The German Army was not totally prepared for high-speed warfare. As noted, the bulk of its divisions were based on the World War I pattern and were horse-drawn. In 1939 a single German infantry division required 4,077-6,033 horses for movement; even the vaunted panzer divisions utilized them. This reliance on horses continued throughout the war; indeed, as late as 1944 85 percent of German Army divisions were horse-drawn, with few vehicles. Nonetheless, the Germans were a few vital degrees better than their opponents, and as it turned out, that made all the difference.
Germany did enjoy the considerable advantage of having already established tank and motorized/light divisions along with a doctrine governing their use. These new-style divisions were, however, only a small minority of the total. Of Germany’s 98 divisions (40 of which were still forming) in September 1939, 14 were new-style: six panzer divisions (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 10th) and eight motorized/ light divisions (two of the latter being SS). The original plan was to equip the panzer divisions with 570 tanks apiece, but production failed to keep up with the expansion of the German armored force, so tanks were in short supply at the beginning of the war.
This shortage of tanks forced a reorganization of the panzer divisions, the nucleus of which was a panzer brigade of two regiments. Each regiment had two battalions (Abteilungen) and each of these usually had two light companies of the PzKpfw I and II and one medium company with the PzKpfw III and IV. In addition, each panzer division had a reconnaissance battalion, a motorized infantry regiment, an engineer battalion, and a signals squadron. Each battalion had 71-74 tanks, of which five were command tanks, and this meant that a regiment would have 150-156 tanks, 12 of them command tanks. Thus during the Polish campaign the panzer divisions had only about 300 tanks each.
The number of tanks per division continued to decline during the war. In 1940 few panzer divisions had as many as 150 tanks, and in 1944 panzer divisions were down to only slightly more than 100 tanks apiece. Each panzer division was also to have its own reconnaissance, infantry, artillery, transport, communications, medical, and service components, but the composition varied sharply depending on the division. The motorized/light divisions of 1939 became the mechanized Panzergrenadier divisions, which by 1940 each were to have 28 tanks. In 1944 these divisions had 48 tanks each.
By way of contrast, at the beginning of the war the French Army had no tank divisions whatsoever and the British only one. As has been stressed here, German tanks were not always superior to those they faced and were often markedly inferior. The key to German success on the battlefield was in the tactical doctrine governing their use, as well as in training and leadership.
The Germans were successful in their initial campaigns because they worked out a flexible system that combined infantry, artillery, tanks, and supporting aviation in one integrated military effort. Unit commanders had great flexibility, and they could concentrate forces quickly to exploit any situation that might develop. Command and control between units and even individual tanks was facilitated by the efficient use of radio.
The French, regarded by many observers as having the most powerful army in Europe, in fact lacked the ability to employ their military strength promptly and to good advantage. It was primarily a failure of doctrine rather than any equipment shortcomings that did in the French. The French Army divided control of its tanks between the infantry and cavalry. Infantry commanders saw the tanks solely as a means of infantry support; the cavalry regarded them chiefly in a reconnaissance role. Another consequence of this division was a multiplicity of designs.
Following the declaration of war, the French were slow to mobilize, and in the two weeks it required them to call up reservists and bring artillery from storage, it became clear that Poland was already collapsing. Even so, a vigorous French thrust would have carried to the Rhine with tremendous consequences for the course of the war, as the German strategic plan committed the vast bulk of German strength, some 60 divisions, to Poland and left only a weak force to hold the Rhineland. The latter numbered only 40 divisions (36 of which were untrained), with no tanks, little artillery, and few aircraft. The French moved belatedly and timidly and, after securing a few villages, withdrew the few divisions committed to the effort. Senior French and British commanders had rejected the new theories of high-speed armor warfare. They persisted in viewing tanks as operating in support of infantry, to be spread over the front in small packets rather than being massed in entire divisions.
The Polish campaign of September 1939 revealed the errors in Allied thought concerning armor. In their invasion the Germans pressed into service all available tanks, hoping that sheer numbers and their employment en masse would make up for any equipment and armament shortcomings. As noted earlier, in all they had some 2,900 tanks, most of them PzKpfw Is and IIs. The success of the German blitzkrieg lay not in numbers of tanks but in the formation of combined arms teams. The problem in World War I had been the inability of an attacker’s reserve formations to close quickly once a breech had been created in an enemy’s lines; the attacker’s artillery would also have to be repositioned to support a further advance. The new German theory of high-speed warfare called on mechanized reserves and artillery to move at the speed of the tanks, all supported by aircraft, greatly compressing the time line in favor of the attackers.
General Heinz Guderian, who developed the blitzkrieg, saw the need to use the tanks en masse in divisions for breakthrough shock power rather than dispersing them. German forces were to locate weak points in the enemy battle line, then build up strength at these points, holding them with infantry and antitank guns, hoping to lure enemy tanks into attacking and running into the more powerful antitank guns. Such tactics would save the German tanks for the exploitation role.
These reinforced points would serve as pivots, from which the tanks would achieve fast, sudden breakthroughs without warning or the benefit of preliminary bombardment. Infantry would move with the tanks in a column of tracked vehicles and trucks. The whole idea was to keep moving and to stage deep penetrations and encirclements of enemy forces. The attacking forces would be largely self-contained for a matter of three to four days. Vital to German success was control of the air, ensured by having the world’s most powerful air force. The Luftwaffe was basically a tactical air force, developed for close ground support, and the key to this was the “flying artillery” provided by the Ju 87 Stuka dive-bomber. Although it later proved vulnerable to antiaircraft guns and high-performance fighters, the Stuka’s early opponents had few of those types of equipment, and it proved to be a highly mobile and accurate artillery platform that greatly aided the advance of the tanks below.
During the Polish campaign, enemy dispositions played into the Germans’ hands. Polish forces were still in the process of mobilization, thanks to the British insistence that the Poles provide no excuse for the Germans to invade. Also, Polish Army leaders placed the bulk of their forces far forward. They were unwilling to yield territory to the Germans (indeed, they expected to carry the war into Germany themselves), but in such forward positions they were more easily cut off, surrounded, and destroyed. Poland was also at sharp geographical disadvantage. Attacked by German forces on three sides, it in fact had little chance. With France slow to move, and then only with a small force, and with the Soviet Union invading Poland from the east two weeks after the initial German invasion (in accordance with a secret arrangement with Germany), Poland succumbed after one month.
Airpower played such an important role in the German success in Poland that the German Army then assigned each panzer division its own air force element. The Germans also learned from the Polish campaign that it was difficult for truck-mounted infantry to keep up with the tanks and that it was impossible for them to move across open country. Trucks were vulnerable even to enemy rifles and machine guns. Accompanying infantry required cross-country mobility and some armor protection, and this meant increasing reliance on armored personnel carriers and other tracked vehicles.
One often overlooked factor in the German success in Poland, as well as in the May-June 1940 campaign against the Low Countries and France, was the short distances involved and thus the assurance of adequate resupply of fuel and ammunition. The blitzkrieg functioned well in the dry, flat terrain and the relatively short distances of Poland and the well-developed road network of France in 1940. It broke down completely in the vast distances and poor transportation system of the Soviet Union in 1941.
When the German Army invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 it found itself heavily outnumbered in terms of numbers of men and equipment of all kinds. Eventually superior Soviet numbers, the distances involved, the poor transportation network, difficult weather conditions, and improving Soviet armor doctrine all took a toll on the attacking Germans.
