Blitzkrieg

The intent is to break through an opponent's lines of defense, dislocate the defenders, confuse the enemy by making it difficult to respond to the continuously changing front, and defeat them in a decisive Vernichtungsschlacht: a battle of annihilation.

[11] In 2005, the historian Karl-Heinz Frieser summarized blitzkrieg as the result of German commanders using the latest technology in the most advantageous way, according to traditional military principles, and employing "the right units in the right place at the right time".

Tactically, blitzkrieg is a coordinated military effort by tanks, motorized infantry, artillery and aircraft, to create an overwhelming local superiority in combat power, to defeat the opponent and break through its defences.

[15][16] Blitzkrieg as used by Germany had considerable psychological or "terror" elements,[d] such as the Jericho Trompete, a noise-making siren on the Junkers Ju 87 dive bomber, to affect the morale of enemy forces.

487, Führung und Gefecht der verbundenen Waffen ("Command and Battle of the Combined Arms)", known as Das Fug (1921–1923) and Truppenführung (1933–1934), containing standard procedures for combined-arms warfare.

Like von Seeckt, de Gaulle concluded that France could no longer maintain the huge armies of conscripts and reservists that had fought the First World War, and he sought to use tanks, mechanized forces and aircraft to allow a smaller number of highly trained soldiers to have greater impact in battle.

My historical studies, the exercises carried out in England and our own experience with mock-ups had persuaded me that the tanks would never be able to produce their full effect until the other weapons on whose support they must inevitably rely were brought up to their standard of speed and of cross-country performance.

[56] According to David A. Grossman, by the Twelfth Battle of Isonzo (October–November 1917), while he was conducting a light-infantry operation, Rommel had perfected his maneuver-warfare principles, which were the very same ones that were applied during the blitzkrieg against France in 1940 and were repeated in the Coalition ground offensive against Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War.

[67] Methamphetamine, known as "pervitin," use is believed to have played a role in the speed of Germany's initial Blitzkrieg since military success with combined arms demanded long hours of continuous operations with minimal rest.

[69] The disadvantages of terrain could be nullified if surprise was achieved over the enemy by an attack in areas that had been considered natural obstacles, as occurred during the Battle of France in which the main German offensive went through the Ardennes.

During the Battle of France in 1940, the 4th Armoured Division (Major-General Charles de Gaulle) and elements of the 1st Army Tank Brigade (British Expeditionary Force) made probing attacks on the German flank and pushed into the rear of the advancing armored columns at times.

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), the Luftwaffe chose a method of carpet bombing, resulting in heavy civilian casualties.

[81] Although journalists popularized the term Blitzkrieg during the September 1939 invasion of Poland, the historians Matthew Cooper and J. P. Harris have written that German operations during the campaign were consistent with traditional methods.

Matthew Cooper wrote: Throughout the Polish Campaign, the employment of the mechanised units revealed the idea that they were intended solely to ease the advance and to support the activities of the infantry....

The paralysis of command and the breakdown of morale were not made the ultimate aim of the... German ground and air forces, and were only incidental by-products of the traditional maneuvers of rapid encirclement and of the supporting activities of the flying artillery of the Luftwaffe, both of which had as their purpose the physical destruction of the enemy troops.

[83]John Ellis wrote 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".

[84][page needed] Steven Zaloga wrote, "Whilst Western accounts of the September campaign have stressed the shock value of the panzer and Stuka attacks, they have tended to underestimate the punishing effect of German artillery on Polish units.

Armored and motorized units under Guderian, Rommel and others advanced far beyond the marching and horse-drawn infantry divisions and far in excess of what Hitler and the German high command had expected or wished.

Although it won operationally, it could not inflict a decisive defeat as the durability of the Soviet Union's manpower, resources, industrial base and aid from the Western Allies began to take effect.

[106] Pier Battistelli wrote that the operational planning marked a change in German offensive thinking away from blitzkrieg and that more priority was given to brute force and fire power than to speed and maneuver.

Frieser wrote that the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), which was created in 1938 had intended to avoid the decisive battle concepts of its predecessors and planned for a long war of exhaustion (Ermattungskrieg).

Shimon Naveh wrote, "The striking feature of the blitzkrieg concept is the complete absence of a coherent theory which should have served as the general cognitive basis for the actual conduct of operations".

[123] For all intents and purposes, Blitzkrieg ended at the Eastern Front once the German forces had given up Stalingrad, after they faced hundreds of new T-34 tanks, when the Luftwaffe became unable to assure air dominance, and after the stalemate at Kursk.

To that end, Hanson concludes that German military success was not accompanied by the adequate provisioning of its troops with food and materiel far from the source of supply, which contributed to its ultimate failure.

[124] Despite its later disappointments as German troops extended their lines at too great a distance, the very specter of armored Blitzkrieg forces initially proved victorious against the Polish, Dutch, Belgian and French Armies early in the war.

[125] In the 1960s, Alan Milward developed a theory of blitzkrieg economics: Germany could not fight a long war and chose to avoid comprehensive rearmament and armed in breadth to win quick victories.

It happened because the German aircraft industry lacked the experience to build a long-range bomber fleet quickly and because Hitler was insistent on the very rapid creation of a numerically large force.

The main evidence of Liddell Hart's deceit and "tendentious" report of history can be found in his letters to Erich von Manstein, Heinz Guderian, and the relatives and associates of Erwin Rommel.

The first European general to introduce rapid movement, concentrated power and integrated military effort was Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus during the Thirty Years' War.

As the ideas of making use of the combustible engine in a protected encasement to bring mobility back to warfare developed in the German army, Guderian was a leading proponent of the formations that would be used for this purpose.