Guderian: Panzer General

by Macksey, Kenneth

  He went on: ‘It seemed to me, then, that we could ensure peace in the near future by, first of all, advancing at once to the mouth of the Rhone: then, having captured the French Mediterranean bases in conjunction with the Italians, by landing in Africa, while the Luftwaffe’s first-class parachute troops seized Malta. Should the French be willing to participate in these operations, so much the better. Should they refuse, then the war must be carried on by the Italians and ourselves on our own, and carried on at once. The weakness of the British in Egypt at that time was known to us. The Italians still had strong forces in Abyssinia. The defences of Malta against air attack were inadequate. Everything seemed to me to be in favour of further operations along those lines, and I could see no disadvantages. The presence of four to six panzer divisions in North Africa would have given us such overwhelming superiority that any British reinforcements would inevitably have arrived too late.’

  Epp, of course, was a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi, one of the original Freikorps’ fighters who had won a reputation as the ruthless exterminator of German Communists and who had helped finance the Nazi Party at the outset. As a member of the Reichstag and Chief of the Nazi Party’s Department for Colonial Policy, Epp had the Führer’s ear, even though he was among those who doubted the wisdom of Germany’s involvement in a major war. Guderian claims that Epp put his scheme to Hitler but that Hitler was not interested in exploring the possibilities further. This is not strictly correct. Hitler, inspired not a little by Jodl, explored a multitude of projects after the fall of France, among them collaboration with the Italians in an invasion of Egypt that was firmly rebuffed by Mussolini who wanted to snatch a little glory for himself in his own sphere of influence. He also made overtures to Spain in connection with a drive to Gibraltar and, through the Armistice Commission, to spread his political influence into French North Africa. Admiral Raeder, too, put a strong naval case, linked with the U-boat offensive, for seizing strategic points in Africa, including the West Coast. There are few now (and maybe fewer then who were in the know) who would dispute the soundness of that maritime strategy or its veritable certainty of success.

  Hitler, however, was a land-animal who recognised the allurements of the sea but left maritime adventures to sailors, preferring to send his Army inland, exclusively in its natural environment engaged upon operations which Hitler felt he understood best. Unknown to anybody else, Hitler had never forgotten the project he always had in mind and fixed his predatory gaze upon Soviet Russia.

  By 22nd July both Brauchitsch and Haider were aware of their Supreme Commander’s intentions and had formulated an outline plan of campaign. There would be nothing to spare for other projects, worthy though they might seem. Instead the spectre of the two-front war, which Guderian and every sane German feared above all, was being resurrected.

  8 The Fate of a Hero

  At dawn on 22nd June 1941 Heinz Guderian, a darling of the propagandists and commander of the strongest among four German Panzer Groups, watched his corps and divisions roll into action against the Russians. In close attendance an official war artist, stiffly garbed in uniform and steel helmet, tried on sketch block to catch the mood of confidence radiating from one of Goebbel’s stars. But of those who marched eastward on the day that ‘the world held its breath’, how many felt assured by Hitler’s promise of victory within eight weeks, and how many were free from a sense of doom?

  Guderian was far from at ease though, of habit, he had given everything by the way of duty to make the best of a bad job. The year of rapture that followed the triumph in France had also been one of bewilderment. On the one hand he had frankly revelled in the pleasures of adulation, but on the other recoiled with disgust as the fruits of victory were wasted. On 19th July 1940 he had been promoted Generaloberst, sharing the same promotion list with twelve senior generals who were raised to General-feldmarschall – among them Brauchitsch, Keitel, Rundstedt, Bock, Reichenau, List and Kluge. But on that occasion the notable exclusion from advancement (and subject for puzzled surprise) was Haider who, paradoxically, had come to understand the orthodox role of the Panzertruppe almost as well as Guderian. He, to his misfortune, had fallen foul of Hitler. The war for the Army seemed to stand still as the Navy and Air Force, with totally inadequate resources, tried to conquer Britain in the aftermath of Hitler’s failure to make peace. Guderian reverted to the old routine of training panzer divisions for a campaign that was, as yet, unrevealed; endeavouring to obtain for them more and improved equipment. The necessity to do so was quite obvious. A world in arms was industriously copying Guderian’s methods and Germany’s survival would depend upon keeping a jump or two ahead in the armaments race. Hitler – momentarily – was under the spell of the tank – his enthusiasm for technical innovations fluctuating as wildly as it did in politics and strategy. With a campaign against Russia firmly in prospect, he asked for tank production to be increased from the existing level of about 125 to something between 800 and 1,000 per month, his aim being the doubling of the number of panzer divisions. Dr Todt, the Minister for Armaments and War Production, explained that a programme of such magnitude could not be mounted overnight and that, in any case, it would cost 2 billion Marks, require an additional 100,000 workmen and technicians and, inevitably, result in the cancellation or reduction of other projects such as U-boat and aircraft construction. It was ironic that the industrial resources of the conquered nations would provide only limited assistance and that none of thousands of captured armoured vehicles were compatible with German methods of tank warfare. Submissively Hitler ordered a doubling of panzer divisions by halving their tank content (to a strength which varied between 150 and 210) – or, put another way, doubling the infantry component. Guderian complains that his opinions were not sought in these matters, but it would have been surprising had this been so. His views were well known and, in principle, accepted. They had been underlined by the reports he and the other commanders had submitted after the French campaign. Moreover the scheme to invade Russia was a closely guarded secret known only to a few in the autumn.

  Practically unanimously the panzer leaders rejected the light tanks -Pz I and II – which had failed in action except when employed on subsidiary tasks. These machines would be phased out. Furthermore they realised that the Pz IIIs and IVs were in need of up-gunning and up-armouring to compete with the improved enemy tanks that must soon appear. The race between weapons and protection was an historical inevitability from which tanks could not escape. But entry into that race would automatically introduce production delays at the very moment when the call for increased numbers was loud and when intelligence reports were silent about those enemy, particularly Russian, tanks which were better than lightly armed and armoured. OKW and the Ordnance Office had finally compromised – as is usually essential in arriving at a weapon’s specifications – by increasing the armament of the Pz III with a short L 42 50mm gun of much lower velocity and accuracy than the long L 60 being introduced on field mountings for the infantry. As for the infantry within the panzer divisions, they were given a few additional armoured half-tracks though the actual proportion of units thus mounted was less than one in three as in 1940. The rest continued to travel in awkward, unarmoured, wheeled vehicle of indifferent cross-country performance and zero combat effectiveness.

  Nevertheless the combat power of the panzer divisions in 1941 was higher than it had been in 1940, partly as the result of replacing the light tanks with mediums but principally due to increased confidence and experience among the large number of officers and men who, from practice, had gained priceless insight into the potential and techniques of armoured, mobile warfare. In terms of prowess the Germans, with a galaxy of talent, had taken what amounted to a three years’ lead over their future enemies.

  In November 1940 Guderian heard about the plan to invade Russia – and was flabbergasted.* By his own authoritative estimate, disclosed in Achtung! Panzer!, Russia possessed 10,000 tanks in 1937. Now it was reliably reported that she had 17,000.
But it was the inherent dread, shared with every educated German officer and many others besides, of the fatal consequences of entering into a war on two fronts (such as had wrecked Germany in the previous conflict) which caused his ‘disappointment and disgust’. Though OKW might infer that nothing of the sort would occur, since Russia ought to be eliminated before Britain could make a renewed contribution to the war, the lessons of history were too deeply imprinted on German minds to be erased by a glib excuse. Morbidly the General Staff looked to the precedents by studying Napoleon’s 1812 campaign. A translation of Caulaincourt’s Memoirs had appeared in the bookshops in 1937 and, overnight in 1941, became required and gloomy reading by those involved in planning an advance upon Moscow. Guderian had bought his copy before the war!

  In protest Guderian did more than some. He sent his Chief of Staff to complain to OKH, but OKH did not want to hear. Brauchitsch had long since given up effective resistance to Hitler and OKW (preferring personal tranquillity at a time of war), while Haider, realising he would lack support from his C-in-C and feeling that, perhaps, the project was feasible absorbed himself with means to hasten a military conclusion. But this campaign was not to be the sole project of the year. Digressions supervened Two panzer divisions had to be sent to Libya in February 1941 to bolster the failing Italians who had been thrashed by a small British armoured force. The invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece had, rather unwillingly, to be undertaken in April to strengthen a southern flank which had become vulnerable due to Italy’s abortive attempt to conquer Greece. These major diversions, in addition to commitments in a multitude of minor schemes, sapped the strength of the forces destined for the Russian adventure and made total concentration on the greatest military operation in history impossible. War on two, if not three, fronts was already assured.

  Filled with trepidation, Guderian applied himself to a military requirement that characteristically fluctuated as it developed in response to diverse opinions amid long debates and war games. Three Army Groups – North, Centre and South – were to drive respectively towards Leningrad, Moscow and into the Ukraine, but, as in France, disagreements masked the campaign’s objects as well as the military objectives. From a nebulous debate appeared a blurred aim, partially directed against territorial and economic targets, partially with the purpose of destroying Russian forces, although, in fact, the divergent objectives were virtually synonymous with one policy. Moves in the direction of Leningrad, Moscow or Kiev were assured of drawing the Russian forces into battle. It was at the juncture between political and military requirements that confusion arose. Along with an ingrained conviction concerning the indispensability of destroying the opposing army, Guderian was convinced of the historic psychological necessity to seize a political objective. To him the capture of Moscow was an end in itself – a belief he was to hold until the end of the war. But what he and so few of his contemporaries recognised was the need to win a truly psychological political victory in a country whose size precluded total occupation. On the evidence of Wilfried Strik-Strikfeld, who was to liaise with dissident Soviet elements whose desire it was to bring down the Stalin regime and who conversed with Guderian in 1945, Guderian had not the remotest conception, until after the war, that the capture of Moscow need not have been conclusive but that an honest declaration’ of collaboration with anti-Stalinist activists might have produced the desired result.

  Russia was to be subjugated by brute force, her population cowed by the Nazi elements operating under the auspices of Himmler’s SS. The armies would be followed b the Einsatzgruppen whose job, directed by Alfred Rosenberg, was extermination, but whose effect would be the alienation of a potential ally. For there waited in Russia a host of potential friends who longed for benevolent liberation.

  Panzer Group 2’s share of the spearhead forces, reinforced by an infant corps plus two infant divisions in the initial assault, was:

  XXIV Panzer Corps, comprising a cavalry division, two panzer and one motorised infantry divisions.

  XLVII Panzer Corps, two panzer and one motorised infantry divisions.

  XLVI Panzer Corps, consisting of a single panzer division plus the motorised SS infantry division Das Reich and Infantry Regiment Grossdeutschland.

  At a distance to his northern flank was to move Hoth’s Panzer Group 3 with its two panzer corps. These two groups were to lead Bock’s Army Group Centre whose mission, as finally stated by Bock, was to penetrate the Russian frontier-line concentrations between the Pripet Marshes and points north of Suwalki, to wipe out the enemy wherever he was encountered and to undertake a 400-mile thrust in the general direction of Smolensk, regardless of developments in neighbouring sectors. The instruction was necessarily somewhat vague because Hitler and OKH felt that Minsk, 200 miles distant, should be the first objective, while Bock, with the complete approval of Guderian and Hoth, favoured Smolensk. As a result Bock injected an element of subterfuge from the outset with the consequence that neither Guderian nor Hoth were fully aware of their final objective. At the heart of the trouble was misunderstanding of the role and power of fast-moving units apropos slower horse and foot divisions, a fundamental split between those, like Haider, who still felt, regardless of France in 1940, mechanised forces should not get too far ahead of the marching masses. At the root of indecision was the irresolution of the C-in-C, von Brauchitsch.

  Additional grit was thrown into the machine by a re-emergence of the old tactical chestnut that infantry formations should initiate the offensive across the River Bug near Brest Litovsk, leaving Guderian’s Panzer Group 2 to exploit their bridgehead. The commander of the adjacent Fourth Army was Kluge, with whom, in the same vicinity, Guderian had had a slight disagreement over the dispersion of his corps in September 1939. Once more Guderian stood by his principles. Immediate and lasting success, he claimed, would depend upon the application of maximum surprise, shock, penetration and speed from the outset. This the infantry divisions could not guarantee whereas the panzer divisions could – a lesson that had been learnt on the Aisne in June 1940. Guderian gained his point though at the same time, and with common sense, he recognised the need for an infantry corps to reduce the fortress and vital communication centre of Brest Litovsk. For this purpose he was temporarily given command over XII Corps. Once more his willingness to give as well as take in a debate produced a genuine integration of ideas for, at the same time, Panzer Group 2 was attached to Kluge’s Fourth Army in the initial stages, since they were operating in his sector. In the months to come Guderian’s Group was to enter and leave Kluge’s command on various occasions, though mostly he was to remain indirectly or directly under Bock at Army Group. Hence the personal relationship between these three men became crucial in the development of the campaign and of Guderian’s fortunes -subject to the brooding influence of Haider in the interminable arguments with Brauchitsch and Hitler.

  Throughout the Army Bock was rated as ‘difficult’ with his superiors and hard to serve as a subordinate, though in the latter respect Guderian had few problems. Together they produced outstanding results because they shared a routine General Staff approach to strategy while Bock, as the rules demanded, left Guderian to apply his own tactics. Frequently in his letters Guderian was to extol good relations with Army Group. And yet it tells us something about Guderian when he states a preference for Rundstedt despite that officer’s apparent weaknesses as a commander. This generosity to Rundstedt can be explained by Guderian’s natural response to men of warmth even when it cloaked obvious imperfections. Rundstedt was warm: Bock was chilly. Another cause of Guderian’s reservations about Bock may have been the events of 1938, for Bock was among those who supported Brauchitsch in allowing Fritsch only a lukewarm exoneration: Guderian’s loyalty to Fritsch never wavered. But what Guderian’s behaviour would have been had he known, in 1941, that Bock’s headquarters had become the centre of a conspiracy against Hitler (of which Bock himself was aware) neither history nor Guderian records. Almost certainly Guderian was unaware of it, and had it be
en otherwise might well have taken action against the plotters, for his faith in Hitler was still unshaken. Bock’s was not, but Wheeler-Bennett defines him as insignificant of character, a man who would not be drawn into the conspiracy despite his contempt for Hitler. Yet Bock was among those who resolutely refused to transmit the infamous Hitler order which encouraged the Army to kill Commissars and thus he saved Guderian the embarrassment of seeing it. Nevertheless Guderian, in his turn, declined to repeat another dangerous instruction absolving soldiers who committed excesses against the Russian population. In writing ‘Both I and my corps commanders were immediately convinced that discipline must suffer if the order were published’ he gave the military (as opposed to moral) reason that all German generals offered in declining such demands. But in Panzer Leader he wrote: ‘… German soldiers must accept their international obligations and must behave according to the dictates of Christian conscience’.

  Generalfeldmarschall von Kluge was quite different from Bock in as much as he was even more energetic but also, according to Wheeler-Bennett, deceitful and not above taking bribes. On his sixtieth birthday, in 1942, while still on the active list, he received a letter of good wishes from Hitler enclosing a cheque for a substantial sum and a permit to spend still more upon his estate. Let it be added that, in due course, Guderian too would receive a gift of land from the Führer, though after his service seemed to be over, and that Rommel and List refused rewards. Whether or not these were bribes is another matter. If so a great many past military commanders of all nationalities should have suffered from uneasy consciences when their grateful nations bestowed awards upon them. But the unhappy relationship between Guderian and Kluge had nothing to do with bribery or politics, though each, whilst at first compliant to Hitler, was in due course to practise resistance in his own way. Their acrimonious disputes were personal and professional, commonplace among generals who seem to have a weakness that way. Kluge, the gunner, regarded Guderian, the panzer man, as a menace to orthodoxy who, in the interests of discipline, needed to be suppressed. Guderian felt ill-at-ease in Kluge’s presence because of what he viewed as the Feldmarschall’s icy conceit and intolerance: pictures taken of Guderian shortly after meetings with Kluge show visible signs of strain upon his face. In Kluge (known throughout the Army as Kluger Hans – a. play on words which, in modern parlance, can be translated as ‘Tricky Dickie’), Guderian recognised a threat to the military principles which he upheld as the keys to victory when the prospects of ultimate victory were fading. Guderian’s strong dislike and burgeoning mistrust of Kluge, which turned to outright hatred along with accusations of incompetence against a soldier who was far from being that, simply represented a clash between two ways of thinking – between a daring commander who took undiluted, if calculated, chances and a prudent general who sought security of his personal well-being besides the safety of his army in battle, preferring to spread rather than concentrate the risks. But while, undeniably, the antipathy between Der Schnelle Heinz (or Heinz Brausewetter – ‘Hothead’ – as Guderian was also sometimes known) and Der Kluge Hans disturbed the smooth implementation of the central and principal thrust into Russia, disproportionate importance should not be attached to this squabble between Army Commanders. There were disruptive attributions of far greater magnitude than that in readiness to wreck the German machine.