Light tank chassis were nevertheless good for something. The towed antitank gun was still considered satisfactory as the backbone of antitank defense. The army’s offensive mind-set, however, encouraged active defense to the point where the initial title of Panzer Abwehr (tank defense) was changed prewar to Panzerjäger (tank hunter). The 37mm gun was easily handled, but against the up-armored tanks coming into service, its days were numbered. The more powerful designs on the drawing boards were also significantly heavier. But the Czech army had possessed a very effective 47mm antitank gun and the armored force had an increasing number of Panzer Is becoming surplus to requirements. Remove the German turret, mount the Czech gun behind a three-sided shield, and the result was the first tracked, armored antitank gun to enter service. The design was patchwork and its numbers were small, but as with the assault gun, its relative success in 1940 made the 47mm Panzer I combination the first in a long line of similar improvisations in all armies.
In the interim between the fall of Poland and the attack on France, the armored force confronted another kind of technological problem. How best could the commander of a mobile formation built around the internal- combustion engine be at the critical point of a battle while at the same time continuing to command his whole force effectively? The panzer division included an “armored radio company,” but its vehicles were as a rule attached to division and brigade headquarters. Events in Poland had demonstrated the practical limits of radio communication under field conditions. “Leading from the front” invited the dispersion of effort as commanders seeking to exploit presumed opportunities wound up directing isolated actions that eventually devolved to skirmishes with limited tactical results. Guderian’s familiar mantra “klotzen, nicht kleckern” (“slug, don’t fumble; keep focused on an objective”) was sound enough. The problem was implementation.
Erwin Rommel, newly appointed commander of the freshly minted 7th Panzer Division, addressed the problem by developing a mobile headquarters based on an electronic command system mounted in a cross-country vehicle: a network of radios allowing him to contact both subordinate formations and his own main headquarters. He sought as well to develop a common way of doing things—not as a straitjacket, but rather as a framework for structuring the behavior of subordinates in the constant emergency that was the modern mobile battlefield. Commanders at all levels were to exercise independent judgment, with the division commander using his sense of the battle and the information provided by his headquarters to select points of intervention, ideally to refine and complete the efforts of the men on the spot.
Rommel made clear to his senior staff officers that he depended essentially on them to process and evaluate information in his absence, and to act on it, should that seem necessary. By later American standards, German divisions had small headquarters whose officers were relatively low ranking. That reflected exigency more than principle; the army after 1933 was never able to keep pace with its own expanding need for troop staff officers. The often-praised “lean and mean” German structure meant everyone worked constantly. Vital information could be overlooked by busy men. Fatigue and stress led to errors in judgment and to problems of communication as tired, frustrated alpha-male subordinates snapped pointlessly at each other. Especially in a mobile division, success depended heavily on a commanding general willing to support the decisions of even junior staff officers in whose ability, toughness, and loyalty he had confidence.
There was only one Rommel, who in the 1940 campaign would deliver arguably the most outstanding division-level command performance in modern military history. But in every panzer and motorized division, men with similar perspectives were assuming senior posts. Friedrich Kirchner of 1st Panzer Division, the 6th’s Franz Kempf, the 10th’s Friedrich Schaal, and their counterparts were not water-walkers. But they were solid professionals, able to get the best out of subordinates. Some began as gunners, some as infantrymen, and some wearing cavalry yellow. What they had in common were high learning curves, fingertip situational awareness, and emotional hardness unmatched even in the Red Army. The combination would prove consistently formidable, no matter the operational considerations.
The greater question in these interim months was how the mobile formations could best be used. At division levels the accepted pattern for an initial deployment was a wave formation with tanks leading. The rifle brigade and usually the pioneers formed the next echelon, then the artillery. The reconnaissance battalion scouted ahead, looking for enemy forces and alternate routes of advance. The attack itself went on in a relatively narrow front, no longer than a thousand yards. As a rule, the tanks led, regiments abreast or one following the other, each responsible for overwhelming a particular element of the defense. Their moral effect was considered on a par with their physical impact, both combining to carry the division through enemy defense by mass, shock, and speed. The motorized battalions, supported by the antitank battalion and the pioneers, would clear pockets of resistance along the line of advance, consolidate captured ground, and prepare to hold it against counterattacks until summoned to catch up with the tanks and repeat the process. The reconnaissance battalion would move into the lead, three or four miles ahead of the tanks, supported when necessary by the motorcyclists. The artillery supported the whole operation with direct or indirect fire as necessary—or as possible. The guns were expected to keep pace with the tanks, which waited for no one.
The major development after the Polish campaign involved using armored forces to conduct the initial breakthrough even against prepared defenses. On February 7, at a war game held in Koblenz, Guderian proposed concentrating the armored forces for a drive across the Meuse River around Sedan, then expanding the bridgehead northwest toward Amiens. The Chief of Staff insisted on a measured buildup, waiting for the infantry before seeking to exploit the initial success. A month later, a second war game evaluated the same issue. This time the pressure from on high for using infantry to force the crossing was even stronger. Guderian and XIV Panzer Corps commander Gustav von Wietersheim responded that the proposed conservative employment of the armor was so likely to produce a crisis that they could have no confidence in a high command that ordered it.
These kinds of war games were intended to generate spirited debate with no hard feelings. But when two experienced senior generals flatly declared “no confidence” in a plan, it was the closest thing possible to saying “get yourself another boy.” This partly manifested the panzer troops’ new confidence. Arguably it also reflected a persisting sense at senior command levels that, for all their retraining, the foot-powered infantry of 1940 might not be the soldiers their fathers were in 1914. This was the time of the new men of the German army: the panzer troops.
The army faced a related problem: growing shortage of motor vehicles. As early as 1938, maintenance personnel had to cope with a hundred different models of trucks. That number had been reduced, but on the outbreak of war, confusion was restored by the commandeering of thousands of trucks directly from the civilian economy. Polish roads—or the absence of them—had been hard enough on the panzers. Supply columns had suffered losses in some cases more than 50 percent, many of them permanent. By 1940, write-offs had reached a point where the General Staff was considering replacing some trucks in infantry divisions with horse-drawn vehicles. Small wonder in such contexts that the concept of putting the mobile forces up front increasingly permeated thoughts about the coming campaign.
