Hitler's Panzers by Dennis Showalter Read Free Book Online Page A

gun. Three firms—Krupp, Rheinmetall, and Daimler-Benz—responded, two with a long history of arms production, the third specializing in motor vehicles. None gave the project high priority; all found it more difficult than expected to transform sketches and figures into a functioning weapons system. The half dozen prototypes available by 1929 were most useful as showcases for developments in automotive technology, engines, and suspension systems, than as practical field designs. Though it took only half the time to develop and present their prototypes, the same could be said for the Truppenamt’s second proposal, submitted in 1928. This was a light tank, seven and a half tons, carrying a turret-mounted 37mm high-velocity gun, slightly faster and carrying a bit less armor than its larger stablemate. As a fig-leaf concession to Versailles, the designs were given the subtle cover names of “large tractors” and “small tractors.”
    If the Reichswehr’s theories of armored war owed heavy debt to Britain, its tank designs channeled France in their armament and in the concept behind the paired designs. The heavier vehicles would directly support and cooperate with infantry. The lighter ones would lead attacks and act as tank destroyers. The French reversed the order, but the thinking was similar.
    The Reichswehr pursued other avenues as well. With great reluctance, Lutz abandoned his hopes for a Christie-type wheel/track tank as attention shifted to developing armored cars. During and after the war, German designs were characterized by heavy armor and armament but correspondingly poor off-road capacity. In 1927, the Inspectorate of Motor Troops submitted contracts for prototypes—this time to three firms with histories of successful heavy-truck design: Daimler, Buessing, and Magirus. Since the beginnings of industrialized war in the nineteenth century, the Prussian/German army had been reluctant to rely on single suppliers. The results here justified the multiple tenders, providing the technical basis for the eight-wheeled armored cars that would guide and lead the panzers across most of Europe a decade later.
    Taking the test models to the field posed a different set of problems. After the war, Germany sold the design of its projected light tank to Sweden, and one of its designers also relocated. The vehicle went into service in a modified form in 1921, and gave enough satisfaction that the Swedish army and government remained open to further cooperation. Economics reinforced technology. In 1920, the major heavy-machinery firm of Landsverk was on the edge of bankruptcy. Working through a Netherlands company, the German company Gutehoffnungshütte Aktenverein purchased half the stock, and by 1925 owned more than 60 percent of it. Landsverk continued to turn out trucks and tractors, and railroad and harbor equipment. It also developed a sideline: producing armored vehicles. German engineers, technicians, and designs played significant roles in the process, and some of the resulting vehicles were eventually exported as far afield as Ireland. Despite regular low-level exchanges of personnel and concepts, however, as far as the Reichswehr was concerned, Sweden’s society was too open for much more than the military tourism that in 1929 allowed Guderian, as the guest of a Swedish armor battalion, to actually drive a tank for the first time.
    Looking eastward suggested better prospects since, due to the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922, Weimar Germany and Soviet Russia had frequently made common cause, brought together by their shared status as outlaw states. For German soldiers the vast, impenetrable Soviet Union offered opportunities to circumvent Versailles in relative obscurity. Their Russian counterparts saw Germany as a source of technical modernization. Preliminary planning for military cooperation began in 1920, expanded after a secret clause of Rapallo allowed Germans to train in Russia, and culminated in 1939 with an