a transparent explanation of the development of the German panzer army

Flawed, but riveting | Achtung - Panzer! (Cassell Military Classics) | Heinz Guderian

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	• Achtung - Panzer! (Cassell Military Classics) Heinz Guderian Cassell, 1999 - 220 pages average customer review:based on 12 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Ein Geschichtsbuch. Nicht mehr, aber auch nicht weniger!

Guderian entwickelt aus seinen Studien über die Panzereinsätze der Allierten im ersten Weltkrieg, seine Erfahrungen bei der Funktruppe sowie seiner Studien zum mechanisierten Transport der Infanterie in der Weimaer Republik die moderne Panzertaktik.
Die umfassende Richtigkeit seiner Thesen hat der "Blitzkrieg" dann 2 Jahren später in Polen, Frankreich, auf dem Balkan, in Grichenland und Russland bestätigt.
Das Buch ist flüssig, prägnant und fesselnd geschrieben, didaktisch sehr sauber aufbereitet und mit einem großen Quellenteil versehen, der die Daten aller bis ca. 1930 gebauten Panzertypen beinhaltet.
Ferner vermittlet das Buch ein Stimmungsbild der Reichswehr im Weltkrieg sowie zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen, wenn man etwas zwischen den Zeilen lesen kann.
Ein herausragendes Zeitdokument, wenn es weder von links noch von rechts Indoktriniert gelesen wird.
Mir wurde beim lesen dieses Buchs erst die volle Perversion und Menschenverachtung des ersten Weltkriegs bewusst.

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a transparent explanation of the development of the German panzer army

Mr. Guderian has written a solid account of his thoughts on the development of the German panzer army. Even if not every fine detail in his book is true and even if not all credit for it should go to him, at least he was the key figure in the process. In Achtung Panzer he gives a transparent explanation of the steps taken to form the (so-called) blitzkrieg tactics of the German Army before World War II. The book is packed with lots of examples from the First World War to clearify his ideas. I sometimes had to strain to follow his train of thought, but that is probably because English is not my mother tongue. I think it is quite obvious that this is a book solely for avid fans of military history; highly recommended!

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Flawed, but riveting

(A) The author's insistance on listing every unit in every action, armoured or not, started to drone on like "the begats" in the Old Testament, but this cannot detract from the compelling story. I found the descriptions of events told from the point of view of both sides particularly valuable.

(B) The maps provided might be reprints of the orginal edition's, for all I know -- but they are worthless. One cannot read much of the detail and they do not help illustrate what happen in the battles depicted. If this is what the German army used, it's a wonder they didn't attack Sweden by mistake! Keep a good atlas or detailed map of France at chairside instead.

(C) I am only halfway through, three days into reading, and the binding is ALREADY falling apart. This is truly disappointing in a book I intended to keep as a reference book.

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Surprisingly Interesting

Heavy armored columns accompanied by motorized infantry and artillery punch through static defenses and take advantage of the limited mobility of their opponents to make deep penetrations into the enemy's rear areas. Indispensable for the attack is close air support providing considerable firepower and crucial intelligence. All is bound together by cutting edge communications technology.
The American Army in Iraq? Correct. But originally the German Panzer divisions in Poland, France, and the Soviet Union. While the Pentagon trumpets the innovative nature of their strategy and tactics in Iraq, it is actually just the logical extension of the combined forces approach that is the bedrock doctrine of land warfare since the opening of days of WWII. If the combined forces approach is gospel, then Heinz Guderian was its greatest prophet.
This book, written primarily to promote Guderian's views among his fellow German officers, was an important element in establishing the Panzer Division as the cutting edge of the German Army. It is important to realize that this book was not written for general audiences but is rather a case book type analysis aimed at convincing other officers of the absolute necessity of Guderian's approach. It contains, consequently, a close analysis of several WWI engagements aimed at demonstrating the futility of traditional infantry/artillery based attacking tactics complemented by careful analysis of early attempts to use armor. These occupy most of the book. It concludes with relatively brief sections on Guderian's own views of how offensive warfare should be conducted. Guderian spent a good part of the inter-war period teaching military history and this book provides evidence that he was an experienced pedagogue. The analyses are well organized and presently clearly. The cumulative effect is a powerful indictment of traditional tactics and a powerful argument in favor of armor using the combined forces approach. Guderian was clearly very intelligent and a competent writer. Guderian has become something of an iconic figure because of his effective and apparently prophetic advocacy of the combined forces approach. A component of his reputation rests on the fact that he was perhaps the only prominent military theorist who was also a very successful field commander. It is important to realize, however, that Guderian's insights were not unique. Intelligent veterans of WWI in all the major combatant nations were pursuing alternatives to the static tactics of WWI and a number of these individuals produced influential writings in the interwar period. Guderian drew extensively on this literature in writing Achtung Panzer.
This book is also inadvertantly revealing in several other important respects. The opening section of the book rehearses general arguments for why the German Army needed a new approach to offensive tactics. These 'geopolitical' arguments are the cliches of political and strategic thinking from the pre-WWI period, when Guderian was a young officer. They assume that war between European states is inevitable and that for Germany, the only option was rapid victory, hence the need for punishingly effective offensive tactics. In these important aspects, Guderian never seems to have escaped the conventional ideas of his youth. This is hardly surprising, Guderian was a General Staff officer during WWI and chosen as one of the select few to continue in the regular officer Corps in the interwar period. These are marks of demonstrated competence and promise but no one with really unconventional ideas about politics or strategy would have been selected for the General Staff or interwar Army by the notably reactionary leaders of the German Army, a group who wished to restore the essentials of the Wilhelmine state.
To be fair to Guderian, this book does contain an implicit admission that the German Army was defeated on the Western Front. This conclusion is in contrast to the pernicious 'stab in the back' myth of domestic betrayal (by the Social Democrats and other left wing political parties) propagated by the Army leadership during the 20s and early 30s. Such honesty was probably possible only after Hitler's accession to power and when German rearmarment was safely underway.

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This is one of the most significant military books of the twentieth century. By an outstanding soldier of independent mind, it pushed forward the evolution of land warfare and was directly responsible for German armoured supremacy in the early years of the Second World War. Published in 1937, the result of 15 years of careful study since his days on the German General Staff in the First World War, Guderian's book argued, quite clearly, how vital the proper use of tanks and supporting armoured vehicles would be in the conduct of a future war. When that war came, just two years later, he proved it, leading his Panzers with distinction in the Polish, French and Russian campaigns. Panzer warfare had come of age, exactly as he had forecast. This first English translation of Heinz Guderian's classic book - used as a textbook by Panzer officers in the war - has an introduction and extensive background notes by the modern English historian Paul Harris.

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