Hitler's Panzers (5 page)

Volckheim was also an officer for the working day. First detached to the Weapons Testing School at Doeberitz, in 1925 he was promoted to First Lieutenant and assigned to teach tank and motorized tactics at the infantry school at Dresden. From 1923 to 1927 he also published two dozen signed articles in the Militär-Wochenblatt, the army’s long-standing semiofficial professional journal. Most of them dealt with tactics of direct infantry support by setting problems and presenting solutions. An interesting subtext of these pieces is the scale of armor Volckheim’s scenarios usually presented: an armor regiment to a division, a battalion supporting a regiment.

Volckheim also addresses the subject of antitank defense—a logical response to the Reichswehr’s force structure—and some of the best were published in pamphlet form. Volckheim recommended camouflage, concealment, and aggressive action on the part of the infantry, combined with the forward positioning of field guns and light mortars to cover the most likely routes of advance. Unusual for the time, Volckheim also recommended keeping tanks in reserve, not merely to spearhead counterattacks but to directly engage enemy armor as a primary mission.

Volckheim, with the cooperation of
Militär-Wochenblatt’s
progressive editor, retired general Konstantin von Altrock, made armored warfare an acceptable, almost fashionable, subject of study in the mid-1920s Reichswehr. Initially most of the material published in
MW
translated or summarized foreign work. By 1926 most of the articles were by German officers, both from the combat arms and—prophetically—from the horse transport service as well. Fritz Heigl’s survey of world developments,
Taschenbuch der Tanks
(Tank Pocketbook), whose first edition appeared in 1926, was widely circulated. Its successors remain staples of chain bookstore and internet marketing.

The Reichswehr’s Truppenamt, often described simply as the successor to the treaty-banned General Staff, was actually formed from its predecessor’s Operations Section. Reorganized into four bureaus—operations, organization, intelligence, and training—and more streamlined than its predecessor, the Truppenamt shed responsibility for the kind of detailed administrative planning that had increasingly dominated the prewar General Staff. That was just as well, for while the methods might be transferable, the fundamental reconfiguration of Germany’s security profile demanded fresh approaches.

On the specific subject of armored warfare, the intelligence section monitored foreign developments in tactics and technology systematically enough to issue regular compilations of that material beginning in 1925. German observers took careful notes on postwar French experiences with combining horses and motor vehicles, new material such as half-tracks, and patterns of armor- infantry cooperation. They noted as well the British maneuvers of 1923 and 1924, observing in particular the appearance of the new Vickers Medium, whose turret-mounted 47mm gun, good cross-country mobility, and sustainable speed of around 20 miles per hour made it the prototypical modern tank. English was the fashionable foreign language in the Reichswehr, and Britain was an easier objective for short-term visits. And German officers regularly visited a United States whose army was more willing than any European power to show what they had. In objective terms that was not very much, and most of it existed as prototypes and test models. But the German army offered three months of subsidized leave as an incentive to improve language proficiency, and America offered attractive possibilities for travel and culture shock.

In 1924 Seeckt ordered each unit and garrison to designate an officer responsible for acting as an advisor on tank matters, conducting classes and courses on armored warfare, and distributing instructional materials. These included copies of Volckheim’s articles, Heigl’s data on foreign tanks, and similar material issued by the Inspectorate of Motor Troops. The armor officer had another duty as well: to serve as commander of dummy tank units in the field. Seeckt ordered that representations of state-of-the-art weapons, especially tanks and aircraft, be integrated into training and maneuvers. Tanks in particular must be represented as often as possible in exercises and maneuvers, to enable practicing both antitank defense and tank-infantry cooperation in attacks. Troops were to practice both tactical motor movement and firing from the treaty-sanctioned troop transports. Reports from the annual maneuvers were to include “lessons learned” from operating with mock armored vehicles.

By the mid 1920s the Truppenamt was moving doctrinally beyond the concept of tanks as primarily infantry-support weapons and organi zationally by considering their use in regimental strength. In November 1926, Wilhelm Heye, who the previous month had succeeded Seeckt as Chief of the Army Command, issued a memo on modern tanks. Heye wore an upturned mustache in the style of Wilhelm II, but that was his principal concession to Germany’s military past. Like Seeckt, he had spent a large part of the Great War as a staff officer on the Eastern Front. In 1919 he had been in charge of frontier security in East Prussia, and from 1923 to 1926 commanded the 1st Division in that now-isolated province. Heye argued that technical developments improving tanks’ speed and range had repeatedly shown in foreign maneuvers, especially the British, the developing potential of mechanization. Operating alone or in combined-arms formations, tanks were not only becoming capable of extended operations against flanks and rear, but of bringing decisive weight to the decisive point of battle, the Schwerpunkt.

During the same year, Major Friedrich Rabenau prepared a detailed internal memorandum for the Operations Section. Rabenau was an established critic of the heroic vitalist approach to modern war and its emphasis on moral factors such as “character.” He went so far as to argue that future armies would depend heavily on a technically educated middle class and technically skilled workers. Now he synthesized developments in mobility with the concepts of the Schlieffen Plan. Schlieffen’s grand design, Rabenau argued, had failed less because of staff and command lapses than because its execution was beyond the physical capacities of men and animals. Comprehensive motorization would enable initial surprise, continuing envelopment, and a finishing blow on the enemy’s flanks and rear. Rabenau’s ideas, widely shared in the Operations Section, percolated upwards. A directive in late 1926 asserted that not only could tanks be separated from foot-marching infantry, they could best be used in combination with other mobile troops—or independently. In 1927, section chief General Werner von Fritsch went on record to declare that tanks, in units as large as the British brigades, would exercise a significant influence at operational as well as tactical levels.

HEINZ GUDERIAN EVENTUALLY did such a good job overstating his role in the development of Reichswehr thinking on armor that those who correct his exaggerations run a certain risk of going too far in the opposite direction. Guderian’s fondness for the first person singular should not obscure his early investigations of armored vehicles’ possibilities—or his early addressing of those possibilities in the context of Germany’s defeat in the Great War. He developed—or perhaps more accurately enhanced—a reputation for clarity and forcefulness, recommending for example that instead of the currently popular hybrids, cavalry divisions should be entirely mechanized. In 1924 his exile ended when he was transferred to the staff of an infantry division as an instructor in military history and tactics.

Guderian’s approach was unusual even in a German army more open than most to learning from negative experiences. His classes focused on defeat—specifically, defeat caused by failure to innovate. Guderian ascribed that as much to intellectual rigidity as to technical indifference. He argued, for example, that “shock power” was considered prior to 1914 to depend on infantry attacks with cold steel. During the Great War it came to depend on artillery fire. That was still the case in France. But the guns moved too slowly and took too long. Shock was force multiplied by impulsion; both elements were important. Victory required bringing fire against the enemy quickly, through maneuver. And that, Guderian increasingly asserted, meant mechanization—specifically, fast-moving, gun-armed tanks.

As a teacher Guderian was an acquired taste whose allusive approach and sardonic sense of humor alienated as well as inspired. But he was a dynamic lecturer who took advantage of the opportunity to read widely in German and foreign literature on armor’s current developments and future prospects. The division commander, himself interested in motorization’s prospects, had worked with Guderian in the past and was willing to give him his head. In 1927, freshly promoted to major, he was assigned to the Truppenamt’s Operations Section, in principle to study the development of motor transportation for infantry. That same year, Fritsch was replaced as section head by General Werner von Blomberg, whose interest in motorization ranged from replacing the infantry’s bicycles with motorcycles to preparing training schedules for theoretical tank regiments.

It was scarcely surprising that the Operations Section focused obsessively on the British maneuvers held that summer. These exercises centered on an Experimental Mechanized Force built around armored cars and medium and light tanks, and including a temporarily motorized machine-gun battalion, a field artillery battalion, a battery of light infantry guns, and an engineer company, all truck-transported. The section reported extensively on the maneuvers themselves and provided translations and summaries of the major journalistic commentaries, especially those by Fuller and Liddell- Hart. The statement of British Chief of Imperial General Staff Sir George Milne that future armored forces would be able to strike up to three hundred miles into an enemy’s territory struck particular chords. Guderian credits the post-maneuver
Provisional Instructions for Tank and Armored Car Training
with providing the theoretical basis for a developing German armor doctrine. The work was summarized, and then translated—no great feat of intelligence, since it was available on the open market.

Even—or better said, especially—in the Reichswehr, theory required testing. Banning weapons and limiting numbers enhanced the risks of abstraction, postulating developments and concepts beyond the attainable and the sustainable. New models of dummy tanks appeared on the maneuver grounds. The originals had usually been wooden frames mounted on bicycles or pushed around by a couple of soldiers. By 1928 the firm of Hanomag was delivering motorized mock-ups that could cross terrain at fair speeds. That summer, Vollard- Bockelberg used them in a small-scale exercise reflecting British tactics by deploying the model tanks in three waves: two to break through to the enemy artillery zone and into his rear; the third to support the infantry directly.

By 1930 all the motor battalions conducted similar exercises built around dummy tanks and wooden antitank guns.

In April 1931, Oswald Lutz was appointed Inspector of Motor Troops. He requested as his chief of staff Heinz Guderian, freshly promoted to lieutenant colonel. In 1931-32, the team planned and conducted a series of upscale exercises involving entire battalions of dummy tanks with supporting infantry and artillery. For Lutz the “supporting” adjective was central. Tanks were now the key weapon on the modern battlefield. Infantry, artillery, engineers and aircraft played essentially supporting roles. Tanks therefore should carry out independent missions, as opposed to being tied down to the infantry. Independence in turn required mass; using tanks in anything less than battalion strength diluted their shock effect and rendered them disproportionately vulnerable to antitank defenses. Finally, Lutz insisted on surprise as a critical force multiplier. Surprise involved more than the timing if an initial attack. Tanks should advance in echelons and on a broad front, constantly shifting the focus of their movements in order to confuse the defender. But Lutz was no advocate of the all-armor approach; instead, he stressed the importance of cooperation. In particular the infantry must closely follow the tanks to exploit the initial shock of armor, and trust to the tanks for fire support instead of looking to the rear for artillery or waiting for their own heavy weapons.

On the technical side the development of armored vehicles had continued after the armistice. Initially this focused on wheeled vehicles for internal security purposes. The design capacity to do more remained. The question from the military perspective was how best to work with industry to enhance that capacity and develop state-of-the-art designs without flagrantly violating the terms of Versailles. By the mid-1920s the solution had been worked out, less on paper than by winks, nudges, and gentlemen’s agreements. The Truppenamt would prepare specifications. Interested companies would produce designs and prototypes for study and testing. That process would continue until it somehow became feasible to begin production openly.

The first concept of the Weapons Office in 1925 was cutting-edge: a 16-ton vehicle with a top speed of 25 miles per hour, 14mm of armor overall, and a turret-mounted short 75mm gun. Three firms—Krupp, Rheinmetall, and Daimler-Benz—responded, two with a long history of arms production, the third specializing in motor vehicles. None gave the project high priority; all found it more difficult than expected to transform sketches and figures into a functioning weapons system. The half dozen prototypes available by 1929 were most useful as showcases for developments in automotive technology, engines, and suspension systems, than as practical field designs. Though it took only half the time to develop and present their prototypes, the same could be said for the Truppenamt’s second proposal, submitted in 1928. This was a light tank, seven and a half tons, carrying a turret-mounted 37mm high-velocity gun, slightly faster and carrying a bit less armor than its larger stablemate. As a fig-leaf concession to Versailles, the designs were given the subtle cover names of “large tractors” and “small tractors.”

If the Reichswehr’s theories of armored war owed heavy debt to Britain, its tank designs channeled France in their armament and in the concept behind the paired designs. The heavier vehicles would directly support and cooperate with infantry. The lighter ones would lead attacks and act as tank destroyers. The French reversed the order, but the thinking was similar.