@SuperbattleshipYamato hard to argue against any of this really. The IJN was so far gone by this point in the war that there’s not really much they could have done to salvage their situation one way or another. The bit about the allies not having many LSTs in general is something I never knew before though.
The myth of blitzkrieg
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I had to share this…
http://forum.worldoftanks.com/index.php?/topic/198175-mythbusters-blitzkrieg-decoded/
Blue is my favorite partIn most pop history shows, the standard narrative for blitzkrieg is more or less the following:
The German Army, geared for world conquest under Hitler, uses new weapons like the tank and bomber to rapidly defeat enemies that do not have them. The result is that the Germans nearly conquer all of Europe.
While the last part has some merit (Germany did succeed in conquering most of Europe), this explanation again falls into the standard pop-history trap of thinking “New technology leads to new victories!”.
In reality, new technology very rarely achieves a decision on its own. It can only come about by bringing together many other elements, and this article seeks to peel away the myths surrounding blitzkrieg so that people have a greater understanding of what it was, what were its origins, and how instrumental the tank truly was (or wasn’t) in its success.
Myth 1: Tanks Beat Enemies without Tanks
The most simplistic version of the Blitzkrieg myth likes to portray the Allies as helpless before the power of the tank and aircraft. Because the Germans had tanks while the Allies didn’t, the Germans won.
But that’s simply untrue, because the Allies actually had plenty of tanks for both France 1940 and Barbarossa in 1941. In fact, most estimates show that the Allies had more tanks than the Germans. And many of these Allied tanks were technically superior to German armor in both armor and firepower - two stats that pop history shows love bandying about as the supreme determinants of battlefield victory (which does not pan out in reality).
In fact, pure tank vs tank battles between the Germans and Allies often left the Germans broken and defeated. One famous instance is the battle at Stonne, wherein a single Char B tank of the French army destroyed around a dozen German Panzers that had no support.
As a result, many have attempted to expand on this explanation. They provide reasons like the Germans having “better organization and doctrine”, and other similar tangents.
However, the problem with most of these “explanations” is that they are very generalized motherhood statements which do not go into the specifics of why the Germans were successful. If they did, they would come to a very quick conclusion:
The Germans never actually developed any new doctrine called Blitzkrieg.
Myth 2: The Germans Invented an all-new “Blitzkrieg” Doctrine
Shocking, but true: Blitzkrieg is almost never mentioned in any of the official German war manuals prior to the outbreak of war; to the point that someone who tried counting could only find two instances of the word being used in all of Germany’s military literature. And no, “Achtung Panzer” (which was published by Guderian for consumption by the public; not as an official manual stating German army doctrine) does not count.
Instead, a quick look at how “blitzkrieg” works would reveal that the genesis of the doctrine lies not with any new technological development, but with the sustained work of the one German institution that is most responsible for that nation’s considerable wartime success: The German Staff College, or the Kriegsakademie.
Dating from the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, graduation from this institution was a virtual requirement to achieve high rank in the German Army. It was created with the specific intent of creating a corps of officers with a greater understanding of war, which could then beat opposing armies through superior generalship. And as it turns out, the key to superior generalship rested on one factor:
The ability to write a train schedule.
Well, okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration on my part. However, much of the Staff College’s curriculum was in fact devoted to the art of wargaming and writing war plans. Students were given hypothetical scenarios (i.e. “Germany finds itself at war with France and Russia”) and were tasked to create “solutions” to these conflicts (i.e. the Schlieffen Plan, which calls for a six-week war against France followed by a transfer of the victorious forces to the East to defeat Russia).
And the abiding “innovation” of the Staff College is that students were not allowed to simply put forth any plan based simply on imagination. They actually had to prove that their plans were feasible by showing detailed troops movements based on known operational realities, with very high levels of detail. For instance, it is a known operational reality that a Corps can advance no more than 20 kilometers on foot per day. No amount of screaming or begging will change this. Thus, if your plan involves the troops marching 40 kilometers per day, then it is clearly an impossible plan which will require re-working. Similarly, you need to account for details like the fact that two trains cannot occupy the same space at the same time. If your “plan” requires trains piling up at a station that can’t hold that many trains, then it’s back to the drawing board for you.
Thanks to this, the Germans won the Franco-Prussian War, where their troop deployments ran relatively smoothly while the French army degenerated into chaos. The Germans also very nearly won the First World War in its opening weeks by capturing Paris, if not for a glaring flaw in the Schlieffen plan that went uncorrected. Meanwhile, in the East, mobile campaigning allowed the Germans to defeat the Russians outright in the First World War 1, an elusive goal that had actually defeated countless would-be masters of Europe, from Napoleon to Hitler.
In short, the Germans kept winning because they simply out-maneuvered their opponents, thanks to the excellent training of their officers who understood the realities of moving large bodies of fighting men. Why rely on the mythical qualities of the German soldier, when sound deployment schedules will ensure that you have four Corps in a crucial sector, while the enemy only has two? (which happened at Mons 1914, where the Germans pushed back the “experienced” and “battle-hardened” British regulars)
This did not change greatly in 1940 or even 1941, as during this time the vast majority of the German army remained a foot-slogging army. On average there were only a mere 20 Panzer Divisions, as opposed to over a hundred infantry Divisions whose composition, mobility, and equipment were little different from the German Divisions of 1918. Even then, the Panzers were still operating under the same general principles, only this time they could move at 20 kilometers per hour instead of twenty miles per day (More on this in Part 2).
That this myth has persisted for so long owes in large part due to the effort of the Western military establishment (particularly the British and French) to deflect blame from their own negligence. Both the British and French armies of 1939 insisted that trench warfare was the future of warfare, despite the fact that the trench war of 1915-17 was an anamoly even in the context of the Great War. Rather than admit that they failed to do their homework and study the great battles of maneuver in the Eastern Front, or even of the prelimenary battles like the Schlieffen Offensive of 1914, Western militaries instead simply used the “But they had shiny new weapons!” excuse.
Interestingly, the Soviet Union actually developed a doctrine prior to the Second World War known as “Deep Battle”, and this doctrine fully embraced the idea that war would involve maneuvering vast bodies of men over entire fronts. Unsurprisingly, this doctrine was developed by men who fought on the Eastern Front of World War 1, and knew first hand that the British and French were silly in their insistence on static trench warfare. Had Stalin not committed some monumental acts of stupidity (purging his officers, including the chief architect of “Deep Battle”), the Red Army armed with the Deep Battle Doctrine could have given the Germans a run for their money in 1941.
Similarly, the United States never really bought into the idea of static warfare, as the greatest conflict fought on the North American continent (the Civil War) featured great battles of maneuver, especially in the Western theater where Grant and Sherman made their reputation, which helps account for the speed of American advances in 1944 after the Cobra breakout.
In part 2 of this article, I’ll now go over to the actual effect of technology in the Second World War. And contrary to popular belief, what truly changed that war is not the tank or the airplane, albeit both are ultimately children of the real war-changing invention of the Second World War:
The internal combustion engine.
Thoughts?
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Myth 3: The Tank was the key invention that made Blitzkrieg possible
Some people in this forum often accuse me of hating the tank, because I often write long-winded posts about how the value of tanks has been vastly overstated. This is another one of them, so if you prefer to cling to your imagined notions of the tank then you should probably bury your head in the sand and ignore this post altogether.
However, the vast majority of people understand that the reality of war can be very different from the simple perception of war. And this section at long last defines what the tank’s role truly was in the “Blitzkrieg” doctrine.
Let’s step back to France 1940. We have the German army on one side, and the British, French, Belgian, and Dutch army on the other. We have already established that both sides have tanks. So the question becomes: what was the difference between these two forces, beside the fact that the British and French were criminally backward with their static warfare doctrine? (as opposed to the German, Russian, and American doctrines which all incorporated mobile warfare)
The answer is simple: The British and French tanks were, for the most part, made to operate as part of larger infantry formations. Despite the British / French tanks being capable of moving at 20 kilometers per hour, they were forced to operate with infantry forces who marched at 20 kilometers per day, squandering any speed advantage that they had.
Meanwhile, the German tanks were allowed to operate independently. Despite having only a handful of Panzer Divisions, these Panzer Divisions were not made to march alongside the rest of the infantry-based army. Thus, the German army had a small, specialized force which could rapidly deploy at a much faster pace than the infantry, allowing them to rapidly encircle the British and French forces before they could react (because again, the British/French tanks were limited to marching pace), resulting in the forced evacuation of the BEF and the best of the French army units at Dunkirk.
Thus, it becomes easy to see that the decisive, war-winning difference between a Panzer Division and a French/British Division is operational mobility - which is the ability to move large bodies of men on the battlefield at a pace much faster than the enemy.
[Sidebar: Note that this is different from “strategic” mobility, which is the ability to transfer large bodies of troops using railroads or merchant ships over large distances. High levels of strategic mobility were already available in the First World War, which was defined by railroads.It is also different from “vehicle top speed”, which is really little more than “tactical mobility”. Getting a single tank to move 45kph is one thing. Moving three hundred tanks and its supporting elements over a hundred kilometers in a few hours without resort to rail or merchant transport is another thing entirely]
So does this finally present an airtight example of the tank’s war-winning qualities? Unfortunately, no, as it is often forgotten that the Panzer Division was not an all-tank formation. It is instead part of a combined arms formation, for the German Army - like all competent militaries - recognized that different arms were needed to succeed in combat.
Indeed, a quick look at the Panzer Division’s organization would show that it has a substantial infantry component, which would proportionately grow larger and larger as the war progress. Because at the tactical level, an all-tank force simply made no sense. Such a force was easily defeated by massed anti-tank guns, as the ATGs were easily concealed and could often rain fire on the armor without fear of retaliation. To drive away the ATG crews, infantry and artillery were needed.
Thus, to have a successful mobile army, you needed to be able to move everything at the rate of 20 kilometers per hour. Not just your tanks, but also your infantry and your artillery, and the ammunition and fuel needed to keep them fighting. Otherwise, your unsupported tanks will simply be picked off. And to move these supporting forces, you need to fully utilize that invention I mentioned earlier: The internal combustion engine.
Apart from tanks, the diesel and gasoline engine powers an enormous variety of transport vehicles, most notably the truck. These vehicles are not sexy. They are generally unarmed. But if you want your tanks to fight with infantry and artillery support, then you must rely on trucks and other transports to carry them for you.
And by 1944, the Allied armies had come to realize and finally embrace this concept. The United States, in particular, fully motorized all of its infantry Divisions. This was why US “Infantry” Divisions were racing alongside US “Armor” Division to the German border in 1944 - because you actually don’t need the tank in order to create a highly mobile army. The tank is certainly useful in a wide variety of roles - particularly infantry support - but working on its own it could still not force a decision.
Myth 4: Only Germany Mastered “Blitzkrieg”
Now that we’ve established what “Blitzkrieg” actually is, it’s now time to move on to the other myths and misconceptions about it. In particular, there’s this very annoying brain bug that has come up in recent years, that claims the Allied armies of 1944 were incompetents who simply overcame German tactical skill with overwhelming numbers. Hence the frequent claims of “One Panther lost for every five Shermans”, and other nonsense lies.
The reality of 1944 was completely different. In fact, it was almost a complete reversal of the situation of 1940.
It was now the Allies that had highly mobile armies, while the German army was still limited to a handful of Panzer Divisions. Allied generalship by this point was also much better, with many Generals being leading proponents of mobile warfare (Patton, Zhukov). The German general staff meanwhile, had been gutted. Its leaders were being forced into retirement (Manstein, Guderian) or suicide (Rommel), and Hitler kept insisting on patently insane static warfare statics like his ill-fated “Festungs”.
And the results actually reflected this. 1944 was not a year when the Allies suffered defeats at the hands of mythical Panthers and Tigers. It was in fact a year of utterly catastrophic losses for the German Army.
In the East, an entire Army Group vanished after the Soviets launched “Operation Bagration”, which saw the Russian armor and motorized units cutting into the German rear and annihilating three entire armies (worse than Stalingrad).
In the West, the bulk of seven Panzer Divisions and many other Divisions were crushed when the Western Allies performed a smaller mass encirclement at Falaise. The defeats were so crushing that they essentially equalled Germany’s dazzling advances in 1939 and 1940.
While Allies still suffered losses, what’s important to realize is that when two armies achieve the same level of technology and firepower, heavy losses are inevitable. There is no “magic solution” to reduce casualties once the other side becomes as mobile as you, and their tactics and strategy are no longer incompetent. In fact, German “blitzkrieg” had already failed in 1943, highlighted by that supposed mother of all tank battles: Kursk.
Popular history likes to depict Kursk as a massed, swirling tank battle. It was actually anything but except for very specific portions. Instead, it was simply vindication for the Red Army, who now showed that they had learned their lessons. As shown in the paper here:
http://usacac.army.m…ubs/glantz2.pdfThe Red Army of Kursk was no longer the plodding army that kept finding entire armies surrounded and wiped out by the nimble Panzers before they knew what was happening. It had now learned to create defensive positions manned by combined-arms formations, supported by mobile reserves that could quickly move up to counter any sudden German movements.
This new, improved Red Army defeated the cream of the German Panzer forces, which never recovered despite attempts to make them “better” by introducing “technically superior” tanks like the Panther and Tiger. But the introduction of these super-tanks actually only accelerated the rot, because the Panther and Tigers were mechanically unreliable and had little operational mobility - the very key to the success of the original Panzer Divisions.
This is why, despite all the myth-making, the kill rate of the Panzer forces actually declined by 1944, and they were completely unable to prevent the disasters of Bagration and Falaise.
Myth 5: Blitzkrieg as the Way of the Future
Finally, it’s worth noting that the myths of blitzkrieg had a profoundly negative effect on the development of modern day armies, and this resulted in two superpowers getting humbled.
The standard narrative of the modern “mechanized” army is as follows: The Second World War proved beyond a doubt that the tank was a war-winner. Hence, the super powers created vast armies of mechanized forces, centered around the tank, which was supported by other armored vehicles.
This narrative falls apart when we consider that the tank wasn’t a war-winner on its own. It still needed help from infantry and artillery. Moreover, what’s important to realize is that the mechanized army was not the child of the tank. It was instead the child of the atomic bomb.
The real reason why the US and Soviet armies went all-mechanized was because they both believed that any war between them would become a nuclear war. In a nuclear environment, foot infantry are too vulnerable to atomic weapons to be useful. Only tanks and other armored units have any chance of surviving in an environment full of radiation and poison gas.
Unfortunately, mechanized armies are profoundly unsuited for anything but an all-out war in the North German Plains. Tanks cannot operate well in most environments, like jungles and mountains. The infantry component of mechanized units is also too few to establish proper area control.
And this is really the major reason why both the United States (in Vietnam) and the Soviet Union (in Afghanistan) found themselves humbled by Third-World militaries during the Cold War. Infantry - armed only with light anti-tank weapons - can persist against enemies armed with tanks and other heavier vehicles that have insufficient staying power due to their paucity of infantry. Fighting “regular” or “irregular” opponents - who do not possess vast armories of tanks - require different weapons to fight.
In summary, much of what is known about Blitzkrieg is a myth. They were born out of dangerous misunderstandings and outright attempts to deflect blame. It was simply the application of mobile combat doctrines (mastered by the Germans thanks to their staff college, ignored by the British and French due to their myopia), which was supplemented by the power of the internal combustion engine which conferred greater operational mobility to tank and motorized infantry/artillery forces.
More importantly, it was not, and never was, a be-all end-all doctrine that rendered all other forms of combat obsolete. All the warring powers in fact were able to rapidly implement it, with the Allies implementing it in a superior fashion.
Finally, myths of blitzkrieg should cease to serve as the basis for modern doctrine. In fact, given that virtually all states who possess tanks and mechanized armies also own nuclear weapons, it is unlikely we will ever see such wars of mass maneuver ever again; and the ability to fight other forms of war become more paramount.
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Great post!
Haven’t finished reading it. But I hope there are some comments about Tank Terror and it’s early war effects, as well as the use of combined arms.
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Good article. I agree with much of what the author has written. But there are some points about which I disagree.
Blitzkrieg is almost never mentioned in any of the official German war manuals prior to the outbreak of war . . .
Von Manstein developed the plan to invade France. It was a very daring plan–a plan opposed by the majority of Germany’s generals. The German war manuals probably reflected the conventional thinking favored by most German generals; not the unconventional, blitzkrieg thinking embraced by von Manstein.
Blitzkrieg involved much more than just using tanks and trucks to increase mobility. The objective was to push your enemy off balance, and keep him off balance until his fighting capacity had been destroyed. In order to achieve rapid advances and decisive victories, without necessarily having numerical superiority, it was often necessary to accept a level of risk which conventional generals would abhor. Flanks were to be guarded by air power. Counterattacks were to be guarded against by identifying enemy efforts to concentrate his troops; and attacking those troops before they could mount an attack. Air power, tanks, and mechanized infantry were simply tools to be subordinated to this kind of thinking. This kind of approach was not used by the British or French. Nor was it used by the Soviets, until they learned it from the Germans. Nor was it used by any American general not named George Patton.
In particular, there’s this very annoying brain bug that has come up in recent years, that
claims the Allied armies of 1944 were incompetents who simply overcame German tactical skill with overwhelming numbers.The Allies did have an overwhelming advantage in numbers. Germany’s prewar population was 69 million. The Soviet Union’s was 169 million, the United Kingdom’s was (IIRC) 50 million, and America’s was well over 100 million. The Allies also outproduced Germany. During 1942, the Soviet Union produced 3 - 4 times as many land weapons as Germany, and nearly twice as many military aircraft. This is not to suggest that the Allies were gross incompetents who won only because of their numbers. But Germany had to do everything right to even have a chance of winning. The Allies could (and did) make many mistakes without giving up their advantage.
Why rely on the mythical qualities of the German soldier, when sound deployment schedules
will ensure that you have four Corps in a crucial sector, while the enemy only has two?Throughout the article, the author uses the word “mythical” in a pejorative sense, to imply falsehood. I assume that’s how he’s using it here.
According to an analysis conducted by the U.S. military, German soldiers were 3 - 4 times as combat-effective as their Soviet counterparts. According to the same study, they were twice as combat-effective as their British counterparts. According to one analysis, American soldiers were 80 - 100% as combat-effective as the Germans. Another study drew that conclusion into question, and suggested the Americans may not have been more combat-effective than the British.
The author of the article expresses himself well, and has made a number of intelligent points. But like most of us, he sees the world through the prism of his own preconceived notions. Sometimes, these notions have prevented him from seeing things as they are.
The author himself seems to believe, and would have us believe, that the German military achieved nothing out of the ordinary during WWII. The reality is more complex. Germany had significant qualitative advantages over the Allies, both in terms of the quality of its soldiers and its generals. However, its ability to exploit these advantages was dependent on Hitler. Hitler sometimes made decisions which allowed Germany to maximize these advantages; as he did in 1940 by adopting von Manstein’s plan for the invasion of France. There were other times when Hitler sided with the majority of his generals and against von Manstein. (As for example at Kursk.)
Germany’s reverses in '43 and '44 were not due to a flaw in the underlying blitzkrieg concept. Instead, they were caused by three factors:
- The blitzkrieg concept had been foolishly abandoned, at least for the most part.
- The Allies were steadily building numerical advantages too large to be countered by any tactical doctrine.
- The Allies were learning from their own mistakes and from Germany’s example; thereby decreasing the gap between their generalship and Germany’s. They also had a very gifted general in the form of Patton.
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Interesting, but not being given the context for this, I am viewing it as some sort of smarter-than-you contrarian hit-piece.
That said, I agree with 50% or more of what is said, but maybe not how it is said.
Did you write this Uncrustable, or was it someone else on World of Tanks?
I would say that some of the “myths” are well founded, particularly of the German tanks themselves. In general, they were much more formidable than Allied tanks (outside of the T-34/76) and given equal numbers or a fair distribution, the Germans would win a given tank battle pretty handily using Pz V and Pz VI. Allied superior numbers did play a role, in an overall sense, in that by 1943, Germany was on the defensive and being outfought at nearly every turn. It is impossible to effect blitzkrieg while holding your ground or retreating, but also difficult to do so when your resources are limited or actively being limited by the enemy. Blitzkrieg is an offensive tactic and the Germans had the advantage of surprise, preparation and inertia in 1939 - 1942 to sustain blitzkrieg. By the end of 1942, all of the ideal blitzkrieg qualities shifted to the Allies, due to German strategic losses and relinquishing of initiative.
I first learned about the Russian use of “blitzkrieg” a few years back in my Japan and WWII class in college (best class I ever took!). That was a bit of an eye opener that I had never heard about before and anyone who claims to be a World War II history-buff ought to know. The Russians definitely mastered the tactics before Germany did. The Soviet - Japanese border conflicts of the late 1930s showed this (especially Khalkhin Gol), but it was even more amazing with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in 1945 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_August_Storm). Some of the statistics on this battle are just insane. Obviously, the Soviets were the true masters. Makes what Germany did look like child’s play.
To effectively fight a blitzkrieg style war, you do need combined mobile arms (infantry, land and air), some element of initial surprise and an industrial base proportional to your scope of battle. After recovering from the shock of 1941, the Soviets had that. The US had it all along, it was just a matter of getting across two oceans to implement it. Germany obviously had it at first, but could not sustain it for that long without perhaps reaching certain goals, which they ultimately fell short of.
The tank is a very effective weapon, when properly utilized, and an important part of blitzkrieg. So I don’t understand why this person has the need to “rail” against it; it just seems like doubling down on an opinion that draws some heat. He’s right that it won’t win a war, or even a battle, on its own, but who argues that it would? Seems like the real problem he has is with the “popular culture” impressions of how great tanks are. If so, I suggest he go educate some boobs on the street.
I do agree, and have thought this for some time, that the tank is less useful today than it was certainly in the Second World War and Korea, but maybe even Vietnam. That is for two reasons, 1) for the past 50 years, with the exception of the Gulf War, Western nations have been fighting non-conventional warfare. This equates to traditional armies in expeditionary format vs. under-developed, but fluid, guerrilla forces with non-standard tactics. 2) The advent of the all weather attack aircraft with laser guided munitions.
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This might be less obviously than the second reason, but it is just as problematic, both for tanks and whatever might pass for “blitzkrieg” these days. Tanks, while initially created as infantry support vehicles, evolved into something a little grander as tank vs tank combat arose in WWII. The tanks most countries have in service today, including the US, were designed as MBTs for tank vs tank combat. Cold War style. Though still an imposing sight to a bunch of terrorists I am sure, an Abrams is not as effective against a bunch of guys running around with RPGs and bombs in their pockets as it would be against a Soviet made T-80. Tanks aside, blitzkrieg falters today because the lines of battle are less defined, enemies are not wearing standard uniforms and there are no enemy armies, in the traditional sense. There is also no scope of territory to take and even if you have taken some, the enemy may very well still be among you. Tanks cannot react fast enough in such an environment.
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I do not know what tactics the military has to minimize this threat, but it seems like the days of open plain tank on tank combat is gone. An exposed tank is a dead tank with the state of air warfare. They might be able to survive a little longer in urban or forested environments, but how effective can a MBT be in those situations?
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I’ve been linking to this book around here for years. “The Blitzkrieg Myth.”
It’s been awhile since I read it but I’m fairly certain the myths are at least cribbed from that book if not quoted verbatim.
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Great post LHoffman. James Dunnigan’s book How to Make War has a good chapter on tanks which discusses what they can and cannot do, and the environments for which they are and are not suited. They’re at their best in flat, open terrain where they can operate like ships at sea, but in most other places (such as rubble-strewn urban areas) they have to crawl forward under the protection of infantrymen (who are more nimble and can see better what’s around them). Dunnigan quotes a US Marine Corps expression that says “Hunting tanks is fun and easy,” something that was also demonstrated by Soviet troops in WWII when they had the opportunity to do things like tossing satchel charges onto the backs of German Panzers.
I think it’s also Dunnigan’s book (or another source with which I’m confusing it) which makes the point that when fundamentally new technologies appear on the battlefield, this sometimes creates a situation in which the side against which it’s used is initially placed at a disadvantage. In short, sharp campaigns, this can be decisive. Over time, however, the surprise wears off, countermeasures (both in terms of weapons and tactics) are developed, and the novel technology soon becomes just one more standard part of a nation’s arsenal. The best commanders develop, on the strength of battle experience, a clear-headed appreciation of the optimal way of using the technology, which often means fitting it into a combined-arms approach to warfare. We saw this happen in the 20th century with tanks and with aircraft, and on the naval side of things the Battle of the Atlantic provides all sorts of examples too – for instance the acoustic torpedo, which gave the Allies a nasty surprise when the Germans started using it, but which they soon neutralized by developing decoy noisemakers.
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I am not the author
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Isn’t calling it the “Myth of Blitzkreig” a bit like calling it the “Myth of WWII”?
WWII didn’t really get it’s name until well into / after the conflict if I am not mistaken? And many other names were considered.
Britons also considered the German attack “The Blitz” and I think that’s where the term “Blitz Kreig” comes from. Less of a doctorine, and more of a description of the events that were going on. With nations and cities falling quickly/daily.
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It was meant to be provocative, so he can sign a book deal latter based on other “discovery’s” only the the fringe would find comfort in. Young writers often pull that scam to make them stand out from other writers. He made his points and now he can sleep comfortably.
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@Uncrustable:
In fact, given that virtually all states who possess tanks and mechanized armies also own nuclear weapons, it is unlikely we will ever see such wars of mass maneuver ever again; and the ability to fight other forms of war become more paramount.
This is an exaggeration - my country for sure has tanks and mechanized armies and does not have nuclear weapons and the number of states with nuclear weapons (USA, UK, France, Russia, China, Israel, North Korea, India and Pakistan) is a minority considering the rest of the countries in the world.
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@Uncrustable:
In fact, given that virtually all states who possess tanks and mechanized armies also own nuclear weapons, it is unlikely we will ever see such wars of mass maneuver ever again; and the ability to fight other forms of war become more paramount.
This is an exaggeration - my country for sure has tanks and mechanized armies and does not have nuclear weapons and the number of states with nuclear weapons (USA, UK, France, Russia, China, Israel, North Korea, India and Pakistan) is a minority considering the rest of the countries in the world.
True. And given the extreme reticence to use those weapons shown throughout the past 60 years, I would think it more than likely that a relatively self-contained tank battle would not be good enough reason to use them anyway. Even for small scale tactical nukes.
Just Tomahawk or drone attack the SAM sites in the vicinity then send in the A-10s and Apaches for the slaughter.
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Isn’t calling it the “Myth of Blitzkreig” a bit like calling it the “Myth of WWII”? WWII didn’t really get it’s name until well into / after the conflict if I am not mistaken? And many other names were considered. Britons also considered the German attack “The Blitz” and I think that’s where the term “Blitz Kreig” comes from. Less of a doctorine, and more of a description of the events that were going on. With nations and cities falling quickly/daily.
I saw an American newsreel about the invasion of Poland in which the narrator says “World War II has begun!” The 1914-1918 war was already known as “The World War”, and in the summer of 1939 Chamberlain had warned that a German violation of Polish neutrality would ignite a general conflagration, so it didn’t require a lot of time or imagination for the term WWII to be invented. As for Blitzkrieg, I seem to recall that the term was invented by the British (possibly even by a British newspaper) to describe the fast-moving invasion of Poland. The term “the Blitz” to describe the bombing of London a year later was then derived from Blitzkrieg.
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I saw an American newsreel about the invasion of Poland in which the narrator says “World War II has begun!”
Hang on… so before England and France or Germany even fired a shot at each other, and Russia/USA/Japan were at peace, the Americans were already calling it WW2???
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Isn’t calling it the “Myth of Blitzkreig” a bit like calling it the “Myth of WWII”?
Not really. I think the myth is that Germany created some heretofore unknown form of warfare which to some degree is factual but isn’t ever really challenged. It is also factual the Germans did not have particularly greater mechanization at the start of the war or that they created something from scratch and without parallel. Speedy victory has been advocated since Sun Tzu. The challenge is not to the facts of the war but to the interpretation.
It is fair to say that for many “Blitzkrieg” is used without much definition and with little nuance and to cover a wide variety of tactics and doctrine that might be better broken down and more carefully classified. What happens to the interpretation of the early war when you do that?
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I saw an American newsreel about the invasion of Poland in which the narrator says “World War II has begun!”
Hang on… so before England and France or Germany even fired a shot at each other, and Russia/USA/Japan were at peace, the Americans were already calling it WW2???
I said the newsreel was about the invasion of Poland (the campaign lasted six weeks), not about September 1st 1939. Britain and France declared war on September 3, which automatically brought in their respective empires, and within a few days the self-governing Dominions of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada had done the same too. So it was pretty much a world war by the end of the first week, which is probably the timeframe in which the newsreel was made (I can’t recall its details). Besides, people like H.G. Wells had been predicting another world war since as far back as 1933, so there’s nothing surprising about the phrases “World War II” or “Second World War”.
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Not really. I think the myth is that Germany created some heretofore unknown form of warfare which to some degree is factual but isn’t ever really challenged. It is also factual the Germans did not have particularly greater mechanization at the start of the war or that they created something from scratch and without parallel.
Although some people do believe that the fast-moving, mechanized, combined-arms tactics which Germany used in 1939 and 1940 were a German invention that sprang out of nowhere, historians have been pointing out for decades that the basic theory of armoured warfare had been worked out on paper in the 1920s and 1930s by individuals like Fuller, Liddell-Hart, de Gaulle and Guderian. The Soviets were also early believers in armoured warfare, as illustrated by the fact that they snapped up Christie’s design for a torsion-bar tank suspension after the Americans had failed to show much interest in his invention. It later showed up on the T-34.
Germany had fewer tanks than the French and British in 1940, and its Panzer I and Panzer II tanks were decidedly lightweight compared to some of the Allied tanks, but one area where Germany was ahead was in the use of radio for the command and control of armoured forces. Germany had the same advantage in Russia in 1941, but the Soviets subsequently shaped up and started equiping their own tanks with radios.
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Germany also massed their tanks, while French spread it out along the line…till it was too little, too late at Arras.
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