Hitler's Panzers

by Dennis Showalter

  I

  IN THE FALL of 1940 Adolf Hitler had the opportunity to consolidate rule over a European empire unmatched since the days of Napoleon. Norway, the Low Countries, and northern France lay under German occupation. The government of Vichy France was eager to assume the role of a client state. Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain were vulnerable to German pressure. Nazi influence in the Balkans grew by the week. Josef Stalin still “trusted” his treaty partner to continue acting like a capitalist. Rational calculation, which excluded the Winston Churchills and Charles de Gaulles, allowed only one conclusion: the Third Reich was here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. That conclusion had been shaped by the Wehrmacht—specifically its panzer divisions.

  Blitzkrieg essentially meant convincing participants and observers—one’s own side and the home front included—that enemies faced inevitable and humiliating defeat. In a technological age, that no longer meant man-to-man physical superiority as it had in the Middle Ages, or even at times in the trenches of the Western Front. It spoke rather to the ability to use the means at one’s disposal so effectively that resistance seemed not merely futile but pathetic, without even the heroic element that traditionally informs last stands and forlorn hopes in Western military mythology. Prisoners usually look frightened and shabby compared to their captors—one reason why the current laws of war forbid showing their pictures. Even over a half-century’s distance, prisoners of blitzkrieg appear shocked out of their higher cognitive abilities. Their conquerors seem from another dimension, unmarked physically and psychologically—“overmen” in the original sense of Friedrich Nietzsche.

  The disaster that overtook the western allies in May and June of 1940 has been ascribed to the erosion of national will and morale during the interwar years. It has been presented as the fruit of strategic and tactical doctrines inadequate to meet the German challenge. It has been described as reflecting shortcomings of organization, training, and intelligence. In the same context the German victory is presented as a faute de mieux improvisation: a combination of unpredictable chance, Allied mistakes, and the behavior of a few hard-driving panzer generals who presented their own high command with a series of faits accomplis. Far from prefiguring a new way of war, the successes of 1940 arguably led Germany down a dead-end road of operative hubris, emphasizing combat at the expense of strategy. In an age of industrialized mass war, lightning victories would prove a temporary and fatal anachronism.

  Blitzkrieg’s real victor in 1940 was National Socialism. Hitler celebrated the successes of May and June in Nazi terms: as a triumph of will, informed by a consciousness of martial superiority that in turn depended on the racial superiority evoked and refined by the Third Reich. In that context, blitzkrieg played a central, arguably essential role in the “exterminatory warfare” that was Nazi Germany’s true contribution to modern war making. Some forewarning was given by the treatment of the West African troops the French deployed in large numbers during the campaign’s second half. The atrocities had historical roots: fear and resentment generated by French use of African “savages” in 1870 and 1914-18. The kind of close-quarters fighting in streets and woods characterizing many initial breakthroughs is not usually conducive to taking prisoners, and German soldiers were conditioned to be ruthless in combat. They arguably entertained as well a generalized sense that the war was, for practical purposes over, and regarded continued resistance as immoral because it was futile.

  Neither direct orders nor wink-and-a nudge tolerance at higher levels sanctioned abuses that, rather than being systematic, tended to be situational by perpetrators, places, and times. After all allowances are made there is nevertheless no question that German soldiers, including men from the mobile divisions, disproportionately refused quarter to black combatants, disproportionately singled out black prisoners for brutal treatment including large-scale executions in non-combat situations, and justified themselves on racial grounds. Only the degenerate French would put subhumans into uniform, call them soldiers, and give them license to mutilate German wounded. It was an evil portent.

  Another portent existed for those with wit or will to see. It is a familiar paradox that history’s greatest war was directed and controlled by civilians: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin—and Adolf Hitler. Their styles ranged from Roosevelt’s Olympian position as ultimate decision maker and arbiter to Churchill’s hands-on interventionist approach. None eventually exercised more comprehensive control of their nation’s war effort than did Hitler. It is a downplayed irony that he achieved that position in the face of a military establishment that, since the eighteenth century, had been widely considered the driving wheel of a Prussia/Germany that was “an army with its own country.”

  Whatever his motives, in front of Dunkirk, Adolf Hitler faced down the High Command on a military issue that was clearly in the operational sphere with no real elements of policy or politics. That had made him the first ever ruler of Prussia/Germany, king or kaiser, chancellor or president, to exercise direct control of the generals on their own ground. Hitler, convinced of his own military genius, determined to assert his authority at any price, saw the halt order as the capstone of a campaign he had shaped, in a war he had sought and initiated. It was the first step in what became a pattern of exercising direct command based on remarkable memory for details, adamant refusal to accept inconsistencies or discrepancies, and unshakable belief that decisions were best made spontaneously, with instinct processing data and will inspiring results. Well before the Reich’s downfall, micromanagement would become an analgesic—not only for Hitler, but for his generals as well.

  Prognostication was eclipsed by reconfiguration. The expansion of Germany’s mobile forces initiated in the autumn of 1940 is generally and legitimately connected with Hitler’s parallel decision to invade the Soviet Union. The reorganization, however, had an army taproot as well. The 1940 campaign left no serious doubt that large-scale mobile operations were the wave of the future, and that foot-marching infantry and horse-drawn artillery belonged to a rapidly vanishing past. Manstein, who did not entirely waste his time as commander of an infantry corps, voiced a consensus in reporting that existing infantry divisions lacked the firepower to break through defenses and the mobility to exploit success. That rendered them dependent on the panzers, and created the risk of a two-tier army. Certainly as well any prospective adversary would imitate the Germans by massing tanks, motorizing infantry, and using air power in ground combat. A smaller army would be able to upgrade its standard divisions by increasing their motorization and adding assault guns, self-propelled antitank guns, and antiaircraft guns to the orders of battle.

  That perspective shaped the army’s initial reaction to Hitler’s decision, announced as early as May 15, to shift military production to the Luftwaffe and the navy while reducing the army to 120 divisions. Twenty of these, the Führer declared, would be armored, and ten more motorized. On June 18 the General Staff agreed to create ten new panzer divisions despite the continued shortage of armored and unarmored vehicles of all kinds. Six weeks later, on July 31, Hitler held a conference on strategic priorities. There he announced his intention to invade Russia early in 1941—before then, if possible. The result was another shift in the army’s institutional emphasis: creating as many as possible combat-ready formations of any kind, in order to meet the mission’s geographic demands as well as its operational ones.

  The configuration of the army being created for the invasion of Russia exacerbated the difference between the panzers and the rest. Most of the new panzer and motorized divisions were created by converting and expanding 14 of the 36 active infantry divisions created after 1933. That meant well over half the original peacetime army, the hard core of Germany’s ground forces, was now part of a technology-based elite that, for practical purposes after the invasion of Russia, would be increased only by the incorporation of the Waffen SS. The remaining active divisions that still marched to fight lost effectiveness by bei
ng heavily milked to stiffen the no fewer than sixteen “waves” of infantry divisions organized by summer 1941. Those toward the bottom of the list were scraping the barrel for cadres, weapons, and equipment, with much of the latter two coming from conquered and occupied countries. It was correspondingly obvious that the panzer and motorized divisions would have to do the serious work.

  That would require a capacity for both assault and exploitation, and an improved level of sustainability. The most significant feature of the panzer arm’s reorganization was the shift in the balance of tanks and infantry in a panzer division. The panzer brigade was reduced to a single regiment, usually of two battalions and around 150 tanks. The motorized brigade, however, was increased to two two-battalion regiments and a motorcycle battalion, with one of the rifle battalions riding half tracks. This 50 percent reduction in armored strength was subsequently excoriated by theorists like B. H. Liddell-Hart and field soldiers like Guderian for increasing rear echelons at the expense of fighting power, and privileging wheels over treads. It is frequently attributed to Hitler’s fetishistic emphasis on numbers at the expense of everything else. In fact, the rebalancing had been considered after the Polish campaign, and confirmed in 1940. The motorcyclists had been effective as a swing force, able both to fight afoot and add punch to the reconnaissance battalion. There never seemed to be enough infantry, however, to cope with the near-simultaneous demands of breaking through defense lines, mopping up bypassed positions, securing exposed flanks, and consolidating captured ground in the face of counterattacks accompanying the armor.

  It was certainly possible to increase the panzer division’s infantry and keep its tanks at the same number: fewer divisions but more powerful ones. Massed tanks, however, had been shown to pose problems of control that limited their effectiveness against reasonably well-defended positions, Gembloux being the prime example. The large numbers of rear-echelon vehicles required by a two-tank-regiment division had regularly led to traffic problems significantly hampering operations. Radios had their limits. So did the talents of commanders. The German way of war depended on a high average rather than erratic genius. The commander of a panzer division had to be more than “a good ordinary general,” but it flew in the face of experience to expect too many of them to be gifted battle captains in the mode of a Rommel. For the same reason of effective control, motorized divisions were kept at their existing strength: two three-battalion regiments with neither tanks nor half-tracks.

  Fighting the French had also indicated that in armored war, quality was at least as important a force multiplier as numbers. Survivability was important both to sustainability and morale. The vulnerable Panzer Is and IIs were being replaced with the more formidable Panzer III coming off the Reich’s production lines. The repeatedly demonstrated shortcomings of the 37mm gun as a main armament led to its replacement in the G version by a 50mm gun whose 42-caliber barrel made it a rough counterpart of the 75mm gun mounted on the early versions of the US Sherman—that is to say, a general-purpose weapon useful in supporting infantry, effective against tanks, but not a real tank-killer. About 450 of this version were produced by February 1941, alongside 300 of an up-armored Model H. A number of older Panzer IIIs were also rearmed with the 50mm gun—a tribute to the generous design of the turret ring. The Panzer IV had been satisfactory overall; its E and F versions were distinguished primarily by increased side and frontal armor.

  While scales of equipment varied a good deal in practice, a well-outfitted tank battalion of 1941 with German material had two or three light companies of 17 Panzer IIIs and 5 Panzer IIs, and one medium company of 10 Panzer IVs and 5 Panzer IIs. The Panzer IIs were filler, to be used and used up for reconnaissance and other secondary missions until enough IIIs and IVs became available. The tables reflected production figures that trailed far behind unit requirements. Hitler initially asked for as many as a thousand tanks a month. Minister for Armament and War Production Fritz Todt responded that it would cost two billion marks, require a hundred thousand skilled workers, and disrupt submarine and aircraft deliveries originally secured by cutting back the construction of new munitions plants.

  The High Command received a similarly discouraging answer when it pressed for an increase in tank production from the 200 or so a month that remained standard. Goals of delivering 2,800 Panzer IIIs and IVs by April 1941 remained chimerical. In May 1941, plans were developed for a major production program: more than 34,000 vehicles to complete equipping the mobile divisions. The target date was 1944. Meanwhile, actual tank production reached a low of 120 in September 1940. One new panzer regiment was built around Panzer IIs originally adapted for underwater movement as part of the aborted preparations for invading Britain. As a point of comparison, as late as April 1941, material shortages and production problems meant that seven million rounds for the standard 105mm howitzer existed only as empty shell casings—no propellant, no explosive. By comparison the panzers were well off.

  The numbers gap was filled in part by the factories of Bohemia. They continued the steady manufacture of enough 38(t)s to equip five divisions with three battalions, more than a hundred each, and keep 6th Panzer Division’s 35(t)s up to strength as well. But that 30 percent of its ground-force cutting edge went into battle in obsolescent tanks looted from a second-rate power is a clear sign that Wehrmacht planning agencies put more energy into preparing for the exploitation of Soviet resources than into providing the tools for their conquest.

  One consequence was the inability to provide three battalions of up-to-date tanks for more than three of the reconfigured divisions that went to war against the USSR. Three battalions provided organizational flexibility. Three battalions might sustain effectiveness by consolidating. Two were far more likely to reach a tipping point, especially in fast-paced offensive action without regular pauses for maintenance and regular replacement of losses. A second loser in the armaments sweepstakes was the assault gun force. Four of the first six batteries served in France. Their low silhouettes and high firepower proved their worth from the beginning of the campaign. Regiment Grossdeutschland had nothing but praise for its six organic Sturmgeschütz (StuGs) at Stonne for working hand in hand with the riflemen in street fighting, demolishing barricades, and carrying heavy weapons and ammunition. The gun’s limited traverse was not a problem in a direct-support role, while the vehicle’s presence alone gave a valuable boost to the foot soldiers’ morale.

  The artillery, whose role in the West had been significantly limited compared to the Great War, was fully convinced and began training the first battalions (three six-gun batteries) in the summer of 1940. Service with the StuGs has been described as popular because it was the quickest way to decoration and promotion. The assault artillery did win more than 150 Knight’s Crosses, with lesser medals in proportion. But they were won the hard way, and throughout the war the guns were manned by volunteers.

  Men were easier to find than equipment. Despite the support of two powerful branches of service, assault gun production remained limited—around 30 per month and not exceeding 50 until June 1941. As a result only two battalions every three months, later three every two months, joined the pre-Barbarossa order of battle. Instead of being assigned to divisions, as originally intended, they were held as army troops, sent where need was greatest—another reinforcement of armor’s elite, almost separate, status even when its crews wore artillery colors.

  The emerging differentiation between the armored force and the rest of the army was further exacerbated by the absence of progress developing self-propelled antitank guns. The concept was simple enough: attach a gun to the chassis of an obsolescent tank, of which the army had an ample supply. Nevertheless by June 1941 the inventory of such vehicles amounted to about 150 of the 47mm Czech guns on Panzer I bodies mentioned in Chapter 3. Doing the same thing with captured French equipment does not seem to have even been considered at higher levels, though two tank regiments were eventually organized with French vehicles.

  Antitank d
efense in general had a low practical priority in the run-up to Barbarossa. The near-useless 37mm towed gun was in the process of being more or less replaced by an excellent 50mm/62-caliber piece. Its early production runs were so small that they were issued to the infantry by two-gun sections. Infantry companies were issued small-bore antitank rifles: more sophisticated and less dangerous to their users than their World War I forebears, but effective only against the kind of light tanks that everywhere were being phased out of service. And doctrine expressly forbade using already scarce assault guns in an antitank role. The Landser in Russia would spend too long depending on well-placed hand grenades and overloads of nerve—or desperation.

  In near-absolute contrast to its behavior after the Polish campaign, the German army in 1940-41 not merely accepted but enabled two massive disconnects: between a motorized/mechanized elite and everything else, and within that elite, between structure and equipment. Both cognitive dissonances were subsumed beneath a euphoria that exceeded even the “victory disease” that infected the Imperial Japanese Navy in the months between Pearl Harbor and Midway. Robert M. Citino describes a “literature of exaltation” that reflected the National Socialist intellectual structure of heroism and sacrifice. The Nazis’ crude racism was also not without its appeal; soldiers in all places at all times seek as many credible grounds as possible to assert superiority over their enemies. To interpret the army’s mentality to a double penetration by National Socialist culture and Nazified personnel is nevertheless to overlook its roots in professional pride. The high-tech, low-cost victories of 1939-40 lifted the German generals’ morale in ways incomprehensible to those who had not experienced the Western Front a quarter-century earlier. Places whose names had symbolized a generation’s sacrifice and a generation’s failure—Verdun, Ypres, Amiens—had fallen like beads pulled from a string, rating scarcely a line in official reports. The invasion of Britain had been a nonstarter, but that was easily rationalized by claiming special circumstances.