Panzer Leader

by Heinz Guderian

  In October of 1940 Hitler had discussions with the French leaders and with Franco concerning the future course of the war. In connection with these conversations he next went to meet his friend Mussolini in Florence. It was while on his way to this meeting, on Bologna station to be exact, that he learned, to his surprise, of his ally’s declaration of a private war against Greece: this had been done without Hitler’s connivance and he did not approve of it. By this act of Mussolini’s the Balkan problem was reopened and the war took a new direction which, for Germany at least, was highly undesirable.

  The first result of Mussolini’s arbitrary gesture—according to what Hitler told me—was that Franco immediately withdrew from any sort of collaboration with the Axis powers. He plainly had no intention of becoming involved in a common policy with such unpredictable partners.

  The next sequel was increasing tension between Germany and the Soviet Union. Such tension already existed as a result of a number of incidents that had occurred during the past few months, mainly in connection with German policy in Rumania and on the Danube. It was to lessen this that Molotov was invited to Berlin.

  In Berlin Molotov made the following claims:

  1. Finland was to be regarded as belonging within the Soviets’ sphere of interest.

  2. An agreement was to be made concerning the future of Poland.

  3. Soviet interests in Rumania and Bulgaria must be recognised.

  4. Soviet interests in the Dardanelles must also be acknowledged.

  After Molotov had returned to Moscow the Russians restated these demands, in more precise form, in writing.

  Hitler was highly incensed by the Russian claims and expressed his displeasure at length during the Berlin conversations, while simply ignoring the subsequent Russian note. The conclusion he drew from Molotov’s visit and its results was a belief that war with the Soviet Union must sooner or later be inevitable. He was to describe to me repeatedly the course that the Berlin conference took; I have given his version here. It is true that he never talked to me about this matter before 1943, but later on he did so several times and always in exactly the same terms. I have no reason to believe that what he said to me was not a repetition of his opinions at the time in question.

  Angered as he was by the Russian claims, he expressed his annoyance with the Italian policy of October 1940 in even stronger words; from his point of view he was, I think, quite right to do so. The Italian attack on Greece was as fatuous in execution as it was unnecessary in design. The Italian offensive had already been brought to a halt by the 30th of October. On the 6th of November the initiative passed to the Greeks. As is usually the case when bad policy results in military catastrophe, Mussolini turned in anger against his generals, and in particular against Badoglio who had warned him against bellicose escapades, though unfortunately in vain. In the middle of November the Italians suffered a sharp defeat. Badoglio was therefore an enemy of the régime and a traitor. On the 26th of November he tendered his resignation. On December 6th Cavallero was appointed to succeed him.

  On December 10th the Italians were heavily defeated in North Africa, near Sidi Barrani. It would have been more in the common interest of Germany and Italy to desist from the Greek adventure and in its place to strengthen the position in North Africa. Now Marshal Graziani began asking for German aeroplanes; Mussolini decided to request the despatch to Libya of two German panzer divisions. During the course of the winter Bardia, Derna and Tobruk were lost. Rommel’s German troops finally put the situation in order once again.

  Italy’s unco-ordinated action and mistakes in the Balkans resulted in strong German forces being committed in Africa and Bulgaria, and subsequently in Greece and Serbia. This led to a weakening of our strength in the decisive theatres of the war.

  It had now been shown that the principle by which the Alps were accepted as the boundary between the spheres of interest of the Axis powers was quite inapplicable to the real needs of wartime leadership. Co-operation between the two allies was so faulty that it might just as well not have existed at all.

  Shortly after Molotov’s visit my new Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-Colonel Freiherr von Liebenstein, and my first general staff officer,1 Major Bayerlein, were summoned to a conference by the Chief of the Army General Staff; there they heard for the first time about the proposed campaign against Soviet Russia, Operation Barbarossa. They returned from this conference and reported to me: when they spread out a map of Russia before me I could scarcely believe my eyes. Was something which I had held to be utterly impossible now to become a fact? Hitler had criticised the leaders of German policy of 1914 in the strongest possible words for their failure to avoid a war on two fronts; was he now, on his own initiative and before the war with England had been decided, to open this second-front war against the Russians? All his soldiers had warned him repeatedly and urgently against this very error, and he had himself agreed with them.

  I made no attempt to conceal my disappointment and disgust. My two staff officers, who had been entirely convinced by the arguments put forth by the OKH, were surprised by the vehemence of my language. They explained to me how the Chief of the Army General Staff, Halder, had calculated that Russia would be defeated in a campaign of eight to ten weeks’ duration. Three army groups, each of approximately the same strength, were to attack with diverging objectives; no single clear operational objective seemed to be envisaged. Looked at from a professional point of view this did not appear at all promising. I arranged for my Chief of Staff to convey my views to the OKH, where they produced absolutely no effect.

  As one of the uninitiated, I could only now hope that Hitler was not seriously planning an attack on the Soviet Union, and that all these preparations were a bluff. The winter and spring of 1941 passed as in a nightmare. Renewed study of the campaigns of Charles XII of Sweden and of Napoleon I clearly revealed all the difficulties of the theatre to which we threatened to be committed; it also became increasingly plain to see how inadequate were our preparations for so enormous an undertaking. Our successes to date, however, and in particular the surprising speed of our victory in the West, had so befuddled the minds of our supreme commanders that they had eliminated the word ‘impossible’ from their vocabulary. All the men of the OKW and the OKH with whom I spoke evinced an unshakable optimism and were quite impervious to criticism or objections.

  In view of the heavy task that lay ahead, I concentrated with especial energy on the training and equipping of the divisions for which I was responsible. I made it quite clear to my troops that the campaign ahead of them would be a far more difficult one than those which they had fought in Poland and the West. For security reasons I could not be more specific. I wanted, however, to make sure that my soldiers did not embark on this new and infinitely difficult task in a spirit of frivolity.

  Unfortunately most of the vehicles of the new divisions which Hitler had ordered to be set up were, as already stated, French. This equipment was in no way capable of meeting the demands of warfare in eastern Europe. German vehicle production was insufficient to meet our greatly increased requirements; we could not therefore replace the palpably inferior captured vehicles with German ones.

  The decrease in strength of the tank element within the panzer division has already been mentioned. The smaller number of tanks per division was compensated for, to a certain extent, by the fact that the old Panzers I and II had been almost completely replaced by Panzers III and IV. We believed that at the beginning of the new war we could reckon on our tanks being technically better than all known Russian types; we thought that this would more or less cancel out the Russians’ vast numerical superiority, for when the campaign opened our tank strength amounted only to some 3,200 units. But one curious incident made me at least slightly dubious concerning the relative superiority of our armoured equipment. In the spring of 1941 Hitler had specifically ordered that a Russian military commission be shown over our tank schools and factories; in this order he had insisted that nothing be concealed
from them. The Russian officers in question firmly refused to believe that the Panzer IV was in fact our heaviest tank. They said repeatedly that we must be hiding our newest models from them, and complained that we were not carrying out Hitler’s order to show them everything. The military commission was so insistent on this point that eventually our manufacturers and Ordnance Office officials concluded: ‘It seems that the Russians must already possess better and heavier tanks than we do.’ It was at the end of July, 1941, that the T34 tank appeared at the front and the riddle of the new Russian model was solved.

  Hitler attended a demonstration of armoured equipment on the 18th of April, at which I was present. It was on this occasion that he noticed that the Panzer III had been re-equipped by the Army Ordnance Office with a 50 mm. L42 cannon instead of with a 50 mm. L60 as he had ordered. This independent act on the part of the Ordnance Office infuriated him all the more since it involved a weakening of his original intentions. The firm of Alkett in Spandau was able, by the end of April, to produce the guns Hitler wanted, which made the excuses of the Army Ordnance Office appear even more feeble. Years later he was to refer to this disobedient inefficiency whenever an attempt was made to defend the Army Ordnance Office in his presence.

  At this time our yearly tank production scarcely amounted to more than 1,000 of all types. In view of our enemies’ production figures this was very small. As far back as 1933 I had visited a single Russian tank factory which was producing 22 tanks per day of the Christie-Russki type.

  On March 1st Bulgaria joined the Triple Alliance, and on March 25th Yugoslavia followed suit. However, on March 27th a coup d’état in Belgrade upset the Axis plans. On April 5th Russia and Yugoslavia signed a pact of friendship; on April 6th the Balkan Campaign began. I took no part in this. The panzer troops engaged proved themselves once again and contributed greatly to our rapid victory.

  Only one man was pleased by this new extension of the theatre of war: Mussolini. This was his own war, on which he had embarked without Hitler’s permission. However, the pact of friendship signed between Russia and Yugoslavia made it clear to us that we were heading for trouble with our powerful eastern neighbour, and that the smash could not be long delayed.

  Belgrade fell on April 13th. On April 17th the Yugoslav Army surrendered. The Greek Army did likewise on April 23rd, despite British assistance. At the end of May airborne troops made possible the capture of Crete, though unfortunately not of Malta. Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and Albania all took slices of Yugoslav territory. An independent state of Croatia was formed; its king was to be the Italian Duke of Spoleto, but he never sat on his rather shaky throne. In accordance with a request of the King of Italy Montenegro was also reconstituted as an independent state.

  Since the frontiers of the newly created Croatia did not correspond to the ethnological borders of that nation, there was from the very beginning constant friction with the Italians. Bitter disagreement further poisoned the atmosphere in this already turbulent corner of Europe.

  In May and June of 1941 the British succeeded in occupying Syria and Abyssinia. A German attempt to secure a foothold in Iraq was carried out with insufficient force and failed. It could only have succeeded if it had been part of the logical and sensible Mediterranean policy which we could and should have adopted in the summer of 1940. By now it was too late for isolated actions of this type.

  Preparations

  The Balkan Campaign had been concluded with all the speed desired, and the troops there engaged which were now needed for Russia were withdrawn according to plan and very fast. But all the same there was a definite delay in the opening of our Russian Campaign. Furthermore we had had a very wet spring; the Bug and its tributaries were at flood level until well into May and the nearby ground was swampy and almost impassable. I was in a position personally to observe this during my tours of inspection in Poland.

  Three army groups were formed for the attack on Soviet Russia:

  Army Group South, under Field-Marshal von Rundstedt, to the south of the Pripet Marshes.

  Army Group Centre, under Field-Marshal von Bock, between the Pripet Marshes and the Suvalki Peak.

  Army Group North, under Field-Marshal Ritter von Leeb, in East Prussia.

  The intention was that these three army groups should break through the Russian forces stationed near the frontier, then encircle and destroy them. The panzer groups were to push forward deep into Russia and thus prevent the forming of new defensive fronts. No area of main effort was laid down. The three army groups were of approximately equal strength, though Army Group Centre had two panzer groups allotted to it, while Army Groups South and North had only one each.

  I commanded Panzer Group 2. General Hoth, immediately to my north, had Panzer Group 3. These were the two groups subordinated to Army Group Centre.

  Panzer Group 2 was established as follows:

  Commander: Colonel-General Guderian.

  Chief of Staff: Lieutenant-Colonel Freiherr von Liebenstein.

  XXIV Panzer Corps: General of Panzer Troops Freiherr Geyr von Schweppenburg.

  3rd Panzer Division: Lieutenant-General Model.

  4th Panzer Division: Major-General Freiherr von Langermann und Erlencamp.

  10th (Motorised) Infantry Division: Major-General von Loeper.

  1st Cavalry Division: Lieutenant-General Feldt.

  XLVI Panzer Corps: General of Panzer Troops Freiherr von Vietinghoff genannt Scheel.

  10th Panzer Division: Lieutenant-General Schaal.

  SS Infantry Division (Motorised) Das Reich: Lieutenant-General Hausser.

  Infantry Regiment Gross-Deutschland: Major-General von Stockhausen.

  XLVII Panzer Corps: General of Panzer Troops Lemelsen.

  17th Panzer Division: Major-General von Arnim.

  18th Panzer Division: Major-General Nehring.

  29th (Motorised) Infantry Division: Major-General von Boltenstern.

  The Panzer Group also had under command a number of army troops including:

  A wing of close support planes under General Viebig.

  The Anti-Aircraft Regiment Hermann Goering under General von Axthelm.

  The artillery was commanded by General Heinemann, the engineers by General Bacher, the signal troops by Colonel Praun, the reconnaissance planes by Lieutenant-Colonel von Barsewisch (originally by Colonel von Gerlach, but this gallant officer was shot down on the third day of the attack). Fighter protection operating in the area of the Panzer Group was under command, during the first few weeks, of Colonel Mölders. (See Appendix XXII.)

  My Panzer Group was assigned the following task: on the first day of the offensive it was to cross the Bug on either side of Brest-Litovsk; it was to break through the Russian defensive positions, then it was quickly to exploit the success gained and advance to the area Roslavl–Elnya–Smolensk. The intention was to prevent the enemy from regrouping and forming a new front, and thus to lay the groundwork for a decisive victory during the 1941 campaign. My Panzer Group was to receive further instructions when its objective had been reached. Preliminary orders as issued by the OKH indicated that the plan was then probably to switch Hoth’s 3rd and my 2nd Panzer Groups due north to capture Leningrad.

  The border between the German controlled General-Gouvernement of Poland and the Soviet Russian zone was the River Bug; thus the fortress of Brest-Litovsk was split, the citadel being occupied by the Russians. Only the old forts on the west bank were in German hands. I had already captured the fortress once during the Polish Campaign; I now had the same task to perform a second time, though in more difficult circumstances.

  Despite the very plain lessons of the Western Campaign, the supreme German command did not hold uniform views about the employment of armoured forces. This became evident during the various war games that were held in preparation for the operation and for the purpose of training the commanders for their missions. The generals who came from arms of the Service other than the panzer troops were inclined to the opinion that the
initial assault should be made by infantry divisions after heavy artillery preparation and that the tanks should only be sent in to complete the break-through after a penetration to a specified depth had been made. The panzer generals held the contrary view. They wanted the panzer divisions to be in the forefront of the attack from the very beginning, because they regarded their arm as the most powerful attacking weapon. They expected the armour would thus achieve a deep and rapid break-through, which initial success could be immediately exploited by the tanks’ speed of advance. The panzer generals knew from experience in France what happens when the other system is employed: at the critical moment of success the roads are covered with the endless, slow-moving, horse-drawn columns of the infantry divisions, and the panzers as a result are blocked and slowed up. So they wished the panzer divisions to be put in front on those sectors where a break-through was desired: on other sectors, where the tasks were different, as for example in the storming of fortresses, the infantry should lead the assault.

  This situation arose in the sector of Panzer Group 2’s attack. The fortifications of Brest-Litovsk were out of date, it is true, but the combination of the Bug, the Muchaviec and water-filled ditches made them immune to tank attack. Tanks could only have captured the citadel by means of a surprise attack, as had been attempted in 1939. The requisite conditions for such an attack did not exist in 1941.

  I therefore decided to attack with my panzer divisions across the Bug on either side of Brest-Litovsk, and I asked that an infantry corps be placed under my command for the assault on the fortress. This corps would have to come from Fourth Army, which was to follow behind my Panzer Group. The Fourth Army would also have to provide further infantry to assist in the initial river crossings as well as a considerable amount of artillery support. In order to ensure unity of command, I asked that these troops be temporarily subordinated to me, and expressed my willingness to place myself under the command of Fourth Army’s commander, Field-Marshal von Kluge, during this time. These command arrangements proved acceptable to the Army Group. They involved a sacrifice on my part; Field-Marshal von Kluge was a hard man to work under. But I held them to be important for the success of the undertaking.