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Blitzkrieg, The Long And The Short Of It.
This is one of the most complete documentaries I've seen on the development and deployment of tanks. It's a mixture of newsreel and combat footage, and talking heads who know what they're talking about. And it's a balanced picture. Hitler gets his just moral desserts, but is also credited with inventing the Blitzkrieg. His intention was to avoid the long, drawn-out battles of attrition along a broad front, which he'd experienced as a soldier in the trenches in World War I. Hitler's generals were all for mechanization but didn't think a war could begin with nothing more than light tanks, used mainly for training purposes. But it worked. It worked very well in Western Europe.
It's detail is exquisite. It answers the question: How could Germany acquire tanks when they were forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles? (The USSR built them for Hitler.) The difference between the Panzer I and the Panzer two are clearly defined. And one expert even contributes the name of the Austrian general who coined the term "Blitz" as applied to warfare. That's hard to beat.
The details of Blitzkrieg were worked out by General Hans Guderian. It was he who decided not to disperse the panzers in support of the infantry, but to organize them in separate and independent divisions, so they would be a force in themselves. This is something the Confederate Cavalry knew during the Civil War. It took years for the Federals to catch on.
I can't go into detail in sketching the elements of the program but I do want to make one observation, something I learned. Everyone knows that Hitler stopped his tanks short of Calais and Dunkirk where the remaining British and French armies had been cornered. And it's always treated as a mistake. But here we get to look at the German's point of view. The German tanks scything through France had been attacked from the flank, and although they repulsed the Allied armor, Hitler realized that his long, stretched-out line of advance was vulnerable. The tanks were gas guzzlers too and their fuel supplies hadn't caught up. Further, urban warfare was already beginning to develop around Calais and Dunkirk, in circumstances unsuitable for the use of tanks. So Hitler ordered the panzers to halt and allow the Stukas to obliterate the Allies. (Guderian didn't stop soon enough and was fired.) Hitler blew it when he turned east. If anything should be learned from that disaster, it's that a country the size of Missouri should not invade a country the size of Russia. Guderian knew, but Hitler did not, that Blitzkrieg, to be successful, had to be aimed at a single point. Instead Hitler divided his army into three groups, all headed in different directions. As had happened in France, the panzers outstripped their supplies of food, ammunition, and most important requisite -- fuel. The result was a one-thousand day battle of attrition which Hitler had tried to avoid and which Germany could not possibly win. Hitler blamed his generals and fired Guderian again.
Don't look for many maps or political considerations here. It's the story of Blitzkrieg, its virtues and limitations, and of the part the panzers played in its application.
It's detail is exquisite. It answers the question: How could Germany acquire tanks when they were forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles? (The USSR built them for Hitler.) The difference between the Panzer I and the Panzer two are clearly defined. And one expert even contributes the name of the Austrian general who coined the term "Blitz" as applied to warfare. That's hard to beat.
The details of Blitzkrieg were worked out by General Hans Guderian. It was he who decided not to disperse the panzers in support of the infantry, but to organize them in separate and independent divisions, so they would be a force in themselves. This is something the Confederate Cavalry knew during the Civil War. It took years for the Federals to catch on.
I can't go into detail in sketching the elements of the program but I do want to make one observation, something I learned. Everyone knows that Hitler stopped his tanks short of Calais and Dunkirk where the remaining British and French armies had been cornered. And it's always treated as a mistake. But here we get to look at the German's point of view. The German tanks scything through France had been attacked from the flank, and although they repulsed the Allied armor, Hitler realized that his long, stretched-out line of advance was vulnerable. The tanks were gas guzzlers too and their fuel supplies hadn't caught up. Further, urban warfare was already beginning to develop around Calais and Dunkirk, in circumstances unsuitable for the use of tanks. So Hitler ordered the panzers to halt and allow the Stukas to obliterate the Allies. (Guderian didn't stop soon enough and was fired.) Hitler blew it when he turned east. If anything should be learned from that disaster, it's that a country the size of Missouri should not invade a country the size of Russia. Guderian knew, but Hitler did not, that Blitzkrieg, to be successful, had to be aimed at a single point. Instead Hitler divided his army into three groups, all headed in different directions. As had happened in France, the panzers outstripped their supplies of food, ammunition, and most important requisite -- fuel. The result was a one-thousand day battle of attrition which Hitler had tried to avoid and which Germany could not possibly win. Hitler blamed his generals and fired Guderian again.
Don't look for many maps or political considerations here. It's the story of Blitzkrieg, its virtues and limitations, and of the part the panzers played in its application.
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- rmax304823
- May 11, 2015
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