In October 1918 the German armies were on their way back defeated by the overwhelming material and numerical superiority of the ANTATE forces. As E.M. Remarque so cleverly put it:"for every tired German soldier there were five rested ones opposite. In every German kurama many cans of corned beef, in each of our planes five of theirs. And the chariots, which we used to make fun of, became terrible weapons that did not stop in the face of anything, that melted the dead and the wounded."
In the eyes of the common German soldier tanks had emerged as the weapons that finally gave victory to their opponents, weapons against which "our guns were useless and our grenades mere pebbles". Those steel monsters that rolled over the battlefield with a hideous roar, crushing men and weapons, spewing fire and clearing a path for the opposing infantry, it was they who won.
The tanks were first used by the British at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Those early models - the Mark I - were particularly prone to all sorts of problems. They had very little obstacle-jumping abilities and unreliable engines. During the attack most of them were lost due to technical problems or stopped by the obstacles of the battlefield.
The then German military leadership was not in a position to properly assess the gravity of the event. Not only did it not try to push in the direction of tank development, it also made no effort in the area of anti-tank (AT) development. So when the British dropped hundreds of tanks at the Battle of Cambrai, in 1917, they easily broke through the German positions.
Although their success was not equally exploited, the ease with which the advanced models of British tanks penetrated the German defensive line was nevertheless significant. Only then did the German military leadership become alarmed.
But precious time had already been lost. It was not until the spring of 1918 that the German Army managed to line up a small number of tanks, model A7 V, which were used in "Operation Michael", the last large-scale attack of the German forces on the Western Front. Because of their small numbers, tanks naturally failed to prove their worth as a means of warfare.
A few months later the war ended and the victors, as usual, imposed their terms on the vanquished. The Treaty of Versailles required defeated Germany to limit its armed forces to 100,000 men and pledge not to build tanks, warplanes and heavy artillery. In this climate of defeat and humiliation, the Allies hoped to stifle German militarism and German national pride. They did not see the consequences of their actions. Only Marshal Foss, when he read the text of the Treaty of Versailles, exclaimed, "this is not peace, it is an armistice for 20 years".
Genesis
"The German armored weapon did not spring up like another Athena Pallas from the head of Zeus," says the father of the German armor, General Heinz Gunderian, in his work Achtung Panzer. "On the contrary", he continues, "a long evolutionary path was followed, in light of the prohibitions of the Treaty of Versailles, but also under the very prohibitions that stemmed from the newness of the subject and our ignorance of it".
This general finding of General Gunderian was of course well founded. Yet it was precisely these difficulties that forced the Germans to step forward from the victors of the First World War. It was the lack of previous experience that led the Germans to develop a completely new, innovative doctrine of the use of armored personnel carriers.
As early as 1921, the small German Army had begun, with the help mainly of the Soviets but also the Swedes, to experiment with the new weapon. And they did not limit themselves only to experiments, with regard to tanks, but they also began to experiment on the close cooperation of tanks and tactical aviation, although at that time they had neither tanks nor aviation! Of course everything changed from 1933 onwards, immediately after Hitler came to power.
The German generals of the resurrected army were thoroughly engaged in studying the lessons of the Great War, both during the movement phase and during the stagnation phase. The famous Schlieffen plan of 1909-10, which predicted the destruction of the armed forces of France, was regarded by the military analysts of the Western "democracies" as an extravagant plan, which could not, as it turned out, have any hope of success.
The German military, however, had a diametrically opposite view. According to them, there were three basic principles of military action:surprise, power and exploitation. When in August 1914 the Schlieffen Plan was put into effect, the then German Commander-in-Chief Moltke – the younger – managed to surprise the Allies and easily advance to the Marne. But he was neither able to exceed them in force, at a specific point on the front, nor to take advantage of his initial success.
His forces could not move faster than the enemy's. The allied reserves, drawn up on interior lines, were able to cover any cracks in the front and then counterattack, on the Marne, and drive the Germans back. In the absence of motorized means, the speed of movement of German pedestrians did not exceed the corresponding speed of pedestrians of antiquity or the Middle Ages.
At the same time, the speed of the cavalry divisions, which were supposed to take advantage of the success of the infantry, did not exceed 8 km per hour. Guderian makes extensive references in his work to the inability of cavalry to cope with the task assigned to it on the then modern battlefield. Later, during the phase of stagnation and misery of the trenches, the facts about each attacker became even more difficult.
Attempting to break through superimposed fortified lines required incredibly powerful artillery concentrations. For example, in Operation Michael, the last substantially successful German attack on WWI, the first infantry attack was supported by the fire of 10,000 pieces of artillery, which in a period of about six hours consumed nearly 1,500,000 shells of all types and calibers. !
Naturally, such a barrage of fire did indeed lead to the breaking up of the British front. However, the initial success could not be properly exploited. Again the British reserves, moving at the same pace as the Germans, closed the gap. And the German infantry was gradually left uncovered by the fire of the friendly artillery, which of course could not move fast enough to cover it.
Such a number of guns and the corresponding supply of shells required to satisfy his needs were impossible to move within the time frames required for the attempted exploitation to have any chance of success. So, the German generals concluded, it was not Schlieffen's flawed planning that led to failure, but the German Army's inability to meet the other two parameters of power and exploitation.
This weakness could only be covered by the advanced invention of their opponents, the battle tank.
The Germans, since they did not have tanks, did not adhere to the then regular doctrines of using the tank. For the Germans the tank was not the servant of the infantry, which would meekly follow the slow pace of the infantry's advance, straining the engine and the nerves of its crew.
It was the point of the spear, the weapon which, depending on the circumstances, would play the role of a battering ram or a strategic cavalry. Of course the tanks would act in close conjunction with the infantry, but their organic infantry, which would cover them and, again on occasion, open the way for them. And the organic infantry is of course motorized, so that it is able to follow the movements of the tanks at the same speed.
The close combination of weapons gave the motorized raid a coherence never before achieved. If the enemy is well established in the territory occupied by him, then the tank attack will be preceded by a struggle to wear him down, from organic motorized infantry, also motorized artillery and tactical aviation.
As soon as the enemy shows the first points of inflection, the volume of tanks in reserve will rush against him. Thus it is certain that the enemy will be divided and defeated. After the division is achieved, the tanks will rush forward to exploit their success, like the cavalry of Napoleonic times. The defeated adversary will be pursued on foot, so that he does not have time to regroup, to the zone of his artillery and supply lines.
On the contrary, if the enemy is tentatively and not firmly established on the ground, the assault will be launched by the tanks, supported by artillery and tactical aviation, which will not only attack the enemy's front-line units, but will also attempt to isolate the battlefield, preventing the timely arrival of enemy reserves.
Tanks, immediately after achieving a split, will not stop their movement. The task of clearing any enemy pockets will be undertaken by the motorized infantry following the tank movements. This, in general, is the tactical doctrine of the German armored forces, the successful implementation of which, however, depended to a large extent on the action of the friendly air force.
The Luftwaffe fighters were supposed to ensure the security of the movements of the ground forces, obtaining, at least local air superiority, over the ground battle field. Medium bombers were to isolate the battlefield, hitting any enemy reserve concentration. Finally, regular bombers would operate in close liaison with the ground forces, limiting the necessary artillery preparation time and hitting every enemy support point.
Given all the above, the German generals, having after 1933 and the support of the Hitlerite leadership, proceeded with the practical application of their theoretical doctrines until then. The rearmament of the German Army began at a rapid pace. By 1935 three armored divisions had joined the army's battle formation.
By the start of the war on 1 September 1939, the German Army would field six armored divisions and four "light" divisions. The light divisions would be converted to armored before the attack on the "West" on May 10, 1940. However, the German armored, like the Luftwaffe, received its baptism of fire in the vast "proving field" of Spain. There, the German tanks, clearly inferior in armament and performance, performed much better than the Soviet T-26.
The myth, which was artificially cultivated by the "Democrats" of Spain, about the action of the "fascist" tanks, was completely unreal. The success of the German tanks in Spain – the vast majority of them were PzKpfw I – operated successfully in Spain because they simply operated following the new tactical doctrine, against the scattered "democratic" tanks, led by the militarily incompetent "democratic" commanders.
Von Thoma, later commander of the Afrika Korps in Africa, served in Spain and passed on the lessons of tank action there to his superiors. Spain was also tested for the first time, under real conditions, by the Luftwaffe, whose aircraft also – at least at the beginning – could not be said to be technologically superior to the Soviet I-16 fighters.
The first German armored divisions were composed of two brigades, one of tanks and one of infantry. It also had an armored reconnaissance brigade, an artillery regiment, an organic engineer, transmission, technician and service battalion. Western militaries believed that each German armored division had about 500 tanks. Such a thing was of course not true.
The most powerful armored division ever in the German Army's battle formation was the 3rd Panzer which, on 1 September 1939, had 391 tanks. From this date onwards the number of tanks per armored division fell steadily. The average number of tanks per division in the campaign against France was 250.
In 1941, in the early stages of Operation Barbarossa, the average dropped to around 200 – usually 180. Of course the fall in numbers was partly offset by the withdrawal of light tanks and their replacement by medium tanks