PENGUIN BOOKS
PANZER LEADER
Heinz Guderian was born in 1888, the son of a Prussian General. He attended the War School at Metz and was then commissioned into the German Army. He spent the First World War as a technical and staff officer. After the war he remained with the small army that Germany was allowed to retain under the Treaty of Versailles. At this time he specialized in military transport technology, working on the secret development of tanks, which had been prohibited by the Treaty. When Hitler repudiated the restrictions of the Treaty in 1937, Guderian was created General of Panzer Troops, and in 1938 published a book on armoured warfare entitled Achtung! Panzer!
During the Second World War Guderian commanded forces invading Poland, France and the Soviet Union, successfully employing the blitzkrieg warfare method of massed firepower. His military career was, however, chequered by clashes with Hitler and General von Kluge, and he was dismissed and reinstated a number of times. Hitler made him Army Chief of Staff in 1944, but finally dismissed him in March 1945. After the Second World War, Guderian was interrogated about war crimes by the Nuremberg Tribunal. He was released without being indicted after it was decided he did not have direct responsibility or knowledge of the atrocities committed during the war. Panzer Leader was published in 1952. Guderian died in 1953.
GENERAL HEINZ GUDERIAN
PANZER
LEADER
Foreword by
CAPTAIN B. H. LIDDELL HART
Translated from the German by
CONSTANTINE FITZGIBBON
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This translation first published in the USA by Dutton 1952
Published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph 1952
Published with a new introduction in the USA by Da Capo Press 1996
Published as a Classic Penguin 2000
Reissued in this edition 2009
Introduction copyright © Kenneth Macksey, 1996
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author of the introduction has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-195739-5
CONTENTS
List of appendices
List of illustrations
List of sketch maps
Introduction
Foreword
1. Background and Youth
2. The Creation of the German Armoured Force
3. Hitler at the Peak of his Power
1938. The Blomberg–Fritsch crisis
The Incorporation of Austria into the Reich
The Incorporation of the Sudetenland into the Reich
The Situation Deteriorates Once Again
4. The Beginning of the Disaster
The Drift to War
The Polish Campaign
Between the Campaigns
5. The Campaign in the West
Preparations for the Campaign
The Break-through to the Channel
The Capture of the Channel Ports
Hitler’s Momentous Order to Stop
The Break-through to the Swiss Border
The Armistice
6. The Campaign in Russia, 1941
The Background
Preparations
Opening Operations
Crossing the Dnieper
Smolensk-Elnya-Roslavl
Moscow or Kiev?
The Battle of Kiev
The Battles of Orel and Bryansk
The Advance to Tula and Moscow
My First Dismissal
7. On Inactive Service
8. The Development of the Armoured Force, January 1942 to February 1943
9. Inspector-General of Armoured Troops
Appointment and First Actions
Dr. Goerdeler’s Visits
‘Operation Citadel’
Disagreements during the Second Half of 1943
The Year of Decision
10. July 20th and its Sequel
11. Chief of the General Staff
Operations on the Eastern Front
The Ardennes Offensive
Defensive Preparations in the East
The Russian Offensive
12. The Final Collapse
13. Leading Personalities of the Third Reich
Hitler
The Party
The National and District Controllers
Hitler’s Intimate Circle
The Government
14. The German General Staff
‘To Be or Not to Be, That is the Question!’
Index
APPENDICES
1. My Military Appointments
2. O.K.W. Directive No. 1 for the Prosecution of the War (31.8.1939)
3. Report by the Inspector-General of Armoured Troops on the Organisation and Strength of the Armoured Troops in the Western Campaign
4. XIX Army Corps, Corps Order (12.5.40)
5. XIX Army Corps, Warning Order for the Meuse Crossing (12.5.40)
1st Panzer Division, Divisional Order No. 4 (12.5.40)
10th Panzer Division, Warning Order for the Meuse Crossing (12.5.40)
6. XIX Army Corps, Corps Order No. 3 for the Attack across the Meuse (13.5.40)
1st Panzer Division, Divisional Order No. 5 for the Attack across the Meuse (13.5.40)
10th Panzer Division, Divisional Order for the Attack across the Meuse (13.5.40)
7. XIX Army Corps, Corps Order, 13.5.40, 22.30 hrs.
8. XIX Army Corps, Corps Order No. 5, 14.5.40
9. XIX Army Corps, Corps Order No. 7, 16.5.40
10. XIX Army Corps, Corps Order No. 8, 18.5.40
11. XIX Army Corps, Corps Order No. 9, 18.5.40
12. XIX Army Corps, Corps Order, 18.5.40, 13.00 hrs.
13. XIX Army Corps, Corps Order No. 10, 19.5.40
14. XIX Army Corps, Corps Order 20.5.40, 16.30 hrs.
15. XIX Army Corps, Corps Order No. 11, 20.5.40
16. XIX Army Corps, Preliminary Order No. 12, 21.5.40
Group von Kleist, Group Order No. 12, 21.5.40
17. Group von Kleist, Group Order No. 13, 22.5.40
18. XIX Army Corps, Corps Order No. 13, 25.5.40
19. XIX Army Corps, Order for the Relief of 1st Panzer Division by 20th (Motorised) Infantry Division, 26.5.40
20. XIX Army Corps, Corps Order No. 14, 26.5.40
21. XIX Army Corps, Corps Order No. 15, 28.5.40
22. A Hitler Order: Directive No. 21, ‘Operation Barbarossa.’ 18.12.40
23. The Organisation of the Command of the Armed Forces, 1944
24. War Establishment of a Panzer Division as of 15.10.35
25. War Establishment of a Panzer Division as of 9.5.40
ILLUSTRATIONS
Portrait of the author
1. At an artillery observation post
2. Polish summer landscape
3. Battle for an emplacement near Vizna
4. Brest-Litovsk: The Russians take over
5. In an armoured command vehicle
6. Boulogne: The assault on the town wall
7. The attack rolls on
8. Advancing as though on manœuvres: tanks move forward (Champagne, June 1940)
9. Lieutenant-Colonel Balck handing over a flag captured at Juniville
10. Dawn, June 22, 1941
11. Russia: The road forward
12. Bridge-building over the Dnieper near Kopys
13. The Battle of Shklov
14. Crossing the Dnieper near Kopys
15. With General Marras on the banks of the Dnieper near Kopys
16. Before the attack
17. An anti-tank ditch in the Stalin Line
18. Near Roslavl, August 5, 1941
19. Panzer Regiment 35 advancing before the Battle of Gorodishtche
20. The outskirts of Orel on the Oka: a typical Russian town
21. Dmitrovsk: early winter
22. Night battle before Moscow, 1941
SKETCH MAPS
1. General Sketch Map 1: The advance into Poland. Situation 31.8-5.9.39
2. Sketch Map 1: The battle of Tuchel Heath, 2-3.9.39
3. General Sketch Map 2: The advance into Poland. Situation 9.9-18.9.39.
4. Sketch Map 2: Advance of XXI Army Corps to Brest-Litovsk. Situation 8.9-17.9.39
5. Sketch Map 3a: Advance of XIX Army Corps through the Ardennes.
6. Sketch Map 3b: Advance of XIX Army Corps to the Channel Coast
7. Sketch Map 4: Battle for the Meuse Crossings. Situation 13.5-15.5.40.
8. Sketch Map 5: Battle for the Channel Ports. Situation 24.5-28/29.5.40
9. Sketch Map 6: Break through the Weygand Line to the Plateau de Langres. Situation 11.6-15.6.40.
10. Sketch Map 7: Break through to the Swiss Border and into Upper Alsace. Situation 16.6-20.6.40
11. Sketch Map 8: Advance eastwards of Panzer Group Guderian. Situation 22.6-28.6.41
12. Sketch Map 9: Developments 28.6-2.7.41
13. Sketch Map 10: Developments 3.7-10.7.41
14. Sketch Map 11: Crossing the Dnieper and Smolensk. Situation 11.7-16.7.41
15. Sketch Map 12: Elnya. Situation 17.7-20.7.41
16. Sketch Map 13: Roslavl. Situation 30.7-3.8.41
17. Sketch Map 14: Krichev—Miloslavitchi. Situation 9.8.41
18. Sketch Map 15: Situation on 17.8.41
19. Sketch Map 16: Situation on 24.8.41 (Conference with Hitler)
20. Sketch Map 17: Situation 26.8.41. Developments to 31.8.41
21. Sketch Map 18: The Battle of Kiev. Situation 4.9-14.9.41
22. Sketch Map 19: Crisis at Romny—Putivl. Situation 18.9.41
23. Sketch Map 20: Developments 19.9-22.9.41
24. Sketch Map 21: Situation on 23.9.41
25. Sketch Map 22: Situation on 30.9.41.
26. Sketch Map 23: Orel. Situation on 5.10.41
27. Sketch Map 24: Situation on 14.10.41
28. Sketch Map 25: Advance to Tula. Situation 27.10-14.11.41
29. Sketch Map 26: The Battle for Moscow. Situation 1.12–5.12.41
30. Sketch Map 27: Developments in the East, 22.2.43-4.3.44
31. Sketch Map 27a: Operations by 25 Panzer Division, November 1943
32. Sketch Map 28: The Destruction of Army Group Centre. Situation 22.6-1.8.44
33. Sketch Map 29: Developments in the Baltic States. Situation 23.7-4.10.44
34. Sketch Map 30: The Cutting-off of Army Group North. Situation 5.10-25.10.44
35. Sketch Map 31: The Loss of Rumania. Situation 16.3-4.10.44
36. Sketch Map 32: The Battles in Hungary. Situation 5.10-21.12.44
37. Sketch Map 33: The Catastrophe in January 1945. Situation 12.1-25.1.45
INTRODUCTION
In the fantasy world of Adolf Hitler’s Germany very few General Staff Corps generals received a hero’s treatment from Josef Goebbels’s propagandists. Fewer still were also sacked by the Führer, only to be reinstated later. One such—and, indeed, the first to receive major public acclaim—was Heinz Guderian. He began to attract public notice in 1937 when his best-selling book about tanks, Achtung! Panzer!, was published. It not only established him as a forceful writer and personality, but also made clear that, as the brains behind the newly created Panzertruppe, he was a soldier to be reckoned with in any future war. Between September 1939 and November 1941 Guderian’s reputation grew further as he displayed colossal verve and brilliant fighting in the campaigns against Poland, France, and Soviet Russia. The striking successes of his blitzkrieg technique not only enhanced his professional standing as a soldier, but also vindicated the revolutionary principles underlying this new type of “lightning” warfare that Guderian had developed and would reaffirm in 1942 with his little-known book, Mit den Panzern in Ost und West.
After the war he indelibly recorded for history his role in the Third Reich’s rise and fall in Erinnerungen eines Soldaten (Memoirs of a Soldier), of which Panzer Leader is a translation. When first published in Germany, Erinnerungen received muted, though fair, notices from the critics, but was read with intense interest by the public. For this was the first book by a general to give authentic insight into the German war effort and campaigns, and into the author’s own relations with the High Command and with Hitler. By 1953 it was a bestseller. This edition is but the latest of the many in different languages which have since been published—a clear indication of its enduring value as a standard work of reference.
Panzer Leader is about one man’s endeavor, at a moment of institutional change, to defend his country by the modernization of its army. It has no pretensions to being an autobiography, although there are numerous passages which reveal the innermost thoughts and workings of an honest, outspoken patriot of passionate beliefs. Only two pages are allocated to an outline of his life prior to 1922, when he was pitched into a General Staff post with the Inspectorate of Transport Troops. It was an appointment that ideally suited his dynamic, innovative temperament, and one that led him to understand the vital importance of mechanization and the tank in restoring armored mobility for combat troops engaged in maneuver warfare.
Guderian was a modest person who, as I discovered while writing his biography, Guderian: Panzer General, was uncomfortable in the glare of publicity. In letters to his wife, this outstanding modern leader (as Field Marshal Kesselring rated him) deprecated the adulation of General Erwin Rommel generated by Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry. As a fervent believer in the rules of the old great General Staff, he adhered to the tradition of “Achieve much, appear little” by maintaining a low profile while a staff officer. Yet, once given command, he was quite unable to suppress his natural charisma and strong opinions when thrusting ahead with revolutionary matters, regardless of controversy and, sometimes, obedience.
Nevertheless, it was the ingrained low profile of the General Staff officer that probably led Guderian in Panzer Leader to play down certain fundamental reasons why he was so effective and intuitive an innovator. For unlike many ex-infantry General Staff officers, he was by the end of the First World War (as a result of his training and experience) a technologist. He had trained as a signals specialist; had come to understand air power by flying on reconnaissa
nce missions as an observer; had gained practical experience as a logistician when serving as a supply staff officer; and, as a light infantryman (and the son of one), was ever imbued with the need for quick thinking, speed, and mobility in combat. More than that, as a rapid learner trained to draw conclusions from every fact and opinion, he was impatient with intellects slower than his own. Guderian did not always suffer fools gladly. For example, after the Battle of the Marne in 1914, as a mere 2nd Lieutenant in command of the 5th Cavalry Division’s wireless station, he took the divisional commander to task for misemploying his detachment and nearly, incidentally, landing him in a French prisoner-of-war camp!
Guderian was a Prussian who sometimes seemed more Prussian than the Prussians. He was proud, dignified, honorable, kind, and courtly, with a twinkling sense of humor. Major Kenneth Hechler, an American interrogating officer, wrote after the war: “I did not have the feeling that he twisted any of his real opinions in order to say what he felt an American would like to hear. He responded quickly to all the questions and I do not believe that he was trying to make any particular impression or grind an axe.”
Hechler’s high opinion laid the foundations for Panzer Leader. It was he who recommended that, while in captivity between May 1945 and June 1948, Guderian should be an important contributor among the 2,000 or more German officers selected to record their experiences and opinions of Germany’s conduct of World War Two. A previous Chief of the General Staff, General Franz Halder, designed this stupendous project as a trilogy dealing with OKH (the Army High Command) as it was; OKH as it should have been; and OKH as it should be. Guderian, the last Chief of the General Staff, and at loggerheads with Halder, was given the task of commenting on the first two parts and running the third. This was an indication of the special regard in which the Americans held him, particularly for his prejudices and pride intermingled with caustic shafts aimed at adversaries. Hundreds of documents, some of considerable length, were compiled to create a remarkable, comprehensive archive. Among the contributors were several who, like Guderian, seized on the opportunity, as a sideline, to assemble material for their own memoirs.
Panzer Leader concentrates on four main themes:
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