Customer Reviews

Achtung - Panzer! (Cassell Military Classics)

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If you're into the history of WWI and WWII, this is a must read book. It's written by the German general Heinz Guderian in 1937, two years before the outbreak of WWII. In this book Guderian outlines his visions on how armored warfare should be conducted. He's doing this by drawing parallels to how World War One was fought - and lost - by the Germans. Guderian goes into to detail about several of the most important battles on the western front during WWI.

In reality it was Guderian who invented the blitzkrieg - and not Rommel - like most people seem to believe. It's really spooky to see how Guderian outlines his visions of warfare in 1937 - when we now know how he himself used just those tactics to run over Poland and France only two years later.

Guderian was a professional soldier, and not a politician. Not once in the book does he speak nazi-propaganda. On the contrary he was one of the few who dared to oppose Hitler, something who got him relieved from command in 1943. He was re-instated one year later when Hitler desperately needed him in an attempt to solve the crisis on the Eastern front.

Guderian was tried before the Nürnberg-court after the war, but was acquitted of all charges.

Once I started to read this book I could not put it down. Historians throw the word "blitzkrieg" around, but after you read this inerpetation; a lot of the tactics and use of armour in conjunction with artillery, infantry, and close air support, makes perfect sense. A must for anyone interested in tactics and the WWII German military.

Guderian, J.F.C. Fuller and Basil Liddell Hart make up the holy trinity of blitzkrieg warfare. Consolidating and clarifying the concepts of this holy trinity, this book is the story of Guderian's efforts to put them into practice. How successful was he? That's easy to understand if you comprehend the meanings of: Barbarossa, Poland, and the Drive to the Sea. This is the book Patton studied. This book is the root of modern combined arms warfare. A must for the professional military officer.

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.

All jokes about how the Germans have yet to win a world war aside, this book is an absolutely brilliant work from the stereo-typicaly brilliant Prussian/German military mind. It's a far easier read than say A.T. Mahan's "Rise of Sea Power" because Guderian sat down and developed a coherent & cohesive thesis and clear ideas, as opposed to the collection-of-lectures style of Mahan. The first half of the book is an easy read of WWI history and the second half is a thesis on the future of armored warfare, and his assertations came completly true with WWII. This book is a neccesary read for any serious student of WWII history, military thought, or the future of warfare. Highly recommended.

(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.

For enthusiasts of armoured warfare this is essential reading. Although to be frank, I found the first part of the book heavy going since many WW1 battles are discussed in general terms rather than from a tankman's perspective. Nevertheless one can glean from Guderian's analysis how the development of Armoured forces - IN CONJUNCTION WITH AIR FORCES - was one of only two solutions to repeats of WW1 conditions in future conflicts assuming there were to be such. The other being the development of infantry "sturm" tactics, later exemplified by the
Waffen SS. To my mind, Guderian's later victories can be attributed to the analyses provided here. The nub being that he understood why those battles described went the way they did and, how the negative criteria therein could be overcome. The second part of the book describes the means and methods. One is left with the feeling that had Germany's potential opponents really read this book and observed how Guderian's ideas were being turned into reality by himself and his contemporaries - although not with some not inconsiderable internal opposition, it must be said - the shock and surprise elements that so characterise the early WW2 years battles could well have been avoided.
For make no mistake: Guderian is the true progenator of modern warfare. Although from reading this book it is not quite as apparent as it might be. It pains me to see how a much lesser man such as Rommel recieves recognition far out of proportion to his actual contribution to the general weal while Guderian merely occupies a place in obscurity inhabited by afficiondos. Granted that is because Rommel is associated with resistance to Hitler - quite unwarranted as it happens. Without his personal association with the Nazi dictator, Rommel would never have gained the commands which made his reputation. Both men however were essentially decent men caught up in something inextricably evil and made the best for themelves in the circumstances. In that sense they both cull blame; but who amongst can say we would do any different under the same circumstances? In the case of Guderian Hitler turned out to provide just the support he needed - in marked contrast to his contemporary pioneers in the British Army: Fuller went to enforced retirement, Hobart was demoted from Major General to Corporal in the Home Guard! Had they recieved the same measure of support as Guderian......

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.

This book forms part of the thinking that gave rise to modern combined-arms warfare as we still know it today. Written by general guderian shortly before WW2, this theory was then put into practice (including by himself) with the german offensives against poland and france. Strangley this edition (1992) is the first time is was translated into english!

The first half of the book is detailed description (almost too detailed and a bit tedious at times) of all the tank battles of WW1. After each battle is an analysis of what worked and what didnt.

It then effectively goes into what we would now call a SWOT analysis - Strengths, Weaknesses, Oppotunities, Threats - to work out what is needed to exploit the strengths and cover the weaknesses of tanks as shown by the WW1 battles. The result? His conclusion is that tanks are best used en masse, in surprise attacks over suitable terrain to make use of their spped and firepower but with full support from mechanised infantry, artillery and tactical air support to cover their vulnerability against obstacles and lack of long range indirect fire capacity! As an ex-troop leader of an armoured recon regiment who wore the black beret myself, reading the book was a bit like doing refresher training!

Last, the book goes into the organisational structure, tactics and doctrine that these forces should use to achieve the desired strategy of break through of the enemy front-line, so that mobile warfare can be carried deep into the enemies rear. The book even goes into what formations should be used, the depth and breadths of the attacks and the planning rates for the advances. What is most amazing is that the book was written before the war (which seems like giving away state secrets!) yet the allied forces didnt seem to have read it or taken heed of what was said and developed counter-measures!

Maybe it was like that anecodote quoted about Napoleon? After his early great victories one of his aides, Henri Jomini, returned home to his native swizterland to write a book 'critique of the battles of the revolution' in 1806. Napoleon is said to have read the book in alarm and exclaimed "it teaches my whole system of warfare to my enemies" then he is supposed to have relaxed and said "it's alright, the old generals who command against me will never read it and the young men who do read it do not yet command' sure enough it was almost ten more years before he meet his Waterloo...

If your are interested in the history of modern mobile warfare, the way war is still conducted today, then Achtung Panzer is a readable gem.
regards
david

Achtung! Panzer! by Heinz Guderian is a must read for the student of evolving military history and strategy. It describes with unprecedented insight (for the times) a general outline for the deployment and utilization of what, even in 1937, were the new tank divisions of the German Army, backed by illustrations and examples of tank engagements from the Great War and lessons learned from the faltering first attempts to use these tanks in those monumental battles to nullify the deadly enemy trench lines and machine gun emplacements, which had been sending millions of European soldiers to their deaths. General Guderian was considered the father of modern warfare. His insights and the lessons he drew from the world conflict greatly influenced, and helped to shape the Blitzkrieg into the deadly, potent armored forces breakthroughs and exploitations that they became, which nearly won Germany the world.