David T. Zabecki called it a seminal and comprehensive work on mechanized combined arms warfare and said its lessons and principles were of immeasurable value to the post-Vietnam American military.

[5] In 1997, the official United States Marine Corps review of books for its professional military reading list, assembled by Paul Van Riper for the Marine Corps Combat Development Command, lauded it as "a virtual Bible" on armored warfare, with special praise given to the "Psychology of the Russian Soldier" section and the book's maps, which it says offers more tactical and operational clarity than nearly any other military work.

Soon after its release, Dartmouth history professor Henry L. Roberts, in a one-sentence "capsule review" in Foreign Affairs, called it an "excellent account", offering "interesting observations".

[11][12] Robert Citino said Mellenthin's book bolstered Western stereotypes of the Red Army as "a faceless and mindless horde" that aimed to "smash everything in its path through numbers, brute force and sheer size".

Citino included Panzer Battles among the German officers' memoirs that were "at best unreliable and at worst deliberately misleading", an opinion echoed by historian Daniel Franke, who characterized its impact on the post-war reputation of the Wehrmacht as "baleful", while still recommending it as an important book.