Commentaries on War and International Relations

The Blitzkrieg Revolution

Ralph Zuljan

One of the great lessons to be learned from World War II is that a relatively small change at the tactical level can have a tremendous effect on the strategic situation. Such was the case when the German army introduced mechanized divisions -- the panzer divisions. On a purely technical basis these units were not dissimilar to armored divisions deployed and experimented with in other countries and while these showed some promise they hardly represented a significant deviation from the norm in the armies of the great powers. However, when combined with the "storm troop" tactics developed during the First World War, these mechanized units proved to be the basis for an entirely new form of warfare and a new term entered our vocabulary to describe it -- Blitzkrieg.

Germany solved the problem of static trench warfare by 1918 but it went virtually unnoticed at the time. With American troops flooding onto the Western Front and German troops in full retreat after the spring offensive collapsed, there was not the time to give serious consideration to the effectiveness of the German tactical doctrine by the allied camp. Besides which, the lack of mechanization made the "storm troop" tactics that the German army had developed ineffectual at the strategic level. The mobility necessary to make these tactics work simply did not yet exist.

One reason for the allied victory in World War I was the use of tanks in support of infantry attacks-- a British technological advance. There were other reasons as well, but tanks featured prominently in almost all the explanations. The mechanical limits on early armored fighting vehicles, however, led most military experts to conclude that this new element in land warfare should be relegated to an infantry support role. Visionaries, meanwhile, seized on the tank as a revolutionary weapons system and argued for its massed employment in fully mechanized units instead of the parceling out of armored assets to the infantry units which was the norm for post Great War armies.

In the Soviet Union of the 1930s the idea of fully mechanized armored units was actually adopted for a while as official doctrine. Once the full implications, especially the industrial requirements, of such a doctrine became apparent there was a reversal in official sanction. The kind of fully mechanized army being proposed was simply beyond the capabilities of the Soviet state to provide. A typically Stalinist means of revising doctrine was applied to the Soviet officers who favored the mechanized idea -- the military purge.

In Britain and France the officers who favored mechanized units during the twenties and thirties were too junior to win doctrinal arguments with their respective institutions. The military leadership in both countries retained the Great War perspective that tanks were an infantry support weapon. This should not be seen as an unreasonable position since, after all, this is the use tanks were put to in the First World War and it had proven successful. So, while the seeds of mechanization were everywhere, the soil was not fertile.

Germany's inter-war experience was similar to that of the other great powers although there was a somewhat higher willingness to experiment with new ideas. Tanks were viewed primarily as an infantry support weapon by most of the senior officers. Even the rise of Hitler and his apparent support of mechanized warfare did little to change the generals' point of view. Besides, Hitler's interest in armor was primarily based on its propaganda value and one could argue that the only reason fully mechanized units were encouraged under Hitler was that they looked really impressive on parade. No one expected these units to have a war-winning quality.

When the war began and Poland was eliminated within a month of operations by the Third Reich's army, few military observers showed any concern. There was a complete lack of insight into the strategic implications of this new use of armored units. Only after France was eliminated from the war in six weeks (an accomplishment that had proven impossible in the four years of the First World War) did observers begin to reconsider their assumptions about how wars were to be fought. By then, most of Europe was already under German hegemony. When the Soviet Union was invaded about one year after France had been defeated, their military was still trying to reform in a way that was consistent with the German pattern. Unfortunately, such radical changes take time to institute. This inevitable lag nearly cost the Soviet Union its survival. The territory lost in the first six weeks of Barbarossa took three years to recover and the social and economic damage done was not overcome for decades afterward.

All of the Third Reich's success in the first period of the war can readily be attributed to the remarkably effective combination of mechanized units and "storm troop" tactics. It was a combination that few military experts viewed as revolutionary until after the effects were observed on the battlefield. Once revealed, there was a strict time limit on the German Blitzkrieg's effectiveness because viable countermeasures would inevitably be developed be its enemies. This weakness, rather than the more frequently cited one of lack of economic production, doomed Nazi Germany to defeat if presented with a lengthy war. Its entire success depended on the inability of its enemies to adapt to the new form of war before they were defeated.

German forces rolled over France in six weeks and most of the western Soviet Union in less than three months. The perception that these achievements were calculated successes based on a reasoned understanding of the revolutionary combination of tactics and technology that Blitzkrieg warfare represented is, however, false and has caused a great deal of confusion in the interpretation of these historical events. A closer examination of how the German High Command responded to their successes shows that Blitzkrieg was a serendipitous achievement which the Germans understood as poorly as the Allies.

Blitzkrieg victories depended on aggressive advancement of mechanized units without regard to their flanks or the inevitable enemy force concentrations to their rear. This opportunistic form of warfare depended on the independent action of local commanders and represented an unprecedented loss of control for senior field commanders as well as for the High Command. Even the liberal German military system found its senior commanders frustrated by Blitzkrieg warfare. German commanders traditionally had substantial freedom of action but Blitzkrieg pushed the demands for freedom from command interference to new levels, which inevitably strained relations with senior commanders who watched with ever increasing unease as panzer commanders advanced beyond the limits of supporting forces.

All of the German victories in 1940-41 depended on the risky yet effective Blitzkrieg method. The practical consequence of this process was a loose encirclement of front-line enemy units that gradually became tighter as regular infantry caught up and filled in the flanks of the advancing panzers. Generally, the psychological impact on the enemy of such deep penetrations behind the supposed front lines was great enough to overcome the threat of obvious counter-thrusts and this effect usually lasted long enough for the Germans to move up the relatively slow regular infantry units and trap the bulk of the enemy in isolated pockets.

It was inevitable that some of the encircled forces would be able to break through the initially thin encirclements until German infantry were able to reinforce it. During this period there were usually moments in which the leading elements of a German attack were themselves in danger of being destroyed - by the very forces they had trapped. Also, any enemy forces outside the pockets represented threats to the flanks of the advancing panzers. For such reasons, the panzer and motorized units leading an attack into the enemy rear had tenuous contact with their own rear at times. There were even occasions when the marauding panzer forces ended up completely cut off and in danger of destruction by forces they had nominally encircled.

The German High Command was never comfortable with this situation and their problem of command and control was never resolved in a satisfactory manner. Even senior field commanders had reservations about such actions and their standard response was to try to slow down the advance in order to give the infantry time to catch up. It was an understandable response considering the ever-increasing risk of effective enemy countermeasures as the flanks lengthened and the panzers moved farther into the enemy rear and away from their support. Junior commanders often ignored the sometimes frantic orders to halt or slow down and, in so far as such actions proved successful, they were mildly rebuked for what was outright insubordination in some cases. When success was not forthcoming, they tended to be sacked for their recklessness.

For example, during the Soviet counteroffensive of 1941-42 a large number of German front-line commanders were removed for insubordination and a host of other reasons. Justifiable or not, it demonstrated the German command structure's ultimate response to failure in a Blitzkrieg campaign since the German Moscow offensive represented the first significant failure in over two years of war and the consequence of it was a purging of the commanders associated with the successful implementation of Blitzkrieg tactics in previous campaigns. The negative consequences of the risks associated with a Blitzkrieg campaign were made painfully clear during these critical winter months and the German High Command's response was to attempt to reduce the risk in future campaigns.

This process of risk reduction was formalized, in the spring of 1942, by Hitler's Directive No. 41 which also outlined the plan for the coming summer campaign on the Eastern Front. This document effectively summarizes the mistaken lessons learned by the Germans during the first year of the war with the Soviet Union. It observed that "[e]xperience has shown that the Russians are not very vulnerable to operational encircling movements" so that "individual breaches of the front should take the form of close pincer movements." Furthermore, it warned mechanized units against "advancing too quickly and too far" and thereby risk losing "connection with the infantry following them" and emphasized mechanized units "supporting the hard-pressed, forward-fighting infantry by direct attacks on the rear of the encircled Russian armies."

The debate over the scale of Blitzkrieg advances had been ongoing since the campaign against France in 1940. Directive No. 41 effectively settled the debate in favor of the risk adverse High Command. Even more devastating for the fighting of Blitzkrieg campaigns was the endorsement of limiting the pace of the mechanized advances to that of the infantry. By linking the pace of advance with the speed of marching infantry the overall effectiveness of Blitzkrieg was compromised. The practical effect of these instructions was to mix armored and motorized units with regular units and reintroduce into the German army practices that had proven fatal or nearly so for all of their opponents up to that time.

Blitzkrieg was then, no brilliantly thought out military development. It was a fortunate combination of armor and tactics that relied on highly skilled and motivated soldiers to achieve its impressive results. The German High Command failed to either support or develop this revolution in warfare. Their only contribution to its success being the limited ability to tolerate the rogue behavior of its practitioners as long as it proved successful.

Originally published in "World War II" at Suite101.com in two parts on November1, 1998 and December 1, 1998. Revised edition published in "Articles On War" at OnWar.com in two parts on July 1, 2003.

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