INTRODUCTION

A NEW THREAT

In April 1938, to mark the Führer’s birthday, Hitler’s magnificent new army marched before him. At the centre of the great parade were the tanks of the new German Panzer Divisions. The event was staged to intimidate the world. True, most of the tanks were small and lightly armed and, unbeknownst to the foreign dignitaries, some were allegedly driven past twice, but they served Hitler’s grand design. Hitler was a gambler and he gambled upon bluffing his enemies into believing his tank forces were far stronger than they actually were. By a combination of deceit and brinkmanship. Hitler had made a chilling and spectacular assertion of Germany’s re-born military might.

Adolf Hitler was the man who provided the impetus to develop the Panzer Divisions of Germany’s Wehrmacht, and in the campaigns of the early war years these new tank armies would strike down all before them. The German soldier would become accustomed to fighting against numerical odds but he would also become accustomed to victory. The comparatively few mechanised and armoured units were the only truly modem component of the German Army and they were the key to much of its extraordinary success. The military of many countries were familiar with wireless, with tanks and with war planes, but only in Germany were these elements so effectively combined to form fully integrated fighting units with exceptional striking power. Hitler’s Generals had rewritten the rule book of battle. In Poland it took less than a month to dispose of a large but poorly equipped Polish army which had fought along rigidly traditional lines. In France, the German army successfully challenged the largest and most modern army in Europe. In the ensuing ‘Blitzkrieg’ or ‘lightning war’ the British forces were completely routed. Only a year later even this achievement was to be eclipsed by Germany’s astonishing victories in the war against Stalin’s Soviet Union. In June 1941, spearheaded by tank formations, German Armies swept eastward. In a series of huge encirclements, thousands of Soviet tanks were destroyed and millions of Soviet troops killed or captured. For a while it seemed that Hitler would succeed where Napoleon had failed, by conquering the vast eastern power. On the world stage the tank had become established as a symbol of German invincibility.

tanks-vi.tif

Panzer III chassis in the Alkett works during 1941.

It is difficult now to imagine that such small and lightly armoured tanks could spearhead the devastating operation of Blitzkrieg. The secret of their success was speed and co-ordination of effort. In reality, the remarkable string of German successes was due less to superiority of military technology than to the excellence of German methods and training. Many of the German Panzer Division were equipped only with Panzer 1 and II light tanks. It was the new way of waging war which came as a hammer blow to Germany’s opponents, forcing them to radically rethink their own military tactics. Slowly the lessons would be learned and eventually the answer to Blitzkrieg would be found.

Tanks came of age in the Second World War. They also developed quicker and changed more in a six-year period than at any time before or since. The catalyst was the demands of a technological war. Like a crazed version of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, the Second World War accelerated the pace of design. Fast responses to a constantly changing situation were urgently needed and new designs had to be engineered, tested and built in an incredibly short timescale. In the space of three short years, German tank technology progressed from the lightweight and inefficient Panzer I to the mighty Panzer VI - the Tiger, the most complete fighting vehicle of the war. As an example of evolution, the transformation of the Panzer 1 to the Tiger was an almost unbelievable leap in design terms.

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