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.pdf
The 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.
