prussia.36 The terrain at Zorndorf would not

be friendly to Bewegungskrieg, due to “numerous hillocks and depressions, along with three gullies run-

ning north-west to south-east” and three from the west which were all “ten to fifteen meters below the

plain.”37

31 (German General Staff 1903), p.222 cited in (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 8132 (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 8633 Ibid., p. 8734 Ibid., p. 8835 (German General Staff 1904), p. 41 cited in (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 8836 (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 9137 (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 92

13

Blitzkrieg

The commander of the Russian force, Fermor, learned of Frederick’s maneuvering to come up on his

right-rear, and Fermor had no interest in having a repeat of Leuthen on his hands, so as soon as it was

learned that the Prussians were in the area, he ordered his troops to alter their position so Frederick’s

maneuver was effectively nullified, since instead of coming up on the right-rear on the Russian army, he

was coming up on it frontally, which is what Frederick’s maneuver was supposed to avoid. Frederick

launched a frontal assault, but the contours of the battlefield made the launching of a coordinated as-

sault impossible, and this meant that the schwehrpunct on the Prussian left was lacking in sufficient

strength to mount a decisive assault, then a Russian cavalry attack took the Prussians completely by sur-

prise, causing the Prussians “to throw off all discipline” and flee.38 Fortunately for the Prussians, the ter-

rain of the battlefield caused this Russian counterattack to become as uncoordinated as the Prussian at-

tack had become and the Russians made themselves vulnerable to a riposte delivered by Frederick’s re-

serve cavalry, which blunted their advance.39 The results of the battle were 22,000 Russian dead, and

the Prussians had sustained losses similar to the Austrians at Leuthen.40

Frederick had had every intention of “Leuthen-ing” the Russians, and his approach march had

marched a ring around the Russian force, but instead of revisiting Leuthen, he was reliving the night-

mare of Kolin. “He had fought, literally down to the last man and shell, leaving the field soaked in

blood” and had very little to show for it, for his intention was to destroy the Russian army he had faced,

not only demolishing half of it.41 This was because he had lost strategic surprise due to enemy recon-

naissance being aware of his movements and Fermor knew what he was attempting to do and took the

appropriate countermeasures; to apply a scene from Patton to this situation: Fermor had read Freder-

ick’s book and knew how to turn the tables on him and take appropriate counter-measures to turn what

38 Ibid., p. 9639 Ibid., p. 9640 Ibid., p. 9841 Ibid., p. 99

14

Blitzkrieg

Frederick perceived as bold operational maneuver that would ensure his victory to the restoration of the

operational status quo.

Helmuth von Moltke

Helmuth von Moltke (the Elder) became Chief of the Prussian General Staff in 1857, a position he

held until 1888. At this time, the Industrial Revolution had matured to a point where the weapons of

war had become so much more lethal over a greater distance, that the linear tactics of Frederick and

Napoleon were being overtaken by technology with innovations such as the Minié Ball, which greatly im-

proved upon the amount of time it took to load a musket due to the ammunition being a lot easier to in-

sert, the development of the percussion cap and it also allowed rifles and muskets to have an effective

range quintuple of their Napoleonic versions. The rifle and breach-loading artillery improved accuracy

and rate of fire, respectively.42 Mass armies also meant that there would be all the more personnel to

field these more lethal, accurate weapons. At Rossbach (1757), Frederick has an army of 22,000 men,

and Austrian casualties at Könniggrätz (1866) alone would number twice that of Frederick’s entire

army.43 Command and control of these monstrous armies would pose a problem, as it had for Napoleon

in 1812 with an army of similar strength and the French emperor was “at his best” with armies number-

ing fewer than 85,000.44

The telegraph and telephone were also of limited utility due to their need for a “static system of

poles and wires” which would make the telegraph all but useless in a mobile campaign. While the mass

army was a large force, the difficulty of command and control would grow in direct proportion to the

size of the force, so it would have difficulties doing anything “much more than marching straight ahead

and crashing into whatever happened to be in front of it.”45 The end result of this would be a bloody

42 (Addington 1971), p. 443 (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 14844 Ibid., p. 148; for the source about Napoleon see (Creveld 1985), pp. 105-10645 (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 148

15

Blitzkrieg

slaughter, made all the more bloodier by the technological revolution taking place in terms of ammuni-

tion and fire-arms.

Moltke’s art of war was rooted in Frederickian tradition as he wrote that “modern conduct of war is

marked by the striving for a great and rapid decision.” He goes on to cite factors that push for this

“rapid termination of the war: the struggle of the armies; the difficulty of provisioning them; the cost of

being mobilized; the interruption of commerce, trade, business and agriculture.”46 Moltke was speaking

of achieving a decisive decision as soon as possible to minimize prolonged disruptions to the national

economy, the national budget at thereby the civilian population. He also saw to the adoption of the

breech-loading Dreyse Needle Gun in 1858, which, in the hands of a well-trained infantryman could get

off ten shots per minute—an innovation which would greatly increase the power of the Prussian army.

Moltke was also closely involved with the development of the railroad in Prussia to ensure that there

were rail-lines going to all potential deployment points along the borders.47

German military art not only stressed speed, mobility and always seeking to attack—it also fully em-

braced the latest technology of the period and developed and implemented the militarization of this

technology to the utmost to gain the most tactical, operational or strategic utility out of the technology.

Through the use of superior technology, hopefully the “rapid decision” Moltke spoke of could be

reached that much more rapidly and that this would allow the Prussian Army the ability to maneuver

around, envelop and annihilate its enemies.

Moltke stressed careful, preparatory staff work, and broadened the scope of the General Staff to re-

flect this through the establishment of new sections to cover mobilization, geographical and statistical

analysis and military history.48 In the age of the mass army, plans could no longer be developed on-the-

46 (Hughes 1993), p. 176 cited in (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 15047 (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 15148 (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 149

16

Blitzkrieg

fly as Frederick had done; rather they required careful timing and coordination to ensure that the proper

numbers and types of troops would arrive by train at the proper time and that their necessary provisions

and ammunition would either be attached to the same locomotive or timed to arrive as close as possible

to the disembarkation of the troops. This meant that Moltke had numerous plans drawn-up for all sorts

of contingencies.

Moltke sought to fight cauldron battles (Kesselschlachten) and to do this the mass army was useless

due to its poor ability to maneuver, but if the mass army were split into distinct armies or army groups,

mobility could be restored so that these armies would “march separately but fight jointly.”49 Once one

army had engaged and tied-down the enemy, the other separate parts would be directed to march to

the other’s aid and envelop the enemy.

Moltke was not developing a new way of Prussian war-making, rather, he was updating Frederickian

war-making to take into account the military developments that came out of the French Revolutionary

and Napoleonic Wars of the fielding of citizen mass-armies that would pose problems of supply and

command and control, so Moltke sought to manage this serious problem by only bringing the mass army

together when it was time to fight allowed for the mass army to maneuver as separate armies on the

operational level, thereby providing the Prussian military with considerable flexibility. This differed from

Napoleonic thinking which stressed concentration “as early as possible,”50 which had the effect of rob-

bing Moltke’s adversaries of mobility. The problem for the Austrians in 1866 and the French in 1870-71

was that Moltke had taken the Napoleonic playbook and modified it, which provided the innovation on

the operational level that provided him with the decisive edge in both maneuver and battle.

49 (Ludwig 1940), p. 803 cited in (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 15150 (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 189

17

Blitzkrieg

The importance of planning cannot be stressed enough, for the internal-combustion engine had yet

to be developed and this meant that the logistical network was only partially industrialized. The railroad

could only move goods from Point A to Point B—it could not increase the speed with which supplies and

weapons were loaded into the rail-cars, nor could it devise the most optimum manner in which to pack

them, nor was it capable of transporting the items in question from storage within the depot to the sta-

tion. All of these activities were still largely dependent upon humans and horses for doing the work of

getting the items necessary for modern war onto the trains in the first place. Logistics came to the fore

with the mass army: from July 24 to August 3 1,200 trains passed over nine trunk lines carrying 350,000

troops, 87,000 horses and 8,400 wagons and artillery pieces. Yet, supply problems were quite egre-

gious: after the Battle of Sedan, the Prussian Second Army was subsisting on captured enemy supplies,

even though the railroads assigned to it had rail-cars sitting idle laden with 16,830 tons of provisions,

which would have been sufficient provisions to support the army for nearly a month. The army’s Route

Inspectorate began the campaign with a 2,000-wagon reserve in July, but by mid-October that number

had dwindled to a mere twenty. By the time the Germans reached Paris and successfully invested it,

they were 200 miles from their rail-heads and there was only one operational rail-line since the French

had sabotaged all the others as they withdrew. Fortunately for von Moltke, the French Army of the Sec-

ond Empire was irresolute, poorly armed and poorly lead. 51

At Sedan, he achieved a Kesselschlachen, but, while ultimately successful, the envelopment did not

hit the French like a wave—the envelopment was “progressive” and the flanks were “extended by de-

grees” until the jaws of the encirclement were closed shut, according to von Schleiffen.52

Bewegungskrieg and World War One

51 (Addington 1971), pp. 9-1052 (Scheiffen 1937), p. 87 cited in (Holmes 2003), p. 747

18

Blitzkrieg

It could be argued that Germany waged two distinct wars during the First World War: Stellungskrieg

—“warfare of position”—in the West and Bewegungskrieg in the East. While the Western Front came to

be characterized by the ubiquitous lines of trenches, barbed-wire and suicidal frontal assaults against

these prepared positions which would merely lead to a repeat of Frederick’s debacle at Kolin, only lead-

ing to the infliction of tens of thousands of casualties per side. The trenches, wire, machine gun and

modern artillery had all come together “to rob the front of any vestige of mobility” on the Western

Front, yet, on the eastern front, Bewegungskrieg “began and did not stop.”53

Due to the wide expanses on the eastern front, that would only continue to widen the further the

German Army penetrated into Russia, it was not possible to have deployed adequate forces in sufficient

depth due to the fact that the western front of the First World War was a relatively narrow stretch of

territory, for which both sides had adequate numbers of troops to man every inch of the lines of

trenches and adequate machine guns and artillery to harden the positions against attack. This enabled

the Germans and Austro-Hungarians and the Russians to attempt “vast and daring maneuvers” very

much in keeping with the spirit of the slugging match the Wehrmacht and Red Army would engage in

from 1941-45.54 Yet, the poor state of infrastructure the more east one went from Germany meant that

rapid movements would not be possible, therefore Tannenberg would not be the “magic bullet” that

would end the campaign in the east.55

The Battle of Tannenberg of 1914 was the only series of operations during the war that had any com-

monality between the war that the German General Staff had been planning for and the one it wound

up having to fight.56 The German 8th Army utilized the “excellent”57 East Prussian rail system to stymie

53 (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 22354 Ibid., p. 22355 (Addington 1971), p. 2456 (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 22457 Prittwitz had access to 17 double-track rail-lines, which would have theoretically have moved his army about the theater of operations “every single day of the campaign,” while the Russians had only six rail-lines serving the op-erational area for their 2nd Army. See (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Re-

19

Blitzkrieg

the advance of two Russian armies by out-maneuvering the two slower, less-coordinated Russian

armies, encircling and defeating one at Tannenberg and defeat the second one two weeks later at

Mansurian Lakes. The victory at Tannenberg marked the “only complete Kesselschlacht victory of World

War One.”58

The Russian 1st and 2nd Armies were to locate the main German force (Prittwitz’s 8th Army) and de-

stroy it in a Moltkean operation that was designed for one army to find the Germans and achieve a posi-

tion whereby the Germans would position themselves to be arrayed against this force frontally, while

the other army would Hindenberg from behind and destroy the German 8th Army; then they would ad-

vance on Königsberg, just as the Russians did twice during the Seven Year’s War.

Shortly after the Russians began their campaign, the Russian 1st Army was moving slower than antici-

pated, as the roads, if they are to be called such, “were little more than sandy tracks through dense pine

forests.” The forests forced the Russians to use the poor road network all the more and it shouldn’t be

any surprise that these paths “collapsed under the weight of men, horses and wagons.”59 The move-

ment of the two Russian armies was further hampered by their overreliance upon cavalry, due to each

horse requiring twelve pounds of grain per day whether or not they were seeing any action.60 Addition-

ally, the Russians were transmitting all their orders via telegraph in the clear, a glaring, incompetent

breach of operational security.61

The new commander of 8th Army, Paul von Hindinberg, being able to read the Russians’ mail, knew

that the Russian 2nd Army was dawdling, since there was a “constant” stream of messages from the

Stavka “telling him to hurry.”62 Due to the slow pace of the Russian advance, Hindenberg had plenty of

ich 2005), p. 22558 (Addington 1971), p. 2359 (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 22560 (Jones 1987), p. 30061 (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 22862 Ibid., p. 229

20

Blitzkrieg

time to properly bring his forces together for the decisive battle, while the German 1st Cavalry Division

was assigned to harass the Russian 1st Army, which was advancing ever so slowly, due to having been

attacked several times previously.63 Deprived of any sort of flank protection, the 2nd Russian Army under

Samsonev was easy pickings for the 8th Army and it was surrounded and destroyed: 90,000 Russian sol-

diers surrendered to the Germans.64

A fresh Russian offensive across the Vistula in Autumn 1914 had unnerved the Germans. Hinden-

berg, newly-promoted to to command of all German forces in the eastern theater, sought a typically of-

fensive solution to the problem of defending Silesia: “[w]e had to find the way to his exposed, or merely

slightly protected flank.”65 This meant thrusting towards the gap that had developed between the Rus-

sian 1st and (reconstituted) 2nd Armies from a northerly direction, since they had previously beaten off an

attack from the south.66

The logistical wizardry of this operation is truly spectacular, as the entire German 9th Army (composed

of 18 divisions) was moved by rail over a five day period from the south to the north, leaving only a

weak covering force of “untried units.” In order to protect their now weakened southern flank, the Ger-

mans had destroyed many of the rail lines and bridges as they fell back in the face of the Russian

counter-offensive.67

Both sides at Lodz were working to encircle the other. When the 2nd Army’s position was growing in-

creasingly precarious, Grand Duke Nichols directed 1st Army to provide three divisions to be sent to on

the march to aid 2nd Army, and 5th Army countermarched to attack the German 25th Corps, which now

found itself, instead of working to encircle the Russian 2nd Army found itself encircled by the Russian 5th

63 (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 22964Ibid., p., p. 23065 (Hindenberg 1921), p. 153 cited in (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Re-ich 2005), p. 23266 (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 23267 Ibid., p. 233

21

Blitzkrieg

and the three divisions provided by the Russian 1st. The 25th Corps broke out of its encirclement by orga-

nizing itself into “a huge, concentrated phalanx” that launched an attack in a “totally unexpected direc-

tion to the northeast” and slammed into a “barely deployed” corps, overran it, broke out of the encir-

clement and wheeled back to the safety of friendly lines and took up its former place in the line. The

men of the corps had marched and engaged the enemy for nine days without rest.68 Neither the Ger-

mans nor the Russians were able to achieve a decisive victory due to the difficulties inherent in wielding

effective command and control over mass armies: 250,000 men in the case of the Germans and 600,000

in the case of the Russians.

The Legacy of Versailles

In several respects, the Treaty of Versailles forced the new Reichswehr to innovate for the Treaty

placed serious restrictions upon the military such as seriously limiting its strength and equipment, there-

fore the Reichswehr had to get the most out of what it did possess and engage in covert efforts to cir-

cumvent the Treaty. The new Truppenamt (Troop Office), the newly-formed replacement for the out-

lawed General Staff, set about studying what had went wrong in the prior conflict; out of this soul-

searching came works such as Rommel’s Attacks and Guderian’s Achtung! Panzer, though both were

published in the mid-thirties when the Weimar Republic and Truppenamt had ceased to exist, replaced

by the Third Reich and the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH, Army High Command), respectively.

The Truppenamt’s analysis of the First World War up to the First Battle of the Marne “did not chal-

lenge the Schleiffen view that total victory had been possible” and “it assumed that technical failure, not

faulty strategy or doctrine, was the chief cause of the initial defeat” and that the failure seemed due to

failures to “interfere with French mobilization,” redeployment and inappreciation given to armies whose

68 (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 234

22

Blitzkrieg

primary means of movement is by the foot or hoof have limits of speed upon them for conducting encir-

clement maneuvers.69 Doesn’t this admission indicate a doctrinal failure in the belief that foot-infantry

and horse-cavalry would be regularly capable of encircling an enemy mass army? Due to the prohibi-

tion of Germany fielding a mass army, this lead the Truppenamt to “place emphasis on speed and ma-

neuver” and served as a catalyst which attracted German planners towards mobile operations.

General Hans von Seeckt wished to emphasize several future demands: increased mobility via “the

fullest possible use” of the internal-combustion engine that would aid with mobility of combat units and

to improve the logistical efficiency and rapid mobilization.70 He was unimpressed with the so-called

“lessons of World War One” such as “the invulnerability of entrenched infantry, the futility of infantry

assault, the omnipresence of the machine gun.” He had personally borne witness to the 2nd Guards divi-

sion seize fifty-three enemy positions during the 1915 Gorlice campaign “through the skillful use” of

bringing adequate firepower to bear and movement.71 Seeckt held to the belief that mass armies were

“anachronistic” and that while these armies had increased in size, they had suffered a corresponding de-

crease in effectiveness. The army he saw as embodying the future only had to be large enough only to

deter and, if necessary, fight-off a surprise attack; its strength would be focused upon mobility due to a

large body of cavalry, light machine guns and a “full complement of motorized and/or mechanized

units.” 72 This mobility would allow for battles of annhialation, while French doctrine was thinking of fu-

ture warfare “in terms of static positions . . . and stalemate.” In a 1928 article, Seeckt wrote that “de-

struction of the enemy army . . . is still the highest goal of war.”73

69 (Addington 1971), p. 2970 (Addington 1971), p. 3071 (Citino, The Path to Blitzkrieg: Doctrine and Training in the German Army, 1920-39 2008), p. 972 (Citino, The Path to Blitzkrieg: Doctrine and Training in the German Army, 1920-39 2008), p. 973 (Seeckt 1935), p. 56 cited in (Citino, The Path to Blitzkrieg: Doctrine and Training in the German Army, 1920-39 2008), p. 10

23

Blitzkrieg

It isn’t that attacking entrenched infantry was impossible, rather, what was impossible was launching

assaults frontally upon a prepared position against defenders who wielded considerable firepower—a

mistake from which Frederick learned from, then repeated with similarly bloody results and his succes-

sors in the First World War attacking repeatedly with nothing to show for it save a mountain of corpses,

due to moving the schwehrpunct from the military-plane and attempting to translate it to the psycholog-

ical, which explains Falkenhayn’s rationale for the Battle of Verdun,74 which only succeeded in bleeding

both the French and German armies with the Germans having nothing to show for it. Similar casualties

for both sides is not a victory, it is merely a restoration of the status quo as both armies are still at the

same ratio of personnel after the battle as before.

Von Seeckt convened “57 subcommittees and countless sub-committees totaling some 400 officers”

with each committee being responsible for drafting “a concise study, the purpose of which was to an-

swer four fundamental questions” which were

“1. What new situations arose in the war that had not been considered before the war?

2. How effective were our pre-war views in dealing with the above situations?

3. What new guidelines have been developed from the use of new weaponry in the war?

4. Which new problems put forward by the war have yet been found?”75

Seeckt was not willing to dismiss the cavalry as an anachronism, but he did recognize that its role

would be far more limited than it had been. The age of the tactical cavalry-charge was over, but he still

believed that cavalry was still capable of effective maneuver, and that the development of aircraft and

armored vehicles would serve as an adjunct of the cavalry, to provide additional reconnaissance and

support capabilities.76 In other words, the purpose of the tank was merely to support the cavalry, not to

act independently and replace the cavalry in the shock and pursuit roles. While it is correct for Seeckt to

have stressed cooperation between all arms, he was not quite able to fully embrace the potential of the

74 (Herwig 1994), p. 26975 (Corum 1992), p. 37 cited in (Gukeisen 2005), p. 1076 (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 10

24

Blitzkrieg

new weapons for the full transformative impact they could have upon the battlefield. All Hans von Seekt

managed to do was plant the seeds of the idea of Blitzkrieg, but it would fall to others to water the seed,

care for the sapling and help it grow into a mighty tree.

From 1921-23, Seeckt reviewed and issued an “almost dizzying succession” of tactical manuals which

included a manual on combined-arms warfare, field fortifications, one for the infantry, one for the

artillery, the rifle squad, the signal service and the machine gun section.77

Seeckt was more interested in stressing combined-arms as the keys to victory over mechanization.78

He stressed the initiative of individual commanders and was not seeking to bind them within a rigid

doctrine. The Stosstrupp tactics of 1918 were formally incorporated into Reichswehr doctrine; the attack

was to advance as a torrent of “independent but interconnected teams”, relying on firepower and the

concealing power of the natural terrain for protection, with the objective of seeking out the flanks of the

enemy and penetrating into his positions, thereby “fusing past wisdom with present knowledge, and thus

readying the German Army for its future rebirth.”

Lessons From World War One: Rommel and Guderian

The German General Staff was planning for what came to be known as the First World War as Bewe-

gungskrieg, as exemplified by the deep operational penetrations called for in the strategic plan designed

by General Count Alfred von Schleiffen. Yet, while the General Staff was aiming for feats of operational

daring that would have made Napoleon envious, they failed to take into account the pace of technologi-

cal change that had taken place in the world since 1893, particularly of the considerable firepower that

the machine gun gave to infantry. In the initial combat engagements they write about, Guderian and

Rommel both mention the heavy casualties German forces sustained due to heavy enemy fire at both

77 (Citino, The Path to Blitzkrieg: Doctrine and Training in the German Army, 1920-39 2008), pp. 11-1278 Ibid., p.12

25

Blitzkrieg

Haelen and Bleid.79 Even before the agony of the trenches came into being, with wave after wave of

men being ordered “over the top,” the machine gun had proven its ability to inhibit rapid maneuver

upon the modern battlefield.

Haelen also laid bare the uselessness of cavalry in the face of accurate, high-volume and concen-

trated small-arms fire; the four German cavalry regiments that participated in the operation had lost 24

officers, 468 men and 843 horses. Guderian ascribes these high losses to flawed German cavalry doc-

trine which stressed that cavalry primarily fight from horse-back and that the authors of German cavalry

doctrine were “hankering after the great cavalry battles of the past,” and in so doing, “brush[ed] aside

all intervening [technological] developments.” Guderian goes on to quote von Schleiffen, and the Chief

of the General Staff effectively wrote-off cavalry as belonging to a bygone era.80 Guderian was also criti-

cal of the High Command’s failure to make adequate use of aerial reconnaissance and how command of

aerial resources was placed with army and corps headquarters, which lead to the receipt of only a spo-

radic and incomplete view as to the disposition of the enemy.81

At Bleid, Rommel and his platoon faced a “heavy fog” that limited visibility to “fifty to eighty yards.”82

While Rommel certainly did lead his men with care through the fog, his mind was clearly focused upon

the establishment and maintenance of contact with the enemy for the purposes of the attack. In this

battle, Rommel demonstrated a quality that would be with him throughout his whole military career: “a

readiness to act, rather than to wait, to attack at once and in person rather than make a prudent plan

and form up appropriate forces.”83 Certainly, these instincts could serve a platoon commander very

well, but what about a divisional, corps or army commander? Such qualities in an operational –level

79 For the action at Haelen see (Guderian, Achtung - Panzer! 1995) pp. 26-31; for the action at Bleid see (Rommel, Attacks 1979) pp. 8-1680 (Guderian, Achtung - Panzer! 1995), pp. 30-31, 3381 (Guderian, Achtung - Panzer! 1995), p. 3382 (Rommel, Attacks 1979), p. 883 (Fraser 1995), p. 28

26

Blitzkrieg

commander could lead to great problems upon the battlefield, such as, most notably, being out of con-

tact with one’s staff, due to the commander always riding with the most forward leading elements of a

division or personally “rounding up every can of [gasoline]” that he could locate and personally ferrying

them out to an artillery unit that had been rendered immobile and incapable of participating in an as-

sault.84

Yet, this notion of continually attacking and pursuing the enemy had a proud tradition in German mil-

itary culture, for it “was the Prussian way” and the “Prussian officer was expected to attack,” for “Fred-

erick the Great has stated on numerous occasions, the Prussian army always attack[s].” 85

As Rommel learned, fog can hamper an attacker and support a defender, for the fog blinds the at-

tacker and provides a natural means of concealment to the defender, who doesn’t need to be able to

lay-down accurate fire in order to pin-down and suppress the attacker. In an urban environment, fog

will greatly aid a dug-in enemy in this regard, as every dwelling has the potential to be turned into a

fortress. Rommel planned to counter this ability of the enemy’s by burning straw to compel enemy

troops to come out of hiding. It should come as no surprise that Lieutenant Rommel chose to seize this

troublesome farmhouse in a pincers-attack, so that the defenders would be encircled to be bring about

their capitulation or annhialation.86

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote that the lowest realization of warfare is to attack the cities of the

enemy.87 In his observations on the action at Bleid, Rommel is in agreement and states that attacks on

urban areas “should be avoided whenever possible” due to the inevitably high rate of casualties for the

attacker. His principal means of neutralizing a village would be to concentrate upon the use of machine

guns, mortars and other small-arms to pin-down and suppress the defenders; the purpose of this would

84 (Fraser 1995), p. 234-3585 (Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich 2005), p. 15986 (Rommel, Attacks 1979), p. 1087 (Sun-Tsu 1994), p. 177

27

Blitzkrieg

be to draw the enemy out of his prepared positions so that he could be successfully engaged “outside

the village or town”88 for “[o]nce contact with the enemy has been made, movement is generally para-

lyzed by hostile fire.”89 Rommel’s tactical solution to the problem was first, to avoid an engagement in

the vicinity of the urban area if at all possible; if battle must be given, the commitment of direct and in-

direct fire support must be sufficient to ensure the freedom of movement of the attacking infantry.

For both Guderian and Rommel the issue was one of freeing the infantry to be able to maneuver as

reasonably as possible upon the modern battlefield. Guderian was seeking a technical solution to this

fundamental problem, while Rommel was seeking to identify tactical solutions: using the weapons at-

hand far more wisely then they had been used in the Great War. But both of them were focused upon

regaining Bewegungskrieg, thereby outright rejecting the notion that positional warfare, complete with

its lines of trenches, barbed-wire and machine guns, had made maneuver all but impossible.

“Defense was mechanized; attack was not.” 90 The tools of the mature Industrial Revolution—the

railroad and the internal combustion engine—had greatly improved the speed within which reserves

could be moved about sectors of a given front to provide reinforcements at decisive points; the points at

which major offensives were going to be launched become obvious due to artillery bombardments that

could stretch on for days or even, weeks. Both of these facts strengthened the power of the defense by

making enemy intentions blatantly obvious to the defender.

In order to overcome these problems, an attacker needed to be able to have its front-line forces ca-

pable of moving as rapidly, if not more so, than the capabilities of the enemy’s transportation infrastruc-

ture to support the deployment and employment of reserves. If an attacker’s forces were capable of

moving faster than the defender could react, hopefully the initiative would not slip from the attacker’s

88 (Rommel, Attacks 1979), p. 1689 (Guderian, Panzer Leader 1996), pp. 40-4190 A.J.P. Taylor, The First World War (1963) quoted in (Wintle 1989), p. 304

28

Blitzkrieg

grasp, thereby enabling him to dictate the ebb and flow of the conduct and tempo of operations. Only

through the use of superior mobility and firepower could the attacker hope to stop or disrupt the timely

arrival of enemy reserves, and thereby cause any hope of an enemy counter-offensive at the operational

level to be still-born. Yet, “at the time of the [First World] [W]ar engine-powered offensive weapons

were in their infancy “91 and were not capable of being used to their maximum potential to turn the war

of attrition along the Western Front to a war of maneuver.

In Attacks, Rommel is consistently mentioning the need for firepower92 at the platoon and battalion

level, yet he only confines his calls to ensuring sufficient numbers of machine guns, mortars and other

infantry weapons are readily available to be able to suppress the enemy. But this is because his work is

not theoretical in nature, for Rommel wrote Attacks partially as a memoir and partially to impart doctri-

nal advice to German infantry officers in the present based upon his experiences. Unlike Guderian,

Rommel was not calling for the creation of a new branch of the service and doctrine to solve the Stel-

lungkrieg problem. This is not to insinuate that Erwin Rommel was unimaginative, for one was not pro-

moted to Generalfeldmarschal in the German Army without being able to think outside of the box.

Therefore, it is unsurprising that Rommel makes no mention of the potential of the airplane or of the

tank, rather he was simply interested in providing the infantry with more firepower, not in making this

additional firepower highly mobile via gasoline-powered machinery, but that doesn’t mean that Rommel

was not quick to recognize the potential of the tank.93

In regards to command, control and communications (C3) both Rommel and Guderian are cognizant

of its importance. Rommel writes for the need for adequate C3 on several occasions94, as does Gude-

rian95. Rommel’s concerns are predominantly confined to preventing friendly-fire, mainly from friendly

91 (Guderian, Achtung - Panzer! 1995), p. 13092 (Rommel, Attacks 1979), pp. 16, 25, 34-35, 40, 46, 55, 72 -73, 83-84, 106, 114, 121, 132, 154, 186, 197-98, 249-5093 94 (Rommel, Attacks 1979), pp. 24, 35, 46, 89, 10695 (Guderian, Achtung - Panzer! 1995), pp. 188-98

29

Blitzkrieg

artillery not being aware of the positions of friendly infantry and unknowingly opening fire on them,

which is exactly where the focus of a junior infantry officer should be regarding liason with the artillery.

Guderian treats C3 in a far more sustained fashion due to the fact that his work is concerned with far

more than providing improved infantry tactics for the next war. Guderian stresses C3 right from the start

by laying out the division of labor required for a tank crew: the driver is responsible for both driving the

tank and performance of basic maintenance and repairs and of close cooperation with the gunner to en-

sure that the ride is smooth to allow for the easiest ability of achieving a targeting solution. In a two-

man Panzer, the gunner was also the commander of the vehicle. The tank commander coordinates the

activities of the entire crew, works the signals and radio equipment and ensures that his individual tank

is properly coordinated with the company his vehicle is subordinated to in the chain-of-command.96

In laying-out a hypothetical assault97, Guderian stresses communication between a combined-arms

battlegroup practically immediately when discussing the threat posed by mines and how combat engi-

neers would need to be capable of accompanying the first assault wave and of keeping pace with them

to ensure mine-fields are neutralized as expeditiously as possible. 98 Naturally, sufficiently miniaturized

radios are a prerequisite for the necessary coordination between the combat engineers and the other

arms of the battlegroup to ensure that all efforts, including direct and indirect aerial or artillery support,

is as closely coordinated as possible in order to reduce friendly fire and achieve maximum combat effi-

ciency.

The key assets of a Panzer division are its tanks and other vehicles, thusly, they must be protected; in

order to do so, enemy anti-tank guns must be neutralized and Guderian suggests several tactical solu-

tions: a tank firing upon the enemy emplacement from behind cover or launching a mass armor assault

and seize the guns by a coup de main, suppression of the positions via artillery or machine gun fire, or by

96 (Guderian, Achtung - Panzer! 1995), pp. 174-7697 (Guderian, Achtung - Panzer! 1995), pp. 178-8498 (Guderian, Achtung - Panzer! 1995), p. 178-79

30

Blitzkrieg

utilizing smoke to obscure the gunner’s field of vision.99 These tactics are not mutually exclusive and can

be pursued simultaneously, as they should be to maximize the suppression of any potential counter-at-

tack and to sew feelings of powerlessness in the minds of the enemy. Breaking through a defensive line

is one thing, but breaking the will of the enemy to fight is something altogether different, and, in the

long run, far more significant since equipment losses, provided one’s industrial base and raw-material

base remains intact, can always be made good on, but how does one regain the will to fight? A materi-

ally-weak army can always regain its strength, but a psychologically-crippled one that has lost the will to

fight and is no longer capable of offering resistance to an aggressor has been vanquished.

Since new defensive lines could always be reconstituted further back, it is important for the momen-

tum of the advance to be maintained, so as to prevent even the preliminary work on such a defensive

position from beginning. Leading elements must be strong and robust enough to maintain the pursuit

and keep up the pressure upon the retreating enemy. It would be the duty of the advancing break-

through force to destroy the enemy artillery and engage enemy armor before they could be used to

counter-attack. The success of the breakthrough hinges upon preventing enemy armored reserves from

being brought into action upon the point of breakthrough; if this is not accomplished, “the breakthrough

has failed.” 100

With the destruction of enemy reserve anti-tank and tank units, the way would be clear for the com-

bined-arms kampfgruppe to continue further into enemy territory, thereby widening and deepening the

bulge in the enemy’s front with the intention of seeking-out enemy assembly areas and headquarters. If

this exploitation phase does not occur “the battle will end as it usually ended in the [First] World War,

with a bloody and costly breakthrough that often left the attacker . . . in a salient with vulnerable

flanks”101 that would prove to be disastrous tactical situation. This is why “the entire depth of the en-

99 (Guderian, Achtung - Panzer! 1995), p. 179100 (Guderian, Achtung - Panzer! 1995), p. 179-80101 (Guderian, Achtung - Panzer! 1995), p. 180

31

Blitzkrieg

emy defense” has to be brought under “simultaneous attack”102 in order to inhibit the ability of the en-

emy to identify the schwehrpunct of the attacker, by overloading his headquarters with reports of units

coming under varying intensities of air, artillery or ground attack along the whole front or a large portion

of it, since in order to mount a successful counter-attack, the enemy commander needs to have an ade-

quate picture of the main point of enemy attack and the disposition of his own forces in order to be

aware of what forces can be brought to bear upon the principal focus of the enemy attack. Blitzkrieg

sought “an attack of such stunning range and rapidity as to confound every attempt at resistance.”103

In order for envelopments to take place and for Schleiffen’s dream of a modern Cannae to be

achieved several factors were of critical importance: mobility, concentration and surprise since it was ex-

tremely important to envelop the enemy “before [he] realized what was happening or do anything to

prevent it.”104 Fortunately, Prussia-Germany has always excelled at mobility and concentration and, if a

Prussian-German army were to attack a foe from an unexpected sector or direction, surprise is achieved,

as this paper has argued and the historical record has revealed.

Blitzkrieg in Practice: Case Yellow

In his characteristic impatience, Adolf Hitler wished to see operations against France kick-off as soon

as possible after the defeat of Poland. On October 22, 1939, Hitler specified a start date for operations

against France to commence on November 12.105 The initial plan, and the plan that Germany would

have gone to war with in Western Europe if that start date hadn’t been moved back for a variety of rea-

sons would not have resulted in a decisive victory,106 for the plan “lacked organizational depth” and pos-

102 (Guderian, Panzer Leader 1996), p. 180103 (Holmes 2003), p. 758104 (Justrow 1933), pp. 258 cited in (Holmes 2003), p. 758105 (May 2000), p. 218106 See (May 2000), pp. 228-231 for a series of maps which show how the plans evolved

32

Blitzkrieg

sessed inadequate reserves.107 Hitler was informed that the most likely prognosis for the plan was fail-

ure due to “overwhelming opposition”108 from Allied forces, for German striking-power would have col-

lided head-on with the most mobile elements of the Allied militaries due to the German schwehrpunct

being focused upon central Belgium, and the Allied Dyle-Plan109 stipulated the deployment of the most

mobile elements of the French Army and the British Expeditionary Force in the same sector; the result

being a frontal assault and, should the initial break-through effort fail, Stellungkrieg and a repeat of

1914-18 in Flanders. The key to avoiding this needless clash was to proceed with a bold operational

stroke which would outmaneuver the most mobile portions of the Allied forces without them even real-

izing they were being outflanked until it was too late to react.

German forces were qualitatively inferior to the Allies in virtually every respect: the Germans were

outnumbered nearly 2:1 in heavy artillery, the Allies possessed about 1,000 more tanks than the Ger-

mans and the Allied air forces outnumbered the Luftwaffe by nearly 1,000 aircraft.110 Clearly, the Ger-

mans had to avoid a battle of attrition, and they did so brilliantly, albeit with much resistance from the

more conservative elements of the officer corps.

Manstein ultimately prevailed it getting the schwehrpunct moved south opposite the Ardennes For-

est in Luxembourg, due to his belief that Allied forces could have withdrawn to the River Somme and es-

tablished a strong defensive position,111 therefore Manstein saw it as essential to decide the campaign in

Belgium and that meant having a strong, mobile force capable of severing the lines of communication of

enemy forces in Belgium by striking through the Ardennes, driving onto the River Meuse and from there

to the French channel ports. Manstein maintained that the current plans would have only meant a se-

107 (Cooper 1990), p. 196108 ibid., p. 196109 See ibid., p. 297 for a map110 (Freiser 1996), pp. 44-45, 57 cited in (Jersak 2000), p. 567111 (Manstein 1994), p. 101

33

Blitzkrieg

ries of frontal attacks112, which would have slowed down the pace of the attack, and possibly have ulti-

mately robbed it of all forward momentum. It would be common sense for the Allies to expect the

schwehrpunct of the German attack to come through Belgium, since the Maginot Line prohibited any

contemplation of an assault across the Rhine as had occurred in the Franco-Prussian War.

Case Yellow could be termed as the prototypical Blitzkrieg campaign because it destroyed the offen-

sive portion of the Allied armies in a massive Kesselschlacht and totally paralyzed the ability of the Allied

command to properly react to the situation. The French were hit along a region of frontage—the Ar-

dennes—that they believed to be impassable; as such, the troops that were in that sector were both in-

sufficient in number and unprepared psychologically to bear the full brunt of the Panzers of Army Group

A and stand much of a chance of blunting the advance. While the mechanized, combustion-engine pro-

pelled means by which this victory was accomplished were new, the doctrinal principles to which the

tanks and aircraft were subordinated to were time-tested over the centuries in a series of wars.

In this campaign, Guderian and Rommel were both participants, the former as a corps commander

and the latter in command of the 7th Panzer Division. While Guderian favored mass, Rommel f used his

forces “as if they were commando elements” and favored “slash-and-thrust tactics.”113 The difference is

striking, as Guderian would be looking at things mainly from an operational perspective, while Rommel,

attached to Hermann Hoth’s Panzer corps was viewing the situation through a more tactical lens, since

by viewing his force as commando elements, this placed stress upon the individual small units, not the

mass of the division.

Ultimately, 7th Panzer became known as the “Ghost Division” because no one—not the Allies and not

the German High Command—knew where it was because Rommel was incommunicato due to always

being in the vanguard of his division, usually with the leading company. He was therefore not working

112 Ibid., p. 101113 (May 2000), p. 422

34

Blitzkrieg

to ensure that his division was advancing in a coordinated fashion with its neighbors or its own units,

thereby opening up the dangerous potential for a riposte that could have run the chance of cutting-off

his lines of communication and mauling his strewn-out division. Fortunately for Rommel, French dither-

ing, indecisiveness and general ineptitude in the person of Genralissimo Maurice Gamelin and the vast

majority of Gamelin’s subordinates kept such a danger from materializing.

As has been previously indicated, Rommel believed in always having weapons at the ready and

preferably having them firing towards the enemy as soon as they were in range, since he was steadfastly

rooted to the offensive. Rommel had written that he had “found again and again that in encounter ac-

tions, the day goes to the side that is the first to plaster its opponent with fire” and that “machine-guns

must be kept at the ready to open fire the instant an enemy shot is heard” and if the exact position of

the enemy is not known, “fire simply must be sprayed over enemy-held territory.” This will help to re-

duce friendly casualties.114 Given the military tradition Rommel was a part of, such sentiments should

hardy be surprising. This action allowed 7th Panzer to make an unopposed crossing of the Semois River,

as the French commander concluded he would be out-gunned by the oncoming Germans. Then it was

onto the Meuse.115

In the north, the Belgian Plane would bear witness to the first major tank-on-tank battle in history, as

Erich Hoepner’s Panzer corps sought to secure Gembleaux and for this operation, Hoepner had at his

disposal the Third and Fourth Panzer Divisions, which were “some of the best units” in terms of both

training and equipment in the Panzerwaffe.116 The primary threat to them would come from a French

cavalry corps reinforced with two armored divisions. Yet the 8th Corps of the Luftwaffe would stand

ready to support the two Panzer divisions with considerable firepower provided by hundreds of fighters

and dive-bombers. The French commander, Prioux, could only count on a small number of the 140

114 (Rommel, The Rommel Papers 1953), p. 7115 (May 2000), p. 423116 (Gunsburg 1992), p. 210

35

Blitzkrieg

fighter aircraft of the Armee de l’air. 117 The German advance was held up for 5.5 hours due to receiving

orders that had diverted portions of the corps to aid in the taking of Liege, “poor march discipline and, in

particular by repeated enemy bombing.”118 Despite all of this, the 3rd Panzer Division made it across the

Meuse. Before 4th Panzer could get across the river, the 3rd had to do so; it was fortunate that the

French did not choose to counter-attack during this night, for 3rd Panzer would have been highly vulnera-

ble to counter-attack being split into two separate parts by the Meuse.119 While the French Air Force

was busily pounding away at Hoeppner’s corps, word was apparently not passed on to Prioux as to the

location of the Germans. 4th Panzer advanced towards Hannut and the division ran out of fuel and had

to request an air-drop for the combat elements capable of action, as much of the logistical “tail” of the

division still had yet to get across the Meuse in sufficient strength.120 With Guderian, Rheinhardt and

Hoth’s corps crossing the Meuse in the Sedan sector, the air forces Prioux had at his disposal were

stripped from his cavalry corps. Limited French forces were committed in order to hold back 4th Panzer’s

combat forces, instead of launching a decisive attack to destroy the Germans.

Hoepner was facing French forces of unknown strength, yet still chose to proceed with the assault to-

wards Gembloux on May 13. Gunsberg chalks this up to “arrogance” on Hoepner’s part, when the more

apt description should be German military tradition, rather than arrogance as Hoepner would depend

upon “our own superior leadership and battle strength.” While the 4th Panzer regrouped and resupplied

and the 3rd moved up it would fall to the Luftwaffe and corps artillery.121 Then an attack with both

Panzer divisions proceeded with a concentrated German force.

Case Yellow also marked considerable improvisation. Due to the commitment of German airborne

forces in the Netherlands and Belgium, especially to seize the bridges over the Albert Canal, these forces

117 (Gunsburg 1992), p. 213, 211118 (Gunsburg 1992), p. 216119 (Gunsburg 1992), p. 216120 Ibid., p. 221121 Ibid., p. 227

36

Blitzkrieg

were not available to aid the Panzers of Army Group A in securing crossing points for the rivers ahead of

their area of responsibility, since the advance of Guderian’s Panzers was being slowed by numerous

traffic jams. Reichsmarshal Göring showed considerably unusual creativity in providing Guderian with

help for this problem: one hundred Fiesler Storch’s, which would be capable of carrying two men each

to aid in securing endangered crossing points where Luftwaffe aerial reconnaissance and ground-based

reconnaissance showed the presence of enemy forces that could fortify the crossing points or destroy

them. This enterprising use of air transport capacity allowed 400 German troops to arrive at positions

just in time to block the lead units of the French 9th Army, thereby presenting the French with the very

problem those French forces would have been able to inflict upon Guderian’s forces had the French

gotten to those positions first. German forces even created ad-hoc “road closed” signs to further con-

fuse and discourage the French.122

The fact that Guderian and Reinhardt’s armor was able to advance as quickly as it did through the Ar-

dennes was due to another feet of logistical improvisation: General Kurt Zietzler, who would be ap-

pointed Chief of the General Staff after Hitler’s relief of Franz Halder, devised a solution to keep all the

vehicles—1,222 tanks, 545 other tracked vehicles and 39,333 trucks and cars—supplied with adequate

fuel. Trucks would move ahead of the main body and drop cans of fuel and rations at the points where

it was anticipated the vehicles would be running low on fuel, yet this did nothing to alleviate the fact

that these 41,000 vehicles could only use four roads, it just meant there gas tanks would be filled.123

Reinhardt’s corps had encountered problems in its approach to the Meuse, for the axis for its ad-

vance was but a single road down which vehicles could only advance single-file. He also had to contend

with far more tenacious resistance than Rommel had and the terrain placed considerable strain on his

Panzers, even the medium Mark III’s and IV’s.124

122 (May 2000), p. 421123 (May 2000), p. 418124 (May 2000), p. 424-25

37

Blitzkrieg

Despite all of these logistical difficulties, the Wehrmacht pulled-off a victory because of the narrow

confines of the battlefront, which allowed for the Luftwaffe to exert its tactical air-support doctrine to

truly achieve operational impact and aerial supremacy over the important Ardennes region and tie-

down enemy reserves and provide reconaissance just as Guderian envisioned. Additionally, the relative

confines of the battle-space meant that these German supply problems, while serious, were not truly

catastrophic to the outcome of the campaign.

Blitzkrieg and Russia

As had been demonstrated with the French campaign, logistical difficulties are the Achilles’ Heal of

Blitzkrieg, and the problems would be magnified several-fold on the Eastern Front. The vast distances of

the Soviet Union meant that the logistical demands placed upon the Wehrmacht would be considerable,

and, unlike it France, the discrepancy of speed between the foot-infantry, the horse and the Panzers

would pose much difficulty. In France, the infantry was advancing mere hours behind the infantry at

most, but along the expanses of the Eastern Front, the hours of France turned into days regarding the

time it would take for the infantry to catch-up to the armor.

The element of surprise—no matter if the level under consideration is the strategic, operational or

tactical—requires access to a modern transportation network capable of supporting the advance of the

mechanized portion of the army. European Russia simply lacked these bits of modernity that Central

and Western Europeans took for granted. While Army Group Center engaged in a series of dual-envel-

opment operations and smaller Kesselschlachen operations from the commencement of the campaign

on June 22, 1941, these early successes should not come as any sort of surprise given that the Germans

were starting-off from start-lines that had been well-provisioned in the months leading up to the com-

mencement of operations, there were adequate numbers of airfields built by combat engineers to sup-

38

Blitzkrieg

port the Luftwaffe, weather conditions were reasonable, and the Russian military had no idea of what

was about to befall them.

We must now make mention of someone who has been largely absent from the narrative thus far:

Adolf Hitler. His needless meddling before and during the course of the campaign was to have a delete-

rious impact upon the course of operations. The plan for the invasion of the Soviet Union had gone

through several drafts, and, while Hitler’s interjections into the French campaign, such as adopting

Manstein’s “sickle-stroke” plan, were for the better, in the East they would be for the worse. Hitler dou-

bled the number of Panzer divisions from 10 to 21, yet the number of serviceable tanks had risen only

by a quarter. Hitler did want to boost production of tanks from 800 to 1,000 units per month, but he

was informed that doing so would be very costly both in marks and personnel; he relented on increasing

tank production, but did not countermand his decision of increasing the number of Panzer divisions,

which weakened the Panzerwaffe across the board. In May 1940, the most powerful Panzer division in

the Wehrmacht had 300 tanks; by June 1941, that number had slipped to 199.125 After 200 miles of a

continuous advance, a Panzer division may have suffered 50 percent attrition in terms of its armor in the

course of operations; under the prior establishment of a Panzer division, this still would have left the di-

visional commander with an entire regiment, yet the changes instituted by Hitler meant that this divi-

sion would in fact be depleted to 25 percent of the strength of a 1939 Panzer division.126 The majority of

the Panzer divisions had only 160 tanks in 1941.127

German motorized and Panzer formations were also going to face additional problems due to insuffi-

cient stocks of domestically-produced transport.128

125 (Cooper 1990), p. 276126 (Perrett 1983), p. 124127 (Cooper 1990), p. 276128 (Cooper 1990), p. 276 mentions how “[c]aptured foreign transport entirely equipped one panzer division” and noting that the army had a shortage of tires and motor oil; with General Eduard Wagner, the Chief Quartermaster of OKW, making further dire predictions: fuel reserves would be exhausted by Autumn. See also (Murray 2001), p. 113 on which he states that over half of the front-line Wehrmacht divisions to take part in Barbarossa were either

39

Blitzkrieg

Army Group Center made good progress, but then Stalin had made it a lot easier by insisting that Red

Army forces take-up positions at the new Soviet-German border, thereby abandoning the Stalin line.

Stalin’s desire for as far forward of a deployment as possible played right to the strengths of German

doctrine. While several Russian commanders knew the invasion was coming and sought to take

counter-measures, they were still “surprised by the crushing blow of the assault” against their “vulnera-

bly deployed” army. 129 The critical flaw in Soviet Doctrine appears to be the belief that the invader

would not be fully mobilized and concentrated before the outbreak of hostilities and that this would af-

ford the USSR the time it needed to mobilize. It was believed that a “significant” time period would

elapse between the commencement of fighting and the engagement of large bodies of troops.130 Yet,

“some Soviet military analysts” understood that Blitzkrieg depended upon the “deployment of the bulk

of the armed forces for the initial assault,”131 which negates Soviet doctrine as to what the “Initial pe-

riod” of war would look like.

This explains how Army Groups North, Center and South were able to make such rapid progress

against the Red Army in the initial weeks of the campaign. Components of Army Group Center waged a

successive string of battles which lead to the capture of hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners in

the encirclement battles at Bialystock-Minsk132, Smolensk133, Guderian’s participation in the Kiev134 encir-

clement after being temporarily detatched to Rundstedt’s Army Group South and Vyazma-Bryansk135.

Yet, the Russian army was still always capable of withdrawing deeper into the interior. Therefore, cap-

turing the “main body” of the enemy opposite them was something that always eluded Bock’s army

group. This wasn’t going to be like France where once the Germans reached and crossed a single river

using foreign equipment of some sort or other or suffering from shortages.129 (Roberts 1995), p. 1293130 Ibid., p. 1301131 Ibid., p. 1309132 Surrendered on 3 July, yielding 290,000 prisoners, 2,585 tanks and 1,449 guns. See (Perrett 1983), p. 131 133 Surrendered August 8, yielding 185,000 prisoners, 2,030 tanks and 1,918 guns. See (Perrett 1983), p. 132134 Surrendered September 26, yielding 665,000 prisoners, 900 tanks and 3,719 guns. See (Perrett 1983), p. 133135 Surrendered October 20, yielding 663,000 prisoners, 1,242 tanks and 5,412 guns. See (Perrett 1983), p. 134

40

Blitzkrieg

(the Meuse) the enemy forces to their north— the mobile forces of the enemy—were as good as in the

bag due to the limited size of the theater.

The Eastern Front would stretch on seemingly forever, and, looking at the map, the farther east the

Wehrmacht progressed, the wider the north-south axis of the front would become, thereby diluting any

schwehrpunct as the previously concentrated forces would have to naturally dilute that concentration to

maintain a contiguous front. Therefore, the farther the Germans advanced, the more diluted their com-

bat power would become, and this was especially true of Army Group Center, which didn’t have the

benefit of a narrow front, friendly locals in the Baltic States, and allied support like Army Group North

could enjoy, nor did it have the mighty Don River to offer natural flank protection such as Army Group

South could have enjoyed after the capture of Kiev. To quote Don Rumsfeld, Army Group Center would

face a “long, hard slog” that would demand Herculian efforts from its men, horses and machines.

Germany’s Panzer commanders were an impatient lot, who did not wish to be sitting around idle

waiting for the infantry armies to catch up to them. Guderian and Hoth wanted to maintain the mo-

mentum that their Panzer Groups had achieved and continue the pursuit of the Red Army and essen-

tially, one could imagine, as modern-day JEB Stuarts. This would have been all well and good if they

were commanders of actual cavalry units, but they had tanks, trucks and other engine-driven equipment

that required gasoline to operate; unfortunately, gasoline doesn’t grow in the ground like grass, not to

mention if they encountered strong enemy forces would they burn-through their stores of ammunition?

A Panzer group rendered immobile by lack of fuel yet still capable of shooting at the enemy is only half

as good as a Panzer group capable of full mobility, but both are infinitely superior to a Panzer group

starved of both fuel and munitions, which is entirely useless. This is even before considering where the

nearest airfield(s) capable of supporting JU-52 transports would have been to have the potential of

forming an “air-bridge” to keep the forces of the Panzer commanders supplied. This also meant that air-

41

Blitzkrieg

fields that had been captured by the advancing armor would have had to have units left behind to de-

fend them, thereby decreasing the combat power and mobility of the Panzer divisions, something that

Guderian would have found unacceptable, since it was the duty of the foot-infantry to hold ground,

since they were incapable of supporting the breakthrough beyond the range of their rifles.

Army Group Center contained two of the four Panzer Groups deployed for the campaign and two in-

fantry armies. Fedor von Bock’s objective was Moscow, yet the state of the infrastructure of the Soviet

Union between his jumping-off point in occupied-Poland and Moscow was far from capable of providing

the necessary level of infrastructure to support his advance, as a mere three percent of Russian roads

were paved.136 Of course, the more the campaign wore on, the more these logistical difficulties would

make their presence known.

The greatest doctrinal problem which Army Group Center faced was the fact that the Panzer Groups

of Hoth and Guderian would naturally outpace the foot-infantry of the 4th and 9th Armies. Blitzkrieg

works fine when the objectives are within the confines of the logistical capabilities of the regional trans-

portation network, but in the sparse, under-developed and seemingly endless landscape of European

Russia, the infantry will be incapable of keeping pace with the armored and motorized formations,

thereby depriving them of the support they require to hold ground and provide the necessary mass

which would be required to seal-off encirclements, so that the Panzers could be freed-up to continue

the advance. This was further complicated by the fact that encircled Russians did not surrender, they

fought tenaciously until they had run out of ammunition, therefore this lead to lengthier mopping-up

operations than had been anticipated. Without a large mass of infantry, the encirclements were not as

strong as they could have been, thereby allowing untold numbers of Red Army soldiers to escape to

fight again. In June and July 1941, the campaign “was following a pattern whereby armored divisions

136 (Cooper 1990), p. 277

42

Blitzkrieg

lunged forward at fifty miles per day . . . while the plodding infantry labored behind . . . at twenty miles a

day or less.”137

The three encirclement battles waged by Army Group Center had netted a total of 1,138,000 prison-

ers, 5,857 tanks and 12,498 artillery pieces, which is a staggering aggregate, which would have caused

any other nation but the Soviet Union to collapse. Unfortunately, by the conclusion of the Kiev encir-

clement and Guderian’s return to Army Group Center’s operational control, the time to be able to ad-

vance on Moscow had slipped by, due to Hitler’s diversion of Guderian to the South to capture Kiev and

Hoth northwards to aid with capturing Leningrad, the Germans had simply run out of time before an es-

pecially brutal Russian Winter would make its presence known.

Conclusion

This paper has argued that there was very little that was revolutionary about Blitzkrieg, with the only

exception being the displacement of cavalry. German military history has demonstrated a remarkable

consistency in doctrine going back centuries. While weapons have certainly changed and evolved, the

general strategic precepts which under-pinned the military thought of Frederick I, Frederick II, Moltke,

Schleiffen, Guderian and Rommel have remained consistent; all that has changed is the age in which

they live and how the political, ideological and technological have influenced the German Way of War,

Bewegungskrieg.

Yet there is some friction in the literature over the word Blitzkrieg. Yes, the word is Anglicized Ger-

man; however, it is a word that is superior to Bewegungskrieg in terms of pronunciation and spelling,

but it is also a word that has permeated throughout all of academia as a cursory JSTOR search138 will re-

veal that out of the first 100 items, 19 were not in fields related to history or political science. Seven-

137 (Keegan 1989), p. 187138 Performed on December 18, 2010

43

Blitzkrieg

teen out of the 19 were to be found in several different science journals and they all appear to be re-

lated to some extinction event at some point thousands of years ago; there is also a journal article from

Libraries and Culture discussing the amount of damage that World War Two delivered to British libraries

and one education journal article. The search revealed a total of 2,961, and if we propose a hypothesis

that 19 percent of the total would be unrelated to the use of the word Blitzkrieg as utilized and under-

stood by historians, strategists and other specialists, the hypothetical total of items written outside the

disciplines of history or political science that somehow use the word Blitzkrieg would be 544. This would

indicate a considerable deal of cross-polination of the word Blitzkrieg beyond specialists.

This means that as much as certain specialists may not wish to use the word Blitzkrieg, it is just some-

thing everyone is going to have to tolerate since it seems to have penetrated into other disciplines, to

say nothing of its use in high schools and college and university survey courses due to its ease of transla-

tion and immediacy of comprehension for the students.

44

Blitzkrieg

Works CitedAddington, Larry H. The Blitzkrieg Era and the German General Staff, 1865-1941. New Brunswick: Rut-

gers University Press, 1971.

Citino, Robert M. The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to The Third Reich. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2005.

—. The Path to Blitzkrieg: Doctrine and Training in the German Army, 1920-39. 2nd 1st Edition: Lynne Reinner Publishers, 1999. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2008.

Cooper, Matthew. The German Army, 1933-1945. Lanham, MD: Scarborough House, 1990.

Corum, James R. The Roots of Blitzkrieg. Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1992.

Creveld, Martin van. Command in War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985.

Duffy, Christopher. The Army of Frederick the Great. London: David & Charles, 1974.

Fanning, William J., Jr. "The Origin of the Term 'Blitzkrieg': Another View." The Journal of Military History 61, no. 2 (Apr. 1997).

Fraser, David. Knight's Cross: A Life of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.

Freiser, Karl-Heinz. Blitzkrieg-Legende: der Westfeldzug I940 (Operationen des Zweiten Weltkriegs, II. 2nd. Munich, 1996.

German General Staff. Die Kriege Frederichs des Grossen. Part 3. Der seibenjabriege Krieg, 1756-1763. Vol. 5. Hastenbeck und Rossbach. 13 vols. Berlin: E.S. Mittler, 1903.

—. Die Kriege Friedrichs des Grossen. Part 3. Der siebenjahbridge Krieg, 1756-1763. Vol. 6. 13 vols. Berlin: E.S. Mittler, 1904.

Guderian, Heinz. Achtung - Panzer! Translated by Christopher Duffy. New York: Arms and Armour Press, 1995.

Guderian, Heinz. "Bewegliche Truppenkorper: Ein kriegsgeschichtliche Studie. Part 1. "Die Schlittenfahrt des Grossen Kurfsten im Winterfuldzug 1678-79"." Militar Wochenblatt 112, no. 18 (11 1927).

—. Panzer Leader. Translated by Constantine Fitzgibbon. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996.

45

Blitzkrieg

Gukeisen, Thomas B. "The Operational Art of Blitzkrieg: Its Strengths and Weaknesses in System's Per-spective." Fort Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, May 26, 2005.

Gunsburg, Jeffrey A. "The Battle of the Belgian Plain, 12-14 May 1940: The First Great Tank Battle." The Journal of Military History 56, no. 2 (April 1992): 207-244.

Herwig, Holger. "Strategic Uncertainties of a Nation-State: Prussia-Germany, 1871-1918." In The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War, edited by Williamson Murray, MacGregor Knox and Alvin Bernstein, 242-277. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Hindenberg, Field Marshall Paul von. Out of My Life. Vol. 1. New York: Harper, 1921.

Holmes, Terence M. "Classical Blitzkrieg: The Untimely Modernity of Schlieffen's Cannae Programme." The Journal of Military History 67, no. 3 (July 2003): 745-771.

Hughes, Daniel J., ed. Moltke on the Art of War: Selected Writings. Novato, CA: Presidio, 1993.

Jersak, Tobias. "Blitzkrieg Revisited: A New Look at Nazi War and Extermination Planning." The Historical Journal 43, no. 2 (June 2000): 565-582.

Jones, David R. Imperial Russia's Forces At War. Vol. 1, in Military Effectiveness, Volume I: The First World War, edited by Williamson & Millet, Alan R. Murray, 249-328. Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1987.

Justrow, Karl. Feldherr und Kriegstechnik: Studien uber den Operationsplan des Grafen Schlieffen und Lehren fir unseren Wehraufbau und unsere Landesverteidigung. Oldenburg: Gerhard Stalling, 1933.

Keegan, John. The Second World War. New York: Pengiun Books, 1989.

Ludwig, General of Artillery. "Moltke als Erziehr." Militar-Wochenblatt 125, no. 17 (October 1940).

Luttwak, Edward. The Logic of War and Peace. 2nd. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2001.

Manstein, Erich von. Lost Victories. Novato, CA: Presidio, 1994.

May, Ernest R. Strange Victory: Hitler's Conquest of France. New York: Hill And Wang, 2000.

Murray, Williamson. "Barbarossa." In No End Save Victory, edited by Robert Cowley, 107-122. New York: Berkeley Books, 2001.

Perrett, Bryan. A History of Blitzkrieg. New York: Stein and Day, 1983.

Posen, Barry. The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars. London: Cornell University Press, 1984.

Roberts, Cynthia A. "Planning for War: The Red Army and the Catastrophe of 1941." Europe-Asia Studies, Dec 1995: 1293-1326.

46

Blitzkrieg

Rommel, Erwin. Attacks. Translated by J. R. Driscoll. Provo, UT: Athena Press, 1979.

—. The Rommel Papers. Edited by B. H. Liddel-Hart. New York: Da Capo, 1953.

Scheiffen, Alfred von. Dienstschriften, vol. 1, Die taktisch-strategischen Aufgaben aus den Jahren 1891-1905. Berlin: E. S. Mittler und Sohn, 1937.

Seeckt, Hans von. "Moderne Heere." In Gedanken eines Soldaten . Leipzig: von Hase und Koehler, 1935.

Showalter, Dennis E. The Wars of Frederick the Great. London: Longman, 1996.

Sun-Tsu. The Art of War. Translated by Ralph D. Wayer. Boulder: Westview Press, 1994.

Weigley, Russel F. The Age of Battles: The Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.

Wintle, Justin, ed. The Dictionary of War Quotations. New York: Free Press, 1989.