Hitler's Panzers by Dennis Showalter Read Free Book Online

motorized machine-gun battalion, a field artillery battalion, a battery of light infantry guns, and an engineer company, all truck-transported. The section reported extensively on the maneuvers themselves and provided translations and summaries of the major journalistic commentaries, especially those by Fuller and Liddell- Hart. The statement of British Chief of Imperial General Staff Sir George Milne that future armored forces would be able to strike up to three hundred miles into an enemy’s territory struck particular chords. Guderian credits the post-maneuver Provisional Instructions for Tank and Armored Car Training with providing the theoretical basis for a developing German armor doctrine. The work was summarized, and then translated—no great feat of intelligence, since it was available on the open market.
    Even—or better said, especially—in the Reichswehr, theory required testing. Banning weapons and limiting numbers enhanced the risks of abstraction, postulating developments and concepts beyond the attainable and the sustainable. New models of dummy tanks appeared on the maneuver grounds. The originals had usually been wooden frames mounted on bicycles or pushed around by a couple of soldiers. By 1928 the firm of Hanomag was delivering motorized mock-ups that could cross terrain at fair speeds. That summer, Vollard- Bockelberg used them in a small-scale exercise reflecting British tactics by deploying the model tanks in three waves: two to break through to the enemy artillery zone and into his rear; the third to support the infantry directly.
    By 1930 all the motor battalions conducted similar exercises built around dummy tanks and wooden antitank guns.
    In April 1931, Oswald Lutz was appointed Inspector of Motor Troops. He requested as his chief of staff Heinz Guderian, freshly promoted to lieutenant colonel. In 1931-32, the team planned and conducted a series of upscale exercises involving entire battalions of dummy tanks with supporting infantry and artillery. For Lutz the “supporting” adjective was central. Tanks were now the key weapon on the modern battlefield. Infantry, artillery, engineers and aircraft played essentially supporting roles. Tanks therefore should carry out independent missions, as opposed to being tied down to the infantry. Independence in turn required mass; using tanks in anything less than battalion strength diluted their shock effect and rendered them disproportionately vulnerable to antitank defenses. Finally, Lutz insisted on surprise as a critical force multiplier. Surprise involved more than the timing if an initial attack. Tanks should advance in echelons and on a broad front, constantly shifting the focus of their movements in order to confuse the defender. But Lutz was no advocate of the all-armor approach; instead, he stressed the importance of cooperation. In particular the infantry must closely follow the tanks to exploit the initial shock of armor, and trust to the tanks for fire support instead of looking to the rear for artillery or waiting for their own heavy weapons.
    On the technical side the development of armored vehicles had continued after the armistice. Initially this focused on wheeled vehicles for internal security purposes. The design capacity to do more remained. The question from the military perspective was how best to work with industry to enhance that capacity and develop state-of-the-art designs without flagrantly violating the terms of Versailles. By the mid-1920s the solution had been worked out, less on paper than by winks, nudges, and gentlemen’s agreements. The Truppenamt would prepare specifications. Interested companies would produce designs and prototypes for study and testing. That process would continue until it somehow became feasible to begin production openly.
    The first concept of the Weapons Office in 1925 was cutting-edge: a 16-ton vehicle with a top speed of 25 miles per hour, 14mm of armor overall, and a turret-mounted short 75mm