Guderian: Panzer General

by Macksey, Kenneth

  Fuller’s concepts rode the Germans hard. In 1936 Guderian could sincerely acknowledge in public that it was decided to rely mainly on English observations as contained in Part (Vol) 2 of the ‘Provisional Instructions for Tank and Armoured Car Training’, published in 1927. This document bore the imprint of Fuller and included the conclusions drawn from experience in the First World War plus that gathered in three years’ experiments with the latest tanks. It was obtainable, price 9d, from His Majesty’s Stationery Office. In due course would appear ‘Mechanized and Armoured Formations, 1929’ and ‘Modern Formations, 1931’ which were Security-graded documents, ‘not to be communicated either directly or indirectly to the Press or to any person not holding an official position in His Majesty’s Service’. Nevertheless they each found their way into unauthorised hands, including those of the Germans. The 1927 book, according to Guderian, contained ‘… the essential basic rules … clearly expressed … so that trials could be started, but at the same time it gave the necessary flexibility for further development. This was not the case with the well-known contemporary French manual which seemed to hinder all development by the inflexible binding of tanks to infantry. The recommendation to use the English manual was approved by Reichswehr Headquarters. It remained the basis for the indoctrination of the officers of the motorised troops destined for the future tank arm until 1933.’

  The ‘tank’ exercises of 1929, deficient in realism though they were because of the absence of real tanks, taught false lessons but heightened the faith of the enthusiasts. Small motor cars, decked out with canvas and sheet iron to look like tanks, made a poor enough impression. Their inability to cross anything other than the smoothest of hard going and their propensity to look silly when the infantry poked their bayonets through the canvas and made derogatory remarks to the humiliated crews, placed demands upon the pioneers. Coherent lessons were difficult to assimilate but fortunately Guderian had the optimism, determination and imagination to satisfy all demands and to carry his colleagues with him. ‘In spite of these shortcomings’, he wrote, ‘the idea gained ground that it was essential to have a Panzer Command. Those engaged in the tests obtained a clear knowledge of its future employment and organisation. The tests eventually resulted in demands for the development of the weapon’. That year secret orders went out for the building of Grosstraktor, the heavier tank with its bigger gun.

  Lutz, who became Inspector of Motor Transport in 1931, was carried along by Guderian. Brilliant organiser and clear thinker though he was, he was only a partner – in terms of achievement the junior partner – in a team. Major Chales de Beaulieu, who was on Guderian’s staff between 1931 and 1933 and again between 1935 and 1937, says: ‘Guderian was the brains behind it all and thought about everything in advance which could be important or necessary – in personnel, equipment and in leadership … he was an ideal leader’. Lutz provided the authority and tact to help push through Guderian’s schemes in the higher councils. He also placed Guderian in the right appointments at the right time. In January 1930 he sent him to command 3rd (Prussian) Motor Transport Battalion (no doubt at Guderian’s suggestion) and obtained as its equipment all the elements of a future armoured division less field artillery. There was a company of dummy tanks and an anti-tank company with wooden guns -in fact only the armoured cars of the Reconnaissance Company and the motor-cycles in No. 4 Company were real. There was also another vital piece of equipment missing – the modern communication sets which alone would make the panzer division, as envisaged by Guderian, a viable proposition.

  When Colonel Ernest Swinton wrote the first tactical directive for British tanks in 1916 he tackled the communication problem by suggesting that ‘One tank in ten should be equipped with small wireless sets, others to lay telephone cable as they advanced, while the rest make do with visual signals and smoke rockets to indicate progress’. At that time, of course, there were no suitable small wireless sets while cable-laying was both frail and an inflexible method related only to short advances. Anybody who has attempted visual signalling from the top of a tank will testify what a thoroughly unsatisfactory system it can be, while the few who have tried it in action, and survived when every weapon in sight is throwing missiles, are most unlikely to repeat the experience. A few tanks were equipped with radio and used it in action before the end of the First World War, but they became specialised vehicles because they could not send or receive messages satisfactorily on the move. They were usually employed as reporting centres only.

  Progress in the improvement of radio communications during the 1920s was rapid and the Germans were well up with everybody else, particularly since, in this corner of the military field, the Versailles Treaty did not impose severe restrictions and was far easier to circumvent. In any case enormous strides had already been made in radio transmission and reception during the First World War, and these were further exploited for police and commercial use afterwards. Speech over the air was becoming as common a means of communication as morse, and far less liable to interference when inventors shifted their investigations into the higher frequency ranges. Sets gradually became more robust, smaller and easier to tune, especially when the airmen placed a premium on such things in the interests of reductions in weight. The power of transmitters was steadily increased along with range of operation; the discovery of crystal-controlled master oscillators in the early 1920s opened a new era of accuracy in establishing radio networks.

  In 1931 the first demonstration ever of a tank formation being controlled on the move from a single master control tank was made in England. The sets in use were crystal-controlled. If the Germans were further behind at that time they were, however, more seriously committed to the acquisition of comprehensive tank radio networks – largely because of Guderian’s insistence. His experience in 1914 left him in no doubt that if highly fluid long-range operations were to be conducted with coordinated zeal, radio communication had to be accurate, concise and widespread from the pinnacles of command down to the lowest possible level. Just how low would depend, upon the kind of sets which could be built and on the amount of money made available for their purchase. At first Guderian and his collaborators asked that radio communication should reach as far as the headquarters of tank companies, though they knew that the British had gone lower still to troop headquarters and, in some cases, to individual tanks. Walther Nehring, who was one of Guderian’s principal staff officers for many years, told the author that from the outset it was realised that, without a comprehensive communication network, the concept of high mobility and deep penetration by panzer divisions was unthinkable. De Beaulieu adds that the early use of the wireless for command in battle to the single tank was due to Guderian’s insistence … He had an eye for the essential and at the same time … he was also able to judge when to press for his goal – which is a vital characteristic. Few people know how to recognise the moment.’

  Comparatively speaking, as much effort was put into the development of communications as into the fighting vehicles themselves and the signallers took up the challenge with fervour. In fact the Germans had taken a lead in communications during the First World War and had recognised the problems, though they also had the sense to realise, in 1926, that their latest sets were totally inadequate, notably those developed for civilian purposes. Work began on designing a new range of sets which were small, ‘undamped’ and thoroughly reliable in vehicles on the move. But the dangers of enemy intercept overhearing radio messages and breaking the codes – even those manufactured by machines – also concentrated attention upon the evolution of field telephone and teleprinter networks which could be laid down at such high speed that a pace of 100 miles a day could be kept with an advancing formation. Those units which were compelled by circumstances to use radio alone were warned that their security was almost sure to be penetrated, regardless of codes and disguised speech, and that, therefore, only plans which were to be implemented within a short time, could be mentioned over the air. In parallel extensiv
e monitoring services were created to ‘listen in’ to the enemy, and so acquire information at all levels of his deployment; for these Guderian was to find another use in moments of desperation.

  Within these circumscriptions, intensive trials were launched by the German enthusiasts of fast operations. The all-important trials unit was 3rd (Prussian) Motor Transport Battalion with its ‘latest’, if dubious, equipment. Every phase of warlike operation was practised – attack, defence, withdrawal, flank attack, direct attack with infantry and cavalry, co-operation with artillery and aircraft. As Heinz-Werner Frank (a Leutnant at that time in the battalion), puts it: ‘We almost became fanatics in advertising motorisation and building the Panzerwaffe, enthusiastic followers of Guderian with his passionate powers of persuasion’. But followers they were fully intended to be by the Oberst, as he made clear to them one day after ski training. The young officers had over-enthusiastically overtaken their commander, though nothing was said until that evening. Then, with a twinkle over drinks, Guderian casually remarked: ‘In the tank force the commander leads from the front – not from behind!’ From the exercises grew, in 1931, the list of essential requirements for the sort of independent Panzer Command which Lutz and Guderian deemed necessary. But resistance to their progress was now appearing since these requirements impinged upon the traditional roles of the cavalry and infantry while financial and manpower restrictions at a time of international economic crisis dictated that, in exchange for something new, something old had to be discarded.

  The cavalry was the first to suffer inroads from the new and, to their mind, upstart supply troops who were trying to steal a slice of the operational cake – but at a disadvantage since both memory and the Reichsarchiv history told against them, while Guderian’s proposals were difficult to refute. In 1932, faced with the question of how they envisaged their future employment, the cavalry opted for the solitary role which seemed viable in the light of recent history – that of a ‘heavy’ force to apply the coup de grace after the other arms had made the opportunity. Unwillingly, and in an atmosphere of mounting jealousy, they surrendered to the Motorised Troops the role of reconnaissance at which they had invariably failed in the past.

  Concessions by the cavalry were, of course, of minor importance when set alongside the much greater shift that was taking place in world and German political and economic evolution. Events conspired to bring about a crisis. An influx of foreign money, which had previously poured into Germany, dried up as a world trade recession turned into the Economic Blizzard. As unemployment rose to almost unprecedented levels the opportunity seemed ripe for the extremist elements in German political life to make their bid for power. Communists vied with Nazis in a succession of elections. The Government reeled and was perpetually in danger of collapse while assassins raised the score of their victims with every month that passed. By 1932, when the Army was contentedly maintaining its separation from politics and was bent upon increasing its size and strength, the followers of Adolf Hitler, the NSDAP, were on the verge of taking over the Government by the nearest thing to constitutional means that violence could countenance.

  From these things Guderian tried to stay apart. There was frequent irritation of the scar on his memory from the events of 1919: many of the Nazis and members of the Sturm Abteilung had been of the Freikorps, and he had several friends in the Nazi Party. Unlike so many of his colleagues he was not divorced from contact with the outside world, but watched and waited in the hope that the Reichswehr’s part would be decisive in obtaining the ‘right solution’ for Germany as once it had done under Seeckt. While Hindenburg was Reichspresident Guderian was content. He made no complaint when, in 1927, Heye, the new C-in-C, refused to allow Nazis into the army or, in 1930, when Generaloberst Freiherr Kurt von Hammerstein (Heye’s successor) began to express strong anti-Nazi sentiments. As a junior officer he was not only remote from the thoughts of the C-in-C, but saw little reason at that moment to imagine that the Nazis might come to power or that Hitler could be the strong man – desirable or otherwise – of the future. But in 1930 a fresh influence began to make itself positively felt through the activities of the head of the Truppenamt, General Werner von Blomberg. Blomberg had visited Russia in 1928 in connection with the various collaboration projects and became impressed by the priority received by her army compared with the status of Germany’s: he later remarked, ‘I was not far short of coming home a complete Bolshevist!’ But in 1930 he fell under the spell of Hitler – one of Communism’s staunchest enemies – because he seemed a likely candidate as the man to strengthen the Reichswehr.

  Already Hitler was demonstrating his magnetic persuasive ability to be all things to all men in his search for personal power; as yet hardly anybody recognised him as an evil force because only those in the very closest contact had the remotest chance of doing so. But he knew that the generals were resolved to re-establish the Army not only as a force which could defend Germany’s frontiers – notably those in the east – but also as a stabilising factor in the country. So he announced his support for the Army and its aspirations. And as for Blomberg? He felt, as the economic crisis deepened and unemployment increased, that a unification of all the political parties alone would save the nation. He was prepared to utilise nationalist elements in support of that aim and, if that failed, the strongest party. Nevertheless it has to be said that many generals criticised him for his choice of agency if not his selection of aim.

  Guderian, rather like Blomberg, was enigmatic in his political association with the Nazis and Hitler – though he does seem to have kept the party and its leaders separate in consideration. A Royalist at heart, he treasured past associations with the House of Hohenzollern: had he not served the Crown Prince in 1916 as a Staff Officer? But he realised that there was no point in a return of the Monarchy and was at one with the people in their disenchantment with the governments which succeeded each other at all too frequent intervals. These, in his own words, ‘… were unable to win over the officers or arouse any enthusiasm for the Republic’s ideals.’ Vehemently he abhorred the Communists and consistently he hoped for the emergence of a Bismarckian figure. But not so all the officers, for as Guderian wrote in 1947: ‘When National Socialism entered the scene with its new national slogans, the young officers especially were quickly roused to enthusiasm by the patriotic ideas which the National Socialist German Labour Party (NSDAP) propaganda held out to them. For years the entirely inadequate armament of the Reich had weighed on the officer corps like a nightmare. No wonder that the initiation of a rearmament programme won them over to the man who promised to put new life into the Wehrmacht after fifteen years of stagnation.’

  Nobody at that time had the faintest idea of what was in store. The Nazis were but part of a scene of rising disorder and fear. At first Guderian argued against the claims of the Nazis with those of his junior officers who took their part. Like so many of his generation he venerated Hindenburg, writing upon the President’s death in 1934, ‘He possessed the trust of the world’. And like so many officers in 1932, he too was angry with the tone of Hitler’s campaign. He and they would have been appalled had they known that, in December, Hitler considered impeaching Hindenburg, and further disturbed if they had understood Hitler’s pathological inferiority complex when dealing with the General Staff. After all, at that moment Hitler was going out of his way to placate the General Staff by giving public praise to the Army!

  Six million unemployed and a rising threat by Communists at the polls could not be set lightly aside, however. A desperate situation demanded draconian measures or a scapegoat. Men like Guderian thought that somebody like Hitler could provide the necessary rule of iron and still be kept under control of the Army. The last soldier Chancellor, the arch-intriguer Kurt von Schleicher, over-played his hand and Hitler became Chancellor in his place on 30th January 1933. A few hours later Hindenburg selected von Blomberg as Minister of Defence and Blomberg in his turn picked one of the most able generals to lead the Ministeram
t (the office with the task of co-ordinating all defence matters – land, sea and air and which, in due course, became the Wehrmachtamt), Generalleutnant Walter von Reichenau. The elevation of these men, each a Nazi sympathiser, met with Guderian’s approval. Of Blomberg he thought well and Reichenau he regarded as ‘a modern soldier’, though one who was very political’. Two things they had in common: that the Reichswehr should co-operate with the most patriotic elements and that the tank arm benefit from encouragement, especially from Reichenau who constantly sought outlets for new ideas.

  The political stance adopted by Guderian at this moment of political fermentation was of ambivalence, contrived to satisfy what he considered best for Germany and the Army. He retained a tacit belief in Seeckt’s principle of non-political involvement, gave approval to generals such as Seeckt, Schleicher, Blomberg and Reichenau (who were knee deep in politics) because they seemed to have the Army’s best interests at heart by striving might and main for expansion; kept contact (as did many Army officers) with old Freikorps friends such as Adolf Hühnlein who was a member of the Sturm Abteilung High Command, and, as time went by, managed, in his mind, to segregate Hitler from the other members of the Nazi Party. He seems not to have reacted one way or the other when Schleicher put an ineffectual ban on the SA in 1932. In 1933, however, Guderian was a mere Oberstleutnant who, like the vast majority of army officers, had not the slightest personal contact with Hitler. How could they know the secrets of this man when even the closest of his party colleagues were denied his innermost thoughts? And they were certainly not privy to the councils of the Army hierarchy.