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Blitzkrieg
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Blitzkrieg (German, "lightning war") is "a headline word applied retrospectively to describe a military doctrine of an all-mechanized force concentrating its attack on a small section of the enemy front then, once the latter is pierced, proceeding without regard to its flank." As British military historian Sir John Keegan has noted, it was an idea which owed its creation to soldiers of several nations: the British theorists of tank warfare Major General J.F.C. Fuller, who pioneered the first massed tank offensive at Cambrai in 1917 and Captain B.H.
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Encyclopedia
Blitzkrieg (German, "lightning war") is "a headline word applied retrospectively to describe a military doctrine of an all-mechanized force concentrating its attack on a small section of the enemy front then, once the latter is pierced, proceeding without regard to its flank." As British military historian Sir John Keegan has noted, it was an idea which owed its creation to soldiers of several nations: the British theorists of tank warfare Major General J.F.C. Fuller, who pioneered the first massed tank offensive at Cambrai in 1917 and Captain B.H. Liddell Hart, the German "tank pioneers" Heinz Guderian and General O. Lutz, and the Frenchman General J.E.B. Estienne who, independently of the British, had invented a tank in 1915. In the Soviet Union Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky was developing similar tactics, specifically infiltration tactics were a philosophical solution to a philosophically viewed problem". Both solutions nevertheless proved to be only partial answers to the ever-thickening trench systems.
During the inter-war years, after the embryonic technologies of the airplane and tank had matured and were combined with systematic application of the German tactics of infiltration and bypassing of enemy strong points, leaving them to be reduced by eingreif, or "interlocking", divisions, the doctrine of armored warfare known as blitzkrieg, as it would later be labeled by Western journalists during the 1939 invasion of Poland, came into being.
However, this was achieved only in the teeth of fierce resistance of traditionalists in the German, Soviet and French High Commands, despite the fact that the French and, particularly, the Soviet armies outnumbered the Germans in both quantity and quality of tanks. The resistance was overcome in the German army, largely by a chance meeting between Hitler and General Gerd von Rundstedt, at which the General was able to expound his ideas to the Führer, who quickly adopted the ideas as his own. In France, Marshal Petain and other aged generals managed to stifle its development. The Red Army was well on its way to developing similar armored strategy when Stalin's destruction of its officer corps, particularly his murder of Tukhachevsky, ended it. Thus, both the French and Soviet Armies assigned their tanks to a support role for infantry, thereby diffusing the concentrated power that all-tank formations could deliver. As a result, by 1939, the Wehrmacht was the only army in the world to have fully developed the concept of the all-armored division, supported by mechanized infantry and specialized tactical attack aircraft.
Despite the numerical superiority and qualitative edge of Russian and French armor, the German General Staff proved, as it had in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, superiority of operational doctrine could overcome an enemy's superiority in Materialschlacht (the "Battle of Material"). It was this methodological diligence that had led the victorious World War I Allies to ban the German General Staff in the Treaty of Versailles.
Blitzkrieg operations were particularly effective in the German invasions of Western Europe and initial operations in the Soviet Union. These operations were dependent on surprise penetrations (e.g. the penetration of the Ardennes forest region), general enemy unpreparedness and an inability to react swiftly enough to the attacker's offensive operations.
Only later, during the invasion of the Soviet Union, would the flaws of "blitzkrieg" come to be realized. In France and Poland, the foot-bound infantry had been, at most, a few hours behind the armored spearheads. In the vast, open Russian steppe, delays of hours would become days. The Allies, both in the West and the USSR, would learn from both the Wehrmacht's successes and failures in blitzkrieg warfare.
Interwar years
Reichswehr
in honour of Hindenburgs 85th birthday, October 1932]]
German operational theories began to evolve immediately after Germany's defeat in the First World War. The Treaty of Versailles limited any German Army to a maximum of 100,000 men, making impossible the deployment of massed which had characterised German strategy before the War. Although the German General Staff was also abolished by the treaty, it nevertheless continued to exist as the Truppenamt or "Troop Office", supposedly only an administrative body. Committees of veteran staff officers were formed within to Truppenamt to evaluate 57 issues of the war. Their reports led to doctrinal and training publications, which became the standard procedures by the time of the Second World War. The Reichswehr was influenced by its analysis of pre-war German military thought, in particular its infiltration tactics of the war, and the maneuvre warfare which dominated the Eastern Front.
German military history had previously been influenced heavily by Carl von Clausewitz, Alfred von Schlieffen and von Moltke the Elder, who were proponents of manoeuvre, mass, and envelopment. Their concepts were employed in the successful Franco-Prussian War and the attempted “knock-out blow” of the Schlieffen Plan. Following the war, these concepts were modified by the Reichswehr in the light of WWI experience. Its Chief of Staff, Hans von Seeckt, moved doctrine away from what he argued was an excessive focus on encirclement towards one based on speed. He advocated effecting breakthroughs against the enemy's centre when it was more profitable than encirclement, or where encirclement was not practical.
Under his command, a modern update of the doctrinal system called Bewegungskrieg and its associated leadership system called Auftragstaktik was developed, which influenced German operational planning in the Second World War. Bewegungskrieg required a new command hierarchy that allowed military decisions to be made closer to the unit level. This allowed units to react and make effective decisions faster, which wa a critical advantage and a major reason for the success of blitzkrieg.
Von Seekt also rejected the notion of mass which von Schlieffen and von Moltke had advocated. While reserves had comprised up to four-tenths of German forces in pre-war campaigns, von Seeckt sought the creation of a small, professional (volunteer) military backed by a defense-oriented militia. In modern warfare, he argued, such a force was more capable of offensive action, could be readied and mobilised more quickly, and would be less expensive to equip with more modern weapons.
German leadership had also been criticized for failing to understand the technical advances of the First World War, having given tank production the lowest priority and having conducted no studies of the machine gun prior to that war. In response, German officers attended technical schools during this period of rebuilding after the war. The infiltration tactics developed by the German Army during the First World War became the basis for later tactics. German infantry had advanced in small, decentralised groups which bypassed resistance in favour of advancing at weak points and attacking rear-area communications. This was aided by coordinated artillery and air bombardments, and followed by larger infantry forces with heavy guns, which destroyed centres of resistance. These concepts formed the basis of the Wehrmacht's tactics during the Second World War.
On Eastern Front of World War I, where combat did not bog down into trench warfare, German and Russian armies fought a war of maneuvre over thousands of miles, giving the German leadership unique experience which the trench-bound Western Allies did not have. Studies of operations in the East led to the conclusion that small and coordinated forces possessed more combat worth than large, uncoordinated forces.
Foreign influence
During this period, all the war's major combatants developed mechanized force theories. However, the official doctrines of the Western Allies differed substantially from those of the Reichswehr. British, French, and American doctrines broadly favoured a more deliberate set-piece battle, using mechanized forces to maintain the impetus and momentum of an offensive. There was less emphasis on combined arms, deep penetration or concentration. In short, their philosophy was not too different from that which they had at the end of World War 1. Although early Reichswehr periodicals contained many translated works from Allied sources, they were rarely adopted. Technical advances in foreign countries were, however, observed and used in part by the Weapons Office of the Reichswehr. Foreign doctrines are widely considered to have had little serious influence.
Britain
British theorists J.F.C. Fuller and Captain B. H. Liddell Hart have often been associated with the development of blitzkrieg, though this is a matter of controversy. It is alleged that Guderian drew some of his inspiration from Liddell Hart, based on a paragraph in the English edition of Guderian's autobiography in which he credits Liddell Hart. It is argued however that Liddell Hart, as editor of the autobiography's English edition, wrote that paragraph himself or, more broadly, that his influence on Guderian was not as significant as held. This is further supported by the fact that the controversial paragraph is missing in other translations.
During World War I, Fuller had been a staff officer attached to the newly-developed tank force, and was instrumental in planning the 1917 Battle of Cambrai, the first large-scale armoured offensive. He later developed plans for massive, independent tank operations and was subsequently studied by the German military. It is variously argued that Fuller's wartime plans and post-war writings were an inspiration, or that his readership was low and German experiences during the war received more attention. The fact that the Germans saw themselves as the losers of the war may be linked to the root and branch review, learn and rewrite of all their Army doctrine and training manuals by senior and experienced officers. The UK's response was much weaker.
Both Fuller and Liddell Hart were "outsiders"; Liddell Hart was unable to serve as an active soldier through ill-health and Fuller's abrasive personality resulted in his premature retirement in 1933. Their views therefore had limited impact within the British Army's official hierarchy. The British War Office did permit the formation of an Experimental Mechanized Force on 1 May 1927, composed of tanks, lorried infantry, self propelled artillery and motorized engineers, but financial constraints prevented the experiment being developed.
Although the British Army's lessons were mainly drawn from the infantry and artillery offensives on the Western Front in late 1918, one "sideshow" theatre had witnessed operations which involved some aspects of what would later become blitzkrieg. In Palestine, General Edmund Allenby had used cavalry to seize railway and communication centres deep in the enemy rear in the Battle of Megiddo in September 1918, while aircraft disrupted enemy lines of communication and headquarters. These methods had induced "strategic paralysis" among the defending Ottoman troops and led to their rapid and complete collapse.
A comparatively less-discussed development was the recognition by Allied industrial and political figures (rather than military leaders), that maintenance of momentum required new methods and equipment. The British Ministry of Munitions under Winston Churchill was seeking in 1918 to develop mechanical means of achieving this. They planned to construct large numbers of vehicles with cross-country mobility, but the war ended before their efforts bore fruit.
France
French doctrine was based on the "continuous defence". During World War I, even where defensive lines appeared to have been completely broken, such as during Operation Michael or the Battle of Amiens, the defenders could move reserves to the threatened sector by rail or lorry faster than attackers advancing on foot could exploit a breakthrough. Under Marshal Philippe Petain, French military doctrine concentrated on perfecting the defensive methods of 1918.
Colonel Charles de Gaulle was a known advocate of concentration of armor and airplanes. His opinions were expressed in his book, Vers l'Armée de Métier (Towards the Professional Army). Like von Seeckt, he concluded that France could no longer maintain the huge armies of conscripts and reservists with which World War I had been fought, and sought to use tanks, mechanized forces and aircraft to allow a smaller number of highly trained soldiers to have greater impact in battle. His views little endeared him to the French high command, but are claimed by some to have influenced Heinz Guderian.
Russia
In 1916, General Alexei Brusilov had used infiltration tactics and surprise during the Brusilov Offensive. Later, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, one of the most prominent officers of the Red Army of the Soviet Union during the inter-war years, developed the concept of deep operations from his experiences of the Polish-Soviet War. These concepts would guide Red Army doctrine throughout World War II. Realising the limitations of infantry and cavalry, Tukhachevsky was an advocate of mechanized formations, and the large-scale industrialisation required.
The Reichswehr and the Red Army collaborated in war games and tests in Kazan and Lipetsk beginning in 1926. Set within the Soviet Union, these two centers were used to field test aircraft and armored vehicles up to the battalion level, as well as housing aerial and armored warfare schools through which officers were rotated. This was done in the Soviet Union, in secret, to evade the Treaty of Versailles's occupational agent, the Inter-Allied Commission.
Guderian in the Wehrmacht
Following Germany's military reforms of the 1920s, Heinz Guderian emerged as a strong proponent of mechanized forces. Within the Inspectorate of Transport Troops, Guderian and colleagues performed theoretical and field exercise work. There was opposition from many officers who gave primacy to the infantry or simply doubted the usefulness of the tank. Among them was Chief of the General Staff Ludwig Beck (1935–38), who was skeptical that armored forces could be decisive. Nonetheless, the panzer divisions were established during his tenure.
Guderian's leadership was supported, fostered and institutionalised by his supporters in the Reichswehr General Staff system, which worked the Army to greater and greater levels of capability through massive and systematic Movement Warfare war games in the 1930s.
Guderian argued that the tank was the decisive weapon of war. "If the tanks succeed, then victory follows", he wrote. In an article addressed to critics of tank warfare, he wrote "until our critics can produce some new and better method of making a successful land attack other than self-massacre, we shall continue to maintain our beliefs that tanks—properly employed, needless to say—are today the best means available for land attack." Addressing the faster rate at which defenders could reinforce an area than attackers could penetrate it during the First World War, Guderian wrote that "since reserve forces will now be motorized, the building up of new defensive fronts is easier than it used to be; the chances of an offensive based on the timetable of artillery and infantry co-operation are, as a result, even slighter today than they were in the last war." He continued, "We believe that by attacking with tanks we can achieve a higher rate of movement than has been hitherto obtainable, and—what is perhaps even more important—that we can keep moving once a breakthrough has been made." Guderian additionally required that tactical radios be widely used to facilitate co-ordination and command by having one installed in all tanks.
After becoming head of state in 1934, Adolf Hitler ignored the Versailles Treaty provisions. A command for armored forces was created within the German Wehrmacht; the Panzertruppe, as it came to be known later. The Luftwaffe, the German air force, was re-established, and development begun on ground-attack aircraft and doctrines. Hitler was a strong supporter of this new strategy. He read Guderian's book Achtung! Panzer! and upon observing armored field exercises at Kummersdorf he remarked “That is what I want—and that is what I will have.”
Guderian's armored concept
Heinz Guderian probably was the first to fully develop and advocate the principles associated with blitzkrieg. He summarized combined-arms tactics as the way to get the mobile and motorized armored divisions to work together and support each other in order to achieve decisive success. In his book, Panzer Leader, he said,
Guderian believed that certain development in technology was required to support the entire theory; especially in communications with which the armored divisions, and tanks especially should be equipped (Wireless Communications). Guderian insisted in 1933 to the high command that every tank in the German armored force must be equipped with radio.
Spanish Civil War
German volunteers first used armor in live field conditions during the Spanish Civil War of 1936. Armor commitment consisted of Panzer Battalion 88, a force built around three companies of PzKpfw I tanks that functioned as a training cadre for Nationalists. The Luftwaffe deployed squadrons of fighters, dive-bombers, and transports as the Condor Legion. Guderian called the tank deployment “on too small a scale to allow accurate assessments to be made.” The true test of his “armored idea” would have to wait for the Second World War. However, the Luftwaffe also provided volunteers to Spain to test both tactics and aircraft in combat, including the first combat use of the Stuka.
During the war, the Condor Legion undertook the bombing of Guernica which had a tremendous psychological effect on the populations of Europe. The results were exaggerated, and the Western Allies concluded that the "city-busting" techniques were now a part of the German way in war. The targets of the German aircraft were actually the rail lines and bridges. But lacking the ability to hit them with accuracy (only three or four Ju 87s saw action in Spain), a method of carpet bombing was chosen resulting in heavy civilian casualties.
Methods of operations
Schwerpunkt
The Germans referred to a schwerpunkt (focal point) in the planning of operations; it was a centre of gravity towards which was made the point of maximum effort, in an attempt to seek a decisive action. Ground, mechanised and tactical air forces were concentrated at this point of maximum effort whenever possible. By local success at the schwerpunkt, a small force achieved a breakthrough and gained advantages by fighting in the enemy's rear. It is summarized by Guderian as “Nicht kleckern, klotzen!” (Don't fiddle, smash!)
To achieve a breakout, armored forces would attack the enemy's defensive line directly, supported by motorized infantry, artillery fire and aerial bombardment in order to create a breach in the enemy's line. Through this breach the tanks could break through without the traditional encumbrance of the slow logistics of infantry on foot. The breaching force never lost time by “stabilising its flanks” or by regrouping; rather it continued the assault in towards the interior of the enemy's lines, sometimes diagonally across them. This point of breakout has been labeled a “hinge”, but only because a change in direction of the defender's lines is naturally weak and therefore a natural target for blitzkrieg assault.
In this, the opening phase of an operation, air forces sought to gain superiority over enemy air forces by attacking aircraft on the ground, bombing their airfields, and seeking to destroy them in air to air combat.
A final element was the use of airborne forces beyond the enemy lines in order to disrupt enemy activities and take important positions (such as Eben Emael). While the taking of the position does not constitute part of blitzkrieg, the disruptive effect this can cause in combination with earlier elements would fit well.
Paralysis
Having achieved a breakthrough into the enemy's rear areas, German forces attempted to paralyze the enemy's decision making and implementation process. Moving faster than enemy forces, mobile forces exploited weaknesses and acted before opposing forces could formulate a response. Guderian wrote that “Success must be exploited without respite and with every ounce of strength, even by night. The defeated enemy must be given no peace.”
Central to this is the decision cycle. Every decision made by German or opposing forces required time to gather information, make a decision, disseminate orders to subordinates, and then implement this decision through action. Through superior mobility and faster decision-making cycles, mobile forces could take action on a situation sooner than the forces opposing them.
Directive control was a fast and flexible method of command. Rather than receiving an explicit order, a commander would be told of his superior's intent and the role which his unit was to fill in this concept. The exact method of execution was then a matter for the low-level commander to determine as best fit the situation. Staff burden was reduced at the top and spread among commands more knowledgeable about their own situation. In addition, the encouragement of initiative at all levels aided implementation. As a result, significant decisions could be effected quickly and either verbally or with written orders a few pages in length.
Cauldron Battle
An operation's final phase, the "Cauldron Battle" (German, Kesselschlacht, literally ‘kettle battle’), was a concentric attack on an encircled force. It was here that most losses were inflicted upon the enemy, primarily through the capture of prisoners and weapons. During the initial phases of Barbarossa, massive encirclements netted nearly 4,000,000 Soviet prisoners, (more than 75% of whom were to die from starvation and mistreatment by their captors) along with masses of equipment, in these "Cauldron Battles".
Use of Air Power
A prevalent myth about the Luftwaffe and its Blitzkrieg operations is that it had a doctrine of terror bombing, in which civilians were deliberately targeted in order to break the will or aid the collapse of an enemy. After the bombing of Guernica in 1937 and of Rotterdam in 1940, it was commonly assumed that terror bombing was a part of Luftwaffe doctrine. During the interwar period the Luftwaffe leadership rejected the concept of terror bombing, and confined the air arms use to battlefield support of interdiction operations.
General Walther Wever compiled a doctrine known as The Conduct of the Aerial War. In this document, which the Luftwaffe adopted, the Luftwaffe rejected Giulio Douhet's theory of terror bombing. Terror bombing was deemed to be "counter-productive", increasing rather than destroying the enemies will to resist. Such bombing campaigns were regarded as diversion from the Luftwaffe's main operations; destruction of the enemy armed forces. The bombings of Guernica, Rotterdam and Warsaw were tactical missions in support of military operations and were not intended as strategic terror attacks.
Operations in history
Poland, 1939
Despite the term blitzkrieg being coined by journalists during the Invasion of Poland of 1939, historians generally hold that German operations during it were more consistent with more traditional methods. The Wehrmacht's strategy was more inline with Vernichtungsgedanken, or a focus on envelopment to create pockets in broad-front annihilation. Panzer forces were deployed among the three German concentrations without strong emphasis on independent use, being used to create or destroy close pockets of Polish forces and seize operational-depth terrain in support of the largely un-motorized infantry which followed. The Luftwaffe gained air superiority by a combination of superior technology and numbers.
The understanding of operations in Poland has shifted considerably since the Second World War. Many early postwar histories incorrectly attribute German victory to “enormous development in military technique which occurred between 1918 and 1940”, incorrectly citing that “Germany, who translated (British inter-war) theories into action...called the result Blitzkrieg.” More recent histories identify German operations in Poland as relatively cautious and traditional. Matthew Cooper wrote that
He went on to say that the use of tanks “left much to be desired...Fear of enemy action against the flanks of the advance, fear which was to prove so disastrous to German prospects in the west in 1940 and in the Soviet Union in 1941, was present from the beginning of the war.” John Ellis further asserted that “...there is considerable justice in Matthew Cooper's assertion that the panzer divisions were not given the kind of strategic mission that was to characterize authentic armored blitzkrieg, and were almost always closely subordinated to the various mass infantry armies.”
In fact, “Whilst Western accounts of the September campaign have stressed the shock value of the panzers and Stuka attacks, they have tended to underestimate the punishing effect of German artillery on Polish units. Mobile and available in significant quantity, artillery shattered as many units as any other branch of the Wehrmacht.”
France 1940
The German invasion of France, with subsidiary attacks on Belgium and the Netherlands, consisted of two phases, Operation Yellow (Fall Gelb) and Operation Red (Fall Rot). Yellow opened with a feint conducted against the Netherlands and Belgium by two armored corps and paratroopers. The Germans had massed the bulk of their armored force in Panzer Group von Kleist, which attacked through the comparatively unguarded sector of the Ardennes and achieved a breakthrough at Sedan with air support.
The group raced to the coast of the English Channel at Abbeville, thus isolating the British Expeditionary Force, Belgian Army, and some divisions of the French Army in northern France. The armored and motorized units under Guderian and Rommel initially advanced far beyond the following divisions, and indeed far in excess of that with which German high command was initially comfortable. When the German motorized forces were met with a counterattack at Arras, British tanks with heavy armour (Matilda I & IIs) created a brief panic in the German High Command. The armored and motorized forces were halted, by Hitler, outside the port city of Dunkirk which was being used to evacuate the Allied forces. Hermann Göring had promised his Luftwaffe would complete the destruction of the encircled armies but aerial operations did not prevent the evacuation of the majority of Allied troops (which the British named Operation Dynamo); some 330,000 French and British were saved.
Overall, Yellow succeeded beyond almost anyone's wildest dreams, despite the claim that the Allies had 4,000 armored vehicles and the Germans 2,200, and the Allied tanks were often superior in armour and calibre of cannon. It left the French armies much reduced in strength (although not demoralised), and without much of their own armour and heavy equipment. Operation Red then began with a triple-pronged panzer attack. The XV Panzer Corps attacked towards Brest, XIV Panzer Corps attacked east of Paris, towards Lyon, and Guderian's XIX Panzer Corps completed the encirclement of the Maginot Line. The defending forces were hard pressed to organize any sort of counter-attack. The French forces were continually ordered to form new lines along rivers, often arriving to find the German forces had already passed them.
Ultimately, the French army and nation collapsed after barely two months of mobile operations, in contrast to the four years of trench warfare of the First World War. The French president of the Ministerial Council, Reynaud, attributed the collapse in a speech on 21 May 1940:
The truth is that our classic conception of the conduct of war has come up against a new conception. At the basis of this...there is not only the massive use of heavy armored divisions or cooperation between them and aeroplanes, but the creation of disorder in the enemy's rear by means of parachute raids.
In actual fact, the new technologies had simply been applied to the older strategies of vernichtungsgedanke and since "the once-mighty and confident Allied armies (found) themselves torn asunder in a matter of days, brushed contemptuously aside by a German Army, which, six years previously, had been only 100,000 men strong and denied all modern instruments of offence such as tanks and heavy artillery..." the governments of those nations were eager to find a reason for it. According to Matthew Cooper, the "Blitzkrieg Myth" was more palatable for public consumption than the notion that they had simply been outfought.
Additional credit has since been given to the German understanding of the need to replace planning with coordination in the use of mechanized forces, through their early recognition of the importance of radio communications on the battlefield, and then developing and adopting new and flexible strategy (decision cycle) to maximize their advantage during battle:
North Africa, 1940–43
When Italy entered the war in 1940, a large Italian force faced the British Western Desert Force under Richard O'Connor on the frontier between Egypt and Libya. The British force included a substantial mechanised contingent, the Mobile Force (Egypt). The concepts of operations of the Mobile Force had been worked out by its former commander, Percy Hobart, a comparatively little-known theorist of armored operations. The British Commander in Chief in the Middle East, General Archibald Wavell, had been a staff officer under Allenby in Palestine and had extensively analysed his operations.
In Operation Compass, in December 1940, O'Connor's forces effectively destroyed the Italian armies in Libya by several outflanking maneuvers that isolated the Italian front line troops, and ultimately drove across the desert to intercept and capture the retreating Italians at Beda Fomm. At this point, British forces were diverted to campaigns in Greece and elsewhere, being replaced by comparatively inexperienced units, and German armored forces under Erwin Rommel landed in Africa to reinforce the Italians. Rommel launched a motorized offensive which destroyed many British armored formations and drove the remaining forces back towards Egypt and the starting point of Operation Compass. The offensive was only halted when Rommel's forces were unable to capture the fortress of Tobruk near the Egyptian border, which possessed an excellent port that could have been used to drastically shorten German supply lines.
The pause at Tobruk brought pure motorized operations to a halt. The resulting battles in the open desert terrain have been compared to naval encounters, rather than land battles. The great distances involved imposed logistical limitations on movements, and made it difficult to seize any objective which could cripple the enemy ability to resist.
The large British armored force which mounted Operation Crusader, the final attempt to relieve Tobruk in late 1941, had a vague mission which amounted to destroying Rommel's armour. Rommel, having temporarily knocked out many British armored formations, did launch an armored raid into the British rear areas in an attempt to induce a strategic collapse among his opponents but this did not occur and he was forced to withdraw.
Once again, British forces were diverted from the Middle East (on Japan's entry into the war), and once again the German Afrika Korps mounted a small-scale counterattack which recovered most of the ground lost in Crusader. Rommel's subsequent attack against the British rear at the Battle of Gazala failed, and nearly left his forces stranded and isolated. In the event, Rommel was able to restore his position, capture Tobruk and advance far into Egypt as a result of British failures at a tactical and operational, rather than strategic level. Supply problems and stiff resistance at the El Alamein position, the last defensive line before Egypt, halted Rommel's forces. Rommel's last major operation in Egypt, the Battle of Alam el Halfa, failed because the Allies had warning of his intentions through ULTRA, and met his advance with dug-in British forces.
Most of the subsequent Allied offensives were set-piece battles, with little attempt at pursuit. Rommel had one final opportunity to use combined arms methods in Tunisia, when a spoiling attack launched at Kasserine resulted in the collapse of the American front. Denied reinforcements to exploit the opening, the Germans rejected the option to advance deep into the Allied rear. The Americans were reinforced and were able to rally, and subsequent German attacks were indecisive. The North African campaign ended with a final Allied set-piece attack which broke through the lines in front of Tunis.
Soviet Union: the Eastern Front: 1941–44
Use of armored forces was crucial for both sides on the Eastern Front. Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, involved a number of breakthroughs and encirclements by motorized forces. Its stated goal was “to destroy the Russian forces deployed in the West and to prevent their escape into the wide-open spaces of Russia.” This was generally achieved by four panzer armies which encircled surprised and disorganized Soviet forces, followed by marching infantry which completed the encirclement and defeated the trapped forces. The first year of the Eastern Front offensive can generally be considered to have had the last successful major mobile operations.
After Germany's failure to destroy the Soviets before the winter of 1941, the strategic failure above the German tactical superiority became apparent. Although the German invasion successfully conquered large areas of Soviet territory, the overall strategic effects were more limited. The Red Army was able to regroup far to the rear of the main battle line, and eventually defeat the German forces for the first time in the Battle of Moscow.
In the summer of 1942, when Germany launched another offensive in the southern USSR against Stalingrad and the Caucasus, the Soviets again lost tremendous amounts of territory, only to counter-attack once more during winter. German gains were ultimately limited by Hitler diverting forces from the attack on Stalingrad itself and seeking to pursue a drive to the Caucasus oilfields simultaneously as opposed to subsequently as the original plan had envisaged.
In the summer of 1943 the Wehrmacht launched another combined forces offensive operation - Zitadelle (Citadel) - against the Soviet salient at Kursk. Soviet defensive tactics were by now hugely improved, particularly in terms of artillery and effective use of air support. All the same the Battle of Kursk was a close run affair though was marked by the Soviet switch to offence and the use of the revived doctrine of deep operations. For the first time the Blitzkrieg was defeated in summer and the opposing forces were able to mount their own, successful, counter operation.
By the summer of 1944 the reversal of fortune was complete and Operation Bagration saw Soviet forces inflict crushing defeats on Germany through the aggressive use of armour, infantry and air power in combined strategic assault, known as deep operations.
Western Front, 1944–45
As the war progressed, Allied armies began using combined arms formations and deep penetration strategies that Germany had used in the opening years of the war. Many Allied operations in the Western Desert and on the Eastern Front relied on massive concentrations of firepower to establish breakthroughs by fast-moving armored units. These artillery-based tactics were also decisive in Western Front operations after Operation Overlord and both the British Commonwealth and American armies developed flexible and powerful systems for utilizing artillery support. What the Soviets lacked in flexibility, they made up for in number of multiple rocket launchers, cannon and mortar tubes. The Germans never achieved the kind of response times or fire concentrations their enemies were capable of by 1944.
After the Allied landings at Normandy, Germany made attempts to overwhelm the landing force with armored attacks, but these failed for lack of co-ordination and Allied air superiority. The most notable attempt to use deep penetration operations in Normandy was at Mortain, which exacerbated the German position in the already-forming Falaise Pocket and assisted in the ultimate destruction of German forces in Normandy. The Mortain counter-attack was effectively destroyed by U.S. 12th Army Group with little effect on its own offensive operations.
The Allied offensive in central France, spearheaded by armored units from George S. Patton's Third Army, used breakthrough and penetration techniques that were essentially identical to Guderian's prewar “armored idea.” Patton acknowledged that he had read both Guderian and Rommel before the war, and his tactics shared the traditional cavalry emphasis on speed and attack. A phrase commonly used in his units was “haul ass and bypass.”
Germany's last offensive on its Western front, Operation Wacht am Rhein, was an offensive launched towards the vital port of Antwerp in December 1944. Launched in poor weather against a thinly-held Allied sector, it achieved surprise and initial success as Allied air power was stymied by cloud cover. However, stubborn pockets of defence in key locations throughout the Ardennes, the lack of serviceable roads, and poor German logistics planning caused delays. Allied forces deployed to the flanks of the German penetration, and Allied aircraft were again able to attack motorized columns. However, the stubborn defense of US units and German weakness led to a defeat for the Germans.
Asia 1942–1945
The terrain and logistical infrastructure in the areas of Asia in which Japanese forces were engaged presented far fewer opportunities for wide-ranging mechanised operations, but a few battles were noted for fast-moving attacks which resulted in the dislocation of the defences.
During the Battle of Malaya in early 1942, Japanese forces with air superiority and spearheaded by a tank regiment, rapidly drove British Commonwealth forces back down the length of the peninsula, aided by outflanking operations launched from the sea. The rapid Japanese capture of Burma in the same year was led by tanks and motorised forces which caused the Allied defence to collapse, although disunity of Allied command was also a factor.
In the Battle of Central Burma in 1945, the British Fourteenth Army (enjoying air supremacy) launched an armored and mechanised offensive which captured the major communication centre of Meiktila behind the Japanese lines by surprise. There was no strategic collapse, but the attempted Japanese counter-attack was made at a strategic and tactical disadvantage. The Japanese were forced to break off the battle and withdraw from most of Burma.
In the Soviet invasion of Japanese-occupied Manchuria, Soviet forces made their major attack via a route the Japanese had thought impossible for armored forces to cross. The Soviets very rapidly occupied vast areas, and surrounded most Japanese forces in besieged towns. The Japanese were thinly stretched in static garrisons, and had very few resources with which to counter the Soviet attacks.
Limitations and countermeasures
Environment
The concepts associated with the term blitzkrieg – deep penetrations by armour, large encirclements, and combined arms attacks – were largely dependent upon terrain and weather conditions. Where the ability for rapid movement across “tank country” was not possible, armored penetrations were often avoided or resulted in failure. Terrain would ideally be flat, firm, unobstructed by natural barriers or fortifications, and interspersed with roads and railways. If it was instead hilly, wooded, marshy, or urban, armour would be vulnerable to infantry in close-quarters combat and unable to break out at full speed. Additionally, units could be halted by mud (thawing along the Eastern Front regularly slowed both sides) or extreme snow. Artillery observation and aerial support was also naturally dependent on weather.
It should however be noted that the disadvantages of such terrain could be nullified if surprise was achieved over the enemy by an attack through such terrain. During the Battle of France, the German blitzkrieg-style attack on France went through the Ardennes. There is little doubt that the hilly, heavily-wooded Ardennes could have been relatively easily defended by the Allies, even against the bulk of the German armored units. However, precisely because the French thought the Ardennes as unsuitable for massive troop movement, particularly for tanks, they were left with only light defences which were quickly overrun by the Wehrmacht. The Germans quickly advanced through the forest, knocking down the trees the French thought would impede this tactic.
Air superiority
Allied air superiority became a significant hindrance to German operations during the later years of the war. Early German successes enjoyed air superiority with unencumbered movement of ground forces, close air support, and aerial reconnaissance. However, the Western Allies' air-to-ground aircraft were so greatly feared out of proportion to their actual tactical success, that following the lead up to Operation Overlord German vehicle crews showed reluctance to move en masse during daylight. Indeed, the final German blitzkrieg operation in the west, Operation Wacht am Rhein, was planned to take place during poor weather which grounded Allied aircraft. Under these conditions, it was difficult for German commanders to employ the “armored idea” to its envisioned potential.
Counter-tactics
During the Battle of France in 1940, De Gaulle's 4th Armour Division and elements of the British 1st Army Tank Brigade in the British Expeditionary Force both made probing attacks on the German flank, actually pushing into the rear of the advancing armored columns at times. This may have been a reason for Hitler to call a halt to the German advance. Those attacks combined with Maxime Weygand's Hedgehog tactic would become the major basis for responding to blitzkrieg attacks in the future: deployment in depth, permitting enemy forces to bypass defensive concentrations, reliance on anti-tank guns, strong force employment on the flanks of the enemy attack, followed by counter-attacks at the base to destroy the enemy advance in detail. Holding the flanks or “shoulders” of a penetration was essential to channeling the enemy attack, and artillery, properly employed at the shoulders, could take a heavy toll of attackers. While Allied forces in 1940 lacked the experience to successfully develop these strategies, resulting in France's capitulation with heavy losses, they characterized later Allied operations. For example, at the Battle of Kursk the Red Army employed a combination of defense in great depth, extensive minefields, and tenacious defense of breakthrough shoulders. In this way they depleted German combat power even as German forces advanced. In August 1944 at Mortain, stout defense and counterattacks by the US and Canadian armies closed the Falaise Gap. In the Ardennes, a combination of hedgehog defense at Bastogne, St Vith and other locations, and a counterattack by the US 3rd Army were employed.
The US doctrine of massing high-speed tank destroyers was not generally employed in combat since few massed German armor attacks occurred by 1944.
Furthermore blitzkrieg is very vulnerable to an enemy that puts a great emphasis on anti-tank warfare and on anti-aircraft weaponry, especially if the side employing blitzkrieg is unprepared. An example being the beginning phase of Yom Kippur War; the Israeli tanks were decimated by Egyptian infantry who were heavily equipped with Rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and AT-3 Sagger missiles and Israeli Air Force suffered tremendous losses due to SA-6 Gainful missiles, against whom they had not proper countermeasures. Only with a radical doctrinal and tactical change (see Battle of the Chinese Farm) were the Israelis able to break through Egyptian lines and win the war.
Logistics
Although effective in quick campaigns against Poland and France, mobile operations could not be sustained by Germany in later years. Strategies based on maneuver have the inherent danger of the attacking force overextending its supply lines, and can be defeated by a determined foe who is willing and able to sacrifice territory for time in which to regroup and rearm, as the Soviets did on the Eastern Front (as opposed to for example the Dutch who had no territory to sacrifice). Tank and vehicle production was a constant problem for Germany; indeed, late in the war many panzer "divisions" had no more than a few dozen tanks. As the end of the war approached, Germany also experienced critical shortages in fuel and ammunition stocks as a result of Anglo-American strategic bombing and blockade. Although production of Luftwaffe fighter aircraft continued, they would be unable to fly for lack of fuel. What fuel there was went to panzer divisions, and even then they were not able to operate normally. Of those Tiger tanks lost against the United States Army, nearly half of them were abandoned for lack of fuel.
Influence
Blitzkrieg's widest influence was within the Western Allied leadership of the war, some of whom drew inspiration from the Wehrmacht's approach. United States General George S. Patton emphasized fast pursuit, the use of an armored spearhead to effect a breakthrough, and then cutting off and disrupting enemy forces prior to their flight. In his comments of the time, he credited Guderian and Rommel's work, notably Infantry Attacks, for this insight. He also put into practice the idea attributed to cavalry leader Nathan Bedford Forrest, "to git thar fust with the most" (get there first, with the most forces).
Blitzkrieg also has had some influence on subsequent militaries and doctrines. The Israel Defense Forces may have been influenced by blitzkrieg in creating a military of flexible armored spearheads and close air support.
The Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 is also considered as a modern example of blitzkrieg-style assault by Indian forces that ended in a swift defeat of Pakistan, within a fortnight. The 1990s United States theorists of "Shock and awe" claim blitzkrieg as a subset of strategies which they term "rapid dominance".
Changing interpretation
Beginning in the 1970s, the interpretation of blitzkrieg, particularly with respect to the Second World War, has undergone a shift in the historical community. John Ellis described the shift:
Our perception of land operations in the Second World War has...been distorted by an excessive emphasis upon the hardware employed. The main focus of attention has been the tank and the formations that employed it, most notably the (German) panzer divisions. Despite the fact that only 40 of the 520 German divisions that saw combat were panzer divisions (there were also an extra 24 motorised/panzergrenadier divisions), the history of German operations has consistently almost exclusively been written largely in terms of blitzkrieg and has concentrated almost exclusively upon the exploits of the mechanized formations. Even more misleadingly, this presentation of ground combat as a largely armored confrontation has been extended to cover Allied operations, so that in the popular imagination the exploits of the British and Commonwealth Armies, with only 11 armored divisions out of 73 (that saw combat), and of the Americans in Europe, with only 16 out of 59, are typified by tanks sweeping around the Western Desert or trying to keep up with Patton in the race through Sicily and across northern France. Of course, these armored forces did play a somewhat more important role in operations than the simple proportions might indicate, but it still has to be stressed that they in no way dominated the battlefield or precipitated the evolution of completely new modes of warfare.
Ellis, as well as Zaloga in his study of the Polish Campaign in 1939, points to the effective use of other arms such as artillery and aerial firepower as equally important to the success of German (and later, Allied) operations. Panzer operations in the Soviet Union failed to provide decisive results; Leningrad never fell despite an entire Panzer Group being assigned to take it, nor did Moscow. In 1942, panzer formations overstretched at Stalingrad and in the Caucasus, and what successes did take place – such as Manstein at Kharkov or Krivoi Rog – were of local significance only.
See also
- AirLand Battle, blitzkrieg-like doctrine of US Army in 1980s
- Armored warfare
- The Blitz, the Luftwaffe air raids on London
- Deep Battle, the period Soviet concept of warfare
- Methodical Battle, the period French concept of warfare
- Rush (computer and video games), an RTS strategy influenced by blitzkrieg
- Shock and Awe, the 21st century American military doctrine
- Vernichtungsgedanken, or 'annihilation thoughts', one of blitzkrieg predecessors
- Mission-type tactics, tactical battle doctrine of delegation and initiative stimulation
Bibliography
External links
- Fort Leavenworth/Washington: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College
- Thesis submitted to The Faculty of Columbian School of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts; directed by Andrew Zimmerman, Assistant Professor of History. (Microsoft Word document).
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