Panzer Leader

by Heinz Guderian

  Hitler then turned to the actual military situation. He was well aware of the grave deterioration to our position, both military, political and moral, that had resulted from Stalingrad and our consequent retreats on the Eastern front; and he expressed his determination—inevitable from his point of view—to hold fast and to put the war situation to rights. This first meeting with Hitler lasted some 45 minutes; the conversation was on a professional level throughout and ended at about 16.00 hrs.

  I next went to see the Chief of the Army General Staff, General Zeitzler, in order that I might study the military situation. I spent the evening in the company of Generals Köstring, formerly military attaché in Moscow, von Prien, field commandant of Vinnitsa, and Buschenhagen, the commander of the 15th Infantry Division. I knew all these officers well and much was explained to me concerning developments during my long absence on inactive service. What Prien told me about the German administration was highly distasteful. German methods, particularly those of the Reich Commissar Koch, had turned the Ukrainians from being friends of Germany into our enemies. Unfortunately our military authorities were powerless against this policy. It was carried out through Party and administrative channels, without the collaboration of the military and usually without the Army’s knowledge and against its will. Only rumours of the various clashes reached our ears.

  I spent February 21st discussing with Jodl, Zeitzler, Schmundt, and Colonel Engel, one of Hitler’s adjutants, the major features of the assignment of duties which I was drawing up.

  On February 22nd I flew to Rastenburg in order to prepare the draft of the assignment of duties with Field-Marshal Keitel, who was not located with the advanced echelon of Supreme Headquarters at Vinnitsa. The Commander of the Training Army, General Fromm, was also summoned here on February 23rd. The document was completed during the course of the next few days and approved and signed by Hitler on February 28th. Since it formed the basis for my activities during the coming years I shall quote it in full.

  ASSIGNMENT OF DUTIES TO THE INSPECTOR-GENERAL OF ARMOURED TROOPS

  1. The Inspector-General of Armoured Troops is responsible to me for the future development of armoured troops along lines that will make that arm of the Service into a decisive weapon for winning the war.

  The Inspector-General of Armoured Troops is directly subordinated to myself. He has the command powers of an army commander and is the senior officer of armoured troops.1

  2. The Inspector-General of Armoured Troops is responsible, in consultation with the Chief of the Army General Staff, for the organisation and training of armoured troops and of the large mobile formations of the Army.

  He is further entitled, by my orders, to direct the armoured troops of the Waffen-SS and the Luftwaffe in matters of organisation and training.

  I reserve to myself the right of making basic decisions.

  His requirements for the technical development of his weapons and for production plans are to be drawn up in conjunction with the Minister of Armaments and Munitions and submitted to me for approval.

  3. In his capacity as senior officer of his arm of the Service, he is also in command of the training troops of his arm. It is his responsibility to ensure that a constant stream of fully employable reserves both in men and in armoured vehicles be available to the field army; this includes equally individual vehicles, drafts of replacements and newly formed units.

  It is his responsibility to decide, under my direction, what proportion of tanks and of armoured vehicles is to be allotted to the army in the field and what to the training army.

  4. The Inspector-General of Armoured Troops will ensure that the new units of, and replacements for, armoured and mobile troops are made ready punctually as ordered and according to plan. In this connection he will decide, in conjunction with the Army General Staff, on the best employment for such tank crews of the field army as no longer have tanks.

  5. The Inspector-General of Armoured Troops will evaluate reports of combat experience in relationship to the command, armament, training and organisation of armoured troops.

  In this connection he is entitled to visit and inspect all armoured units of the armed forces and of the Waffen-SS.

  The Inspector-General of Armoured Troops is entitled to communicate directly with the armoured troops of the field army on all subjects.

  His opinions and conclusions are also to be brought to the attention of all interested branches of the Services, as well as of the Ministry of Armaments and Munitions.

  The Inspector-General of Armoured Troops will control the preparation of all documents, regulations, etc., intended for the armoured troops. Documents dealing with the command of units and of collaboration with other arms of the Service are to be published in conjunction with the Chief of the Army General Staff.

  6. The Inspector-General of Armoured Troops, as senior officer of his arm of the Service, is permanently in command of:

  (a) All reserve and training units of mobile troops (excepting reserve units of the cavalry and of motor-cyclists) which are grouped together in special commands.

  (b) All schools for mobile troops (excepting cavalry and motor-cyclist schools), both of the field and of the training army, together with all instructional troops attached to such schools.

  7. The Inspector-General of Armoured Troops is empowered to give instructions on matters with which he is concerned to all branches of the staffs of the Army. All branches are ordered to supply the Inspector-General of Armoured Troops with any assistance that he may require.

  Supreme Headquarters, 28th February, 1943.

  The Führer.

  Signed: ADOLF HITLER.

  This assignment of duties bestowed upon me a great deal of authority which was not granted to the senior officers of other arms of the Service attached to the OKH; these colleagues of mine were subordinated to the Chief of the Army General Staff, whose permission they had to obtain before being allowed to visit the troops, exercised no influence over the Training Army and the schools, and were not permitted to publish any written material. The results achieved by these unfortunate men were therefore, inevitably, very limited. This is the explanation of why previous senior officers of the armoured force had never succeeded in accomplishing any basic improvements. Experienced officers from the front had no desire to hold such a position and when they received a direct order to do so they attempted as best they could to be returned with all speed to duty with troops, where at least something could be achieved. For the panzer troops, at any rate, my appointment as Inspector-General changed all this. I was not surprised that the General Staff, particularly its Chief, and the OKH were so markedly unenthusiastic about this assignment of duties, which they regarded as an encroachment upon their own hallowed rights. One result of this was that I became involved in difficulties and held up by lack of co-operation from certain quarters over and over again; indeed, this attitude has persisted even after the war, and in some cases my opponents have not hesitated to misrepresent facts. Be that as it may, the new regulations did no damage to our cause as a whole and enabled the armoured force to remain, up to the bitter end, a strong weapon, equipped according to the needs of the time and of its task.

  Only one important mistake crept into this assignment of duties while the document was on its way from Rastenburg to Hitler’s desk in Vinnitsa: in the footnote to paragraph 1, defining the term ‘armoured troops,’ I had included the assault gun units though these had previously been regarded as forming part of the artillery. I had good reasons for this, since the production of assault guns was absorbing a high proportion of our tank production, while the performance of assault guns in an anti-tank role was limited by the fact that they were equipped with insufficiently powerful pieces. Even less effective were the old anti-tank battalions. These latter were still using guns towed by half-tracked vehicles with insufficient penetrative force to pierce the armour of the enemy’s tanks, so that they were for all intents and purposes useless. It was my intention to change all th
is. But somebody smuggled in the word ‘heavy’ while I was not looking, so that the Inspector-General’s control was limited to the heavy assault guns only, which latter were just coming into existence and were to be equipped as tank destroyers on a Tiger or Panther basis. At my very first interview I therefore had to complain about this trick that had been played on me, or rather not on me personally but on the anti-tank defences of the Army and therefore on the Army as a whole.

  While the assignment of duties was circulating through normal bureaucratic channels, I set off for Berlin in order to collect my staff and to prepare for the work ahead. I secured my old office building in the Bendlerstrasse, where I had been housed in pre-war days when I was Chief of Mobile Troops. As chief of staff I chose an officer with great experience at the front, an ardent tank man, Colonel Thomale; he set to his new task with the same energy and devotion to duty which he was to show right up to the final collapse. I was pleased for personal as well as for professional reasons to have him occupying this most important position on my staff. I also had two General Staff Corps officers working with me, one handling organisation and the other employment: these were Lieutenant-Colonel Freyer who, as a result of severe wounds, was no longer fit for service at the front: the other was the fresh and youthful Major Kauffmann. The latter was subsequently replaced by Major Freiherr von Wöllwarth. My adjutant was Lieutenant-Colonel Prince Max zu Waldeck, who had also been severely wounded. I was given an assistant for each branch of the armoured force: these were all officers with experience of their particular branch at the front and were generally older men who had been badly wounded and were in need of a period of less active service. They were changed from time to time when they had regained their health and could exchange the dusty atmosphere of an office for the fresh air at the front. By means of this system of replacements, the Inspectorate-General remained in close and living contact with the troops in action. For the training units an Inspector of Armoured Troops in the Home Territories was appointed, with office in Berlin: General Eberbach held this position for a time. His chief of staff, Colonel Bolbrinker, was simultaneously head of In 6, the department dealing with armoured troops in the General Army Office that was controlled by the Commander of the Training Army. This was done by arrangement between Fromm and myself, with the intention of ensuring the closest possible co-ordination between my actions and those of the Training Army in this sphere; the system proved satisfactory up to the very end of the war. The armoured troops’ schools were placed under a Commander of Schools, and for a long time this was General von Hauenschild, an officer who had been severely wounded. Finally, I arranged for a limited number of officers to be attached to my staff to act as a sort of liaison officers between my staff and the fighting troops; these were in general convalescent officers not yet fit enough to rejoin their units, but capable of service at home. These I used principally for studying and evaluating events at the front and for investigating any unusual occurrences in the battles that were being fought.

  Service manuals were the responsibility of Colonel Theiss, whom I had first met in 1938 when he was commanding the Tank Battalion of the old Austrian Army. He held the post until the collapse and also was of great service in collecting material for a history of the war.

  In Berlin I visited the various Service organisations with which I would have to collaborate in future. Among others I went to see Field-Marshal Milch at the Air Ministry, an old and valued friend from prewar days. Milch gave me detailed and enlightening character studies of the influential personalities of the time. Of the great number of National-Socialist dignitaries he regarded only a very few as having any true importance and any real influence on Hitler, and these he suggested that I visit. They were Goebbels, Himmler, and Speer; the latter I would in any case have to see, as he was Munitions Minister.

  Acting on Milch’s suggestion, I called on Dr. Goebbels on March 3rd, announcing myself to him in my new capacity as Inspector-General of Armoured Troops. He received me in a most friendly fashion and immediately engaged me in a lengthy conversation about the political and military situation. Dr. Goebbels was undoubtedly one of the cleverest members of Hitler’s intimate circle. It was, perhaps, to be hoped that he might be willing to help improve our position. It therefore seemed to me important to make him understand the needs of the troops and of the higher command. Since in this, our first, conversation together he showed himself open to reason, I pointed out to him the bad organisation and even worse clash of personalities that existed within our Supreme Command. I explained to him how the multiplication of overlapping staffs—OKW, Armed Forces Command Staff, OKH, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Armaments Ministry—had produced a confusion of leadership; that the Führer, who was becoming increasingly prone to intervene in matters of subordinate importance, was bound eventually to be overwhelmed by the chaotic situation; that Hitler was not trained as a General Staff Corps officer and would be well advised to appoint some Chief of the Armed Forces General Staff as his assistant; and that the man chosen should be one who understood how to function as an operational commander and who was more qualified to fill this difficult office than was Field-Marshal Keitel. I requested Dr. Goebbels that he undertake to lay all this before Hitler in some suitable form, since I thought it would have more effect coming from a civilian of Hitler’s most intimate and trusted circle than it would from a general in whom, as I knew from previous experience, the Führer did not feel unlimited confidence. It was Dr. Goebbels’ opinion that this was a very thorny problem, but he promised to do his best when a suitable occasion arose to lead the conversation along the lines I had suggested and to urge Hitler that he reorganise the supreme command in a more practical form.

  During this period I also went to see Speer, who greeted me in his friendly, open fashion. In the months to come I always found working with this sensible, natural man both easy and pleasant. Speer’s ideas and decisions were the product of a healthy intellect and were not influenced by sickly, personal ambition or by pride of office. It is true that at that time he was still a most enthusiastic follower of Hitler’s; but he possessed, nonetheless, so independent a brain that he could see the mistakes and weaknesses of the system and therefore did his best to rectify them.

  In order to form an idea of the state of the tank industry I immediately visited the Alkett Company at Spandau and the Daimler-Benz Company at Berlin-Marienfelde.

  Finally I drew up new war establishment tables for Panzer and Panzergrenadier1 Divisions for the year 1943 and—so far as it was possible to anticipate—for 1944 as well. I intended to economise on men and equipment while increasing the combat strength of the divisions by the introduction of new weapons and fresh tactics. This undertaking led to my first conference with Hitler, which I requested for March 9th. I flew to Vinnitsa, accompanied by Colonel Thomale, where, at 16.00 hrs., I found a large gathering collected together all anxious to observe my début. I was very annoyed to see this crowd of people walk in since I had hoped to be able to state my case to the smallest possible audience. But I had made the mistake of previously sending a résumé of what I intended to say to Hitler’s adjutants’ office. Now all those officers who were at all interested in my plans appeared one by one: the whole OKW, the Chief of the Army General Staff together with a number of his departmental heads, my two opposite numbers, the senior officers of Infantry and Artillery, and finally Schmundt, the chief adjutant. All these gentlemen had some criticism to make of my plans, in particular of my expressed wish that the assault guns be placed under my General-Inspectorate and that the anti-tank battalions of the infantry divisions be re-equipped with assault guns in place of their present ineffective weapons drawn by half-tracks. As a result of the lively opposition that these gentlemen put up, and which I had certainly not anticipated, the conference lasted for some four hours. I was so exhausted by the time it was over that when I left the conference room I fell to the ground in a faint. Luckily I was only unconscious for a moment and nobody was aware of what had happene
d.

  The notes for this conference, which I had previously prepared as an aide-mémoire for myself and which I took to Vinnitsa with me, have, owing to a lucky accident, been preserved. I include them here since they are an indication of what the many conferences which I was to hold with Hitler, and of which this was the first, were like:

  Conference Notes

  1. The task for1943 is to provide a certain number of panzer divisions with complete combat efficiency capable of making limited objective attacks.

  For1944 we must prepare to launch large-scale attacks. A panzer division only possesses complete combat efficiency when the number of its tanks is in correct proportion to its other weapons and vehicles. German panzer divisions were designed to contain 4 tank battalions, with a total strength of roughly 400 tanks per division. If the number of tanks falls appreciably below the 400 mark, then the whole organisation (its manpower and vehicle strength) is no longer in true proportion to its offensive power. At the moment we unfortunately have no panzer division which, in this sense, can be said to possess complete combat efficiency.

  Our success in battle this year, and even more so next year, depends on the re-creation of that efficiency. If this can be achieved, then, together with the U-boats and the air force, we shall win this war. If we fail to achieve this, then the land battles will be long drawn out and will cause us heavy casualties. (Read out article by Liddell Hart—on the organisation of armoured forces, past and future.)

  So the problem is this: without delay, and regardless of all special interests, to re-create panzer divisions with complete combat efficiency. In this connection it is better to have a few strong divisions than many partially equipped ones. The latter type need a large quantity of wheeled vehicles, fuel, and personnel, which is quite disproportionate to their effectiveness; they are a burden, both to command and to supply; and they block the roads.