BOOKS OF THE WEEK
Achtung ! Panzer!
Panzer Leader. By General Heinz Guderian. (Michael Joseph.
THERE was surely no field commander in the Second World War who made such an impact on its course and on the nature of warfare as General Heinz Guderian. It was he who created the German armoured forces, developed the Blitzkrieg technique and applied it with spectacular success in France and Russia, thus providing Hitler with the greatest of his victories. In the 1920s, when conventional military thinking, in Germany as elsewhere, was dominated by the belief in the supremacy of fire-power, Guderian set out to revive the importance of movement. Taking his lead—as he admits in his memoirs—from British writers such as Liddell Hart and J. F. C.
Fuller whose doctrines were spurned by their own professional leaders, Guderian declared that the tank could be made " the operationally decisive weapon " provided that armoured units were organised into Panzer divisions and " supplied with fully motorised supporting arms ", so that these could follow the armour across country and enable it to be used en masse. These views were strongly opposed by the German General Staff, who persisted in regarding the tank as an infantry-support weapon, but Hitler, a revolutionary by nature, was quick to appreciate the revolutionary possibilities of Guderian's ideas and gave him the backing he needed.
In France, although Hitler became hesitant after the break- through at Sedan had been achieved; Guderian refused to be restrained and drove unchecked to the Channel. In doing so, with a force numerically inferior to that of his opponents; Guderian showed— as he had written in 1937—that the decisive factors were " to be able to move faster than has hitherto been done . .. to keep moving once the break-through has been made .. . (and) to dominate the enemy's defence in all its depth."
Outnumbered two to one in tanks in the West in 1940, the Wehr- macht found itself in an inferiority of nearly ten to one in the East the next year, and yet the boldness of Guderian's leadership enabled his panzer group to cover the 400 miles to Smolensk in three weeks, despite the efforts of his superiors to restrain him. Had Guderian then been given his head, there is little doubt that Moscow would have been taken that autumn, but, by turning Guderian south to take part in the envelopment of Kiev, Hitler sacrificed a chance that was never to recur. Before the drive for Moscow could be renewed, the Russians had brought into action in large numbers a tank (the T34) superior to anything the Germans possessed. " Up to this time," writes Guderian, " we had enjoyed tank superiority, but from now on the situation was reversed." It was nearly two years before Germany could produce a tank to match the T34, and by this time the Red Army, at Stalingrad, had seized the initiative.
When he writes about his struggles to secure the acceptance of his theories, and about his forthright clashes with Hitler and with his fellow generals, Guderian provides us with some absorbing glimpses of events on " the other side of the hill," but his account of the first campaign in Russia is too detailed and laborious for the ordinary reader. Here he is more concerned to chronicle hii own command activities and to plot the movement of his troops than he is to describe the character of the fighting or the quality of his opponents. It is unfortunate that he says so little about the Red Army, for there is no one better qualified to make an assessment of Soviet forces, their methods and equipment. Guderian makes it clear, however, that the great mistakes of 1941 were made by Germany—by the Army High Command as much as by Hitler. He blames the Generals and the Fiihrer for the excessive optimism which led the Wehrmacht to under-estimate the Red Army and for the disastrous failure to provide heavy clothing for a winter campaign. Moreover, he reveals that lwhen he appealed in person against Hitler's orders, first for the Kiev 'offensive and later for the continuation of the attack against 'Moscow, neither Brauchitsch (the C.-in-C.) nor Haider (the Army Chief of
Staff) attended to support him. • Following the defeat at Moscow which Guderian had predicted, he was discarded and was not recalled to active duty until after Stalingrad. Then, as Inspector-General of Armoured Forces and later as Chief of the Army General Staff, Guderian endeavoured to re-build the panzer divisions that Hitler had well nigh destroyed, but no sooner was their strength partially restored than Hitler threw them into an abortive offensive at Kursk. Thereafter, Guderian urged Hitler to withdraw to a defensive line and set free the panzer divisions so that they might be used for a concerted counter-stroke in application of those principles which had brought them their early victories. This. Hitler refused to do. He demanded that his troops must stand fast wherever they were, and he committed his mobile forces to the static task of holding the front. It is one of the ironies of the Second World War that Hitler's defeat should have been due in considerable measure to the neglect and misuse of the very weapon—and the man—that had gained him his greatest triumphs.
In these circumstances one might expect Guderian to be bitter. On the contrary, he does not attempt to hide his admiration for " Hitlerls great achievements in the field of foreign policy " and he declares that the original Nazi programme was one " to which- all decent Germans heartily subscribed." Even Hitler's " irrespon- sibly harsh treatment of the Jews " is passed off merely as being " significantly short-sighted." , Guderian insists that " the German generals wanted peace," but he reveals what he means by this when he says that after the Anschluss and Munich he and other generals believed that " Germany would be so powerful in Europe that it would be able peacefully to achieve its national aims."
One can understand—in view of the Allied demand for Uncon- ditional Surrender—why Guderian felt obrged to support Hitler so long as military resistance was possible. Yet it is hardly enough to explain Hitler's excesses away by saying that he suffered from Parkinson's disease. Nor can one accept the assertion that " all the German people needs to know is that the man at their head . . . was a sick man. This sickness was his misfortune and his fate. It was also the misfortune and the fate of his country."
The implication here is that, if Hitler had not been a sick man, Germany might not have lost the war. It seems too that, if another Hitler were to attempt to conquer Europe, Germans like Guderian would be proud to follow him, but would be more careful to make sure that he was kept under control. CHESTER WILMOT.
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