German general (1888?1956)
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian
(
German:
[ha?nts
?v?lh?lm
?u?deː?i.an]
; 17 June 1888 ? 14 May 1954) was a German general during
World War II
who, after the war, became a successful memoirist. An early pioneer and advocate of the "
blitzkrieg
" approach, he played a central role in the development of the
panzer division
concept. In 1936, he became the Inspector of Motorized Troops.
At the beginning of the Second World War, Guderian led an
armoured corps
in the
Invasion of Poland
. During the
Invasion of France
, he commanded the armoured units that attacked through the
Ardennes
forest and overwhelmed the Allied defenses at the
Battle of Sedan
. He led the
2nd Panzer Army
during
Operation Barbarossa
, the invasion of the
Soviet Union
. The campaign ended in failure after the German offensive
Operation Typhoon
failed to capture
Moscow
, after which Guderian was dismissed.
In early 1943, Adolf Hitler appointed Guderian to the newly created position of Inspector General of Armoured Troops. In this role, he had broad responsibility to rebuild and train new
panzer forces
but saw limited success due to Germany's worsening war economy. Guderian was appointed Acting Chief of the General Staff of the
Army High Command
, immediately following the
20 July Plot
to assassinate Hitler.
Guderian was placed in charge of the "Court of Honour" by Hitler, which in the aftermath of the plot was used to dismiss people from the military so they could be tried in the "
People's Court
" and executed. He was Hitler's personal advisor on the
Eastern Front
and became closely associated with the Nazis. Guderian's troops carried out the criminal
Commissar Order
during Barbarossa, and he was implicated in the commission of reprisals after the
Warsaw Uprising
of 1944.
Guderian surrendered to the United States forces on 10 May 1945 and was interned until 1948. He was released without charge and retired to write his memoirs. Entitled
Panzer Leader
, the autobiography became a bestseller, widely read to this day. Guderian's writings promoted several post-war myths, including that of the "
clean Wehrmacht
". In his autobiography, Guderian portrayed himself as the sole originator of the German panzer force; he omitted any mentions of crimes that he authorised or condoned. Guderian died in 1954 and was buried in
Goslar
.
Early life and World War I
[
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]
Guderian was born in
Kulm
,
West Prussia
(since 1920 Poland), on 17 June 1888, the son of Friedrich and Clara (
nee
Kirchhoff).
His father and grandfathers were Prussian officers and he grew up in garrison towns surrounded by the military.
In 1903, he left home and enrolled at a military cadet school. He was a capable student, although he performed poorly in his final exam.
He entered the army as an
officer cadet
on 28 February 1907 with the 10th Hanoverian Light Infantry Battalion (
Hannoversche
Jager
-Bataillon Nr. 10
) , under his father's command. He became a
second lieutenant
on 27 January 1908,
receiving his patent backdated to 22 June 1906. On 1 October 1913 he married Margarete Goerne, with whom he had two sons:
Heinz Gunther
(1914?2004) and Kurt (1918?1984).
At the outbreak of World War I, Guderian served as a communications officer and the commander of a radio station. In November, 1914 he was promoted to
first lieutenant
.
Between May, 1915 and January, 1916 Guderian was in charge of signals intelligence for the
4th Army
. He fought at the
Battle of Verdun
during this period and was promoted to
captain
on 15 November 1915. He was then sent to the 4th Infantry Division before becoming commander of the Second
Battalion
of Infantry
Regiment
14.
On 28 February 1918, Guderian was appointed to the
General Staff
Corps.
Guderian finished the war as an operations officer in occupied Italy.
He disagreed with Germany signing the armistice in 1918, believing that the
German Empire
should have continued the fight.
Interwar period
[
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]
Early in 1919, Guderian was selected as one of the four thousand officers allowed by the
Versailles Treaty
in the reduced-size German army, the
Reichswehr
. He was assigned to serve on the staff of the central command of the Eastern Frontier Guard Service which was intended to control and coordinate the independent
freikorps
units in the defense of Germany's eastern frontiers against Polish (who were not attacking Germany) and Soviet forces engaged in the
Russian Civil War
in conjunction with the
Estonian War of Independence
. In June, 1919 Guderian joined the Iron Brigade (later known as the
Iron Division
) as its second General Staff officer.
In the 1920s, Guderian was introduced to armored warfare tactics by
Ernst Volckheim
, a World War I tank commander and a prolific writer on the subject.
He studied the leading European literature on armored warfare and, between 1922 and 1928, wrote five papers for
Military Weekly
, an armed forces journal.
While the topics covered were mundane, Guderian related them to why Germany had lost World War I, a controversial subject at the time, and thus raised his profile in the military.
There were some trial maneuvers conducted in the
Soviet Union
and Guderian academically evaluated the results. Britain was experimenting with armoured units under General
Percy Hobart
, and Guderian kept abreast of Hobart's writings.
In 1924, he was appointed as an instructor and military historian at
Stettin
. As a lecturer he was polarizing; some of his pupils enjoyed his wit, but he alienated others with his biting sarcasm.
In 1927, Guderian was promoted to major and in October he was posted to the transport section of the
Truppenamt
, a clandestine form of the army's General Staff, which had been forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles.
By the autumn of 1928, he was a leading speaker on tanks; however, he did not set foot in one until the summer of 1929, when he briefly drove a Swedish
Stridsvagn m/21-29
.
In October, 1928 he was transferred to the Motor Transport Instruction Staff to teach.
In 1931, he was promoted to lieutenant-colonel and became chief of staff to the Inspectorate of Motorized Troops under
Oswald Lutz
.
This placed Guderian at the center of Germany's development of mobile warfare and armored forces.
Panzer Division and mobile warfare
[
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]
In the 1930s, Guderian played a significant role in the development of both the
panzer division
concept and a doctrine of mechanized offensive warfare that would later become known as
blitzkrieg
.
Guderian's 3rd Motor Transport Battalion became the blueprint for the future German armored force. However, his role was less central than he claimed in his memoirs and that historians repeated in the postwar era.
Guderian and his immediate superior Lutz had a symbiotic relationship.
Both men worked tirelessly with the shared aim of creating a panzer force. Guderian was the public face advocating mechanized warfare and Lutz worked behind the scenes.
Guderian reached into the Nazi regime to promote the panzer force concept, attract support and secure resources. This included a demonstration of the concept to Hitler himself.
Lutz persuaded, cajoled and compensated for Guderian's often arrogant and argumentative behavior towards his peers.
The modern historian Pier Battistelli writes that it is difficult to determine exactly who developed each of the ideas behind the panzer force. Many other officers, such as
Walther Nehring
and
Hermann Breith
, were also involved.
However, Guderian is widely accepted as having pioneered the communications system developed for the panzer units.
The central tenets of blitzkrieg – independence, mass and surprise – were first published in doctrinal statements of mechanized warfare by Lutz.
During the autumn of 1936, Lutz asked Guderian to write
Achtung ? Panzer!
He requested a polemical tone that promoted the Mobile Troops Command and strategic mechanized warfare.
In the resulting work, Guderian mixed academic lectures, a review of military history and armored warfare theory that partly relied on a 1934 book on the subject by
Ludwig von Eimannsberger
.
While limited, the book was in many respects a success.
It contained two important questions which would require answering if the army was to be mechanized: how will the army be supplied with fuel, spares and replacement vehicles; and how to move large mechanized forces, especially those that are road-bound?
He answered his own questions in discussions of three broad areas: refueling; spare parts; and access to roads.
In 1938, Hitler purged the army of personnel who were unsympathetic to the
Nazi regime
. Lutz was dismissed and replaced by Guderian. In the spring of that year, Guderian had his first experience of commanding a panzer force during the
annexation of Austria
.
The mobilization was chaotic: tanks ran out of fuel or broke down and the combat value of the formation was non-existent. Had there been any real fighting Guderian would certainly have lost.
He stood beside the Fuhrer in
Linz
as Hitler addressed Germany and Austria in celebration. Afterwards, he set about remedying the problems that the panzer force had encountered.
In the last year before the outbreak of World War II, Guderian fostered a closer relationship with Hitler. He attended opera with the Fuhrer and received invitations to dinner.
When
Neville Chamberlain
, in his policy of appeasement, gave Hitler the
Sudetenland
, it was occupied by Guderian's
XVI Motorized Corps
.
Second World War
[
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]
Invasion of Poland
[
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]
During August, 1939 Guderian took command of the newly formed
XIX Army Corps
. At short notice he was ordered to spearhead the northern element of the
invasion of Poland
which began on 1 September.
Under his
corps
command was one of Germany's six panzer divisions; Guderian's corps controlled 14.5 per cent of Germany's
armoured fighting vehicles
. His task was to advance through the former
West Prussian
territory (which included his birthplace of Kulm), then travel through
East Prussia
before heading south towards
Warsaw
.
Guderian used the German concept of "leading forward", which required commanders to move to the battlefront and assess the situation. He made use of modern communication systems by travelling in a radio-equipped command vehicle with which he kept himself in contact with corps command.
By 5 September, XIX Corps had linked up with forces advancing west from East Prussia. Guderian had accomplished his first operational victory and he gave a tour of the battlefield to Hitler and
Heinrich Himmler
, head of the
SS
. The next day, he shifted his corps across East Prussia to participate in the advance on Warsaw.
On 9 September his corps was reinforced by 10 Panzer Division and he continued deeper into Poland, finishing at
Brest-Litovsk
. In ten days Guderian's XIX Corps advanced 330 kilometres (210 mi), at times against strong resistance. The tank had proven itself to be a powerful weapon, with only 8 destroyed out of 350 employed.
On 16 September, Guderian launched an
attack on Brest Litovsk
; the next day the Soviet Union invaded Poland. He issued an ultimatum to the city?surrender to the Germans or Soviets – the garrison capitulated to the Germans. The Soviet Union's entry into the war shattered Polish morale and Polish forces began to surrender en masse to Guderian's troops.
At the conclusion of the campaign, Guderian was awarded a
Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross
.
The historian Russell Hart writes that Guderian supported the invasion because he "despised the Catholic, Slavic Poles who now occupied parts of his native, beloved Prussia".
Foremost in his mind was the "liberation" of his former family estate at Gross-Klonia; Guderian ordered the advance on Gross-Klonia at night and through fog, leading to what he subsequently admitted were "serious casualties".
During the invasion, the German military mistreated and killed prisoners of war, ignoring both the
Geneva Convention
and their own army regulations.
Guderian's corps withdrew before the
SS
began its
ethnic cleansing campaign
. He learned of murder operations and of Jews being forced into
Nazi ghettos
from his son,
Heinz Gunther Guderian
, who had witnessed some of them. There is no record of his having made any protest.
Invasion of France and the Low Countries
[
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]
Guderian was involved in the strategic debates that preceded the invasion of France and the Low Countries. The plan was being developed by his classmate at the 1907 War Academy,
Erich von Manstein
. The
Manstein Plan
shifted the weight of the armoured formations away from a head-on attack through the Low Countries to one through the Ardennes. Guderian confidently proclaimed the feasibility of taking armor through the hilly
Ardennes Forest
and was subsequently told he may have to command the spearhead of the attack himself. He then complained about the lack of resources until he was given seven mechanized divisions with which to accomplish the task. The plan established a force for the penetration of the forest that comprised the largest concentration of German armor to that date: 1,112 out of Germany's total of 2,438 tanks.
Guderian's corps spearheaded the drive through the Ardennes and over the
Meuse River
. He led the attack that broke the French lines at the
Battle of Sedan
. Guderian's panzer group led the "race to the sea", ending with the
British Expeditionary Force
(BEF) and French forces trapped at
Dunkirk
.
A British counter-attack at
Arras
on 21 May slowed down the German advance and allowed the BEF to establish defenses around points of evacuation, while Hitler, conscious of potential reverses and of allowing unsupported armor into urban fighting, issued the order to halt. A general resumption of the attack was ordered on 26 May, but by that time the Allied forces rallied, offering stiff resistance. On 28 May, with his losses mounting, Guderian advised the abandonment of the armoured assault in favor of a traditional artillery-infantry operation.
Guderian was then ordered to
advance to the Swiss border
. The offensive started at the
Weygand Line
on 9 June and finished on 17 June with the encirclement of the
Maginot Line
defences and the remaining French forces.
Despite the success of the invasion, French defeat was not inevitable; the French had better, more numerous military equipment and were not overwhelmed by a numerically or technologically superior military force. Instead, the French loss stemmed from poor army morale, faulty military strategy and a lack of coordination among Allied troops.
Hitler and his generals became overconfident after their historic victory, and came to believe they could defeat the Soviet Union: a country with significantly more natural resources, manpower and industrial capacity.
Invasion of the Soviet Union
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]
In Guderian's 1937 book
Achtung ? Panzer!
he wrote that "the time has passed when the Russians had no instinct for technology" and that Germany would have to reckon "with the Eastern Question in a form more serious than ever before in history".
However, during the planning for
Operation Barbarossa
?the German invasion of the Soviet Union?he had become optimistic about the supposed superiority of German arms.
By May, 1941 Guderian had accepted Hitler's official position that Operation Barbarossa was a
preemptive strike
.
He had accepted some core elements of
National Socialism
: the
Lebensraum
concept of territorial expansion and the destruction of the supposed
Judeo-Bolshevik
threat.
Guderian's
2nd Panzer Group
began its offensive on 22 June by crossing the
Bug River
and advancing towards the
Dnieper
.
The combined forces of 2nd and
3rd Panzer Groups
closed the
Minsk pocket
, taking 300,000 prisoners before attacking towards
Smolensk
.
Guderian was awarded a Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves on 17 July 1941.
Following the conclusion of the
Battle of Smolensk
, which ended with the encirclement and destruction of the Soviet
16th
,
19th
and
20th Armies
, General
Franz Halder
, Chief-of-Staff of the OKH, argued in favor of the all-out drive toward Moscow.
Halder had Guderian fly to Fuhrer Headquarters to argue the Army's case for continuing the assault against Moscow.
Guderian, who had just recently been vehemently opposed to Hitler's plan for the drive to the south, unexpectedly sided with the dictator. This abrupt change of heart angered both Halder and Field Marshal
Fedor von Bock
, commander of
Army Group Centre
, and turned Guderian into somewhat of a pariah amid Army leaders.
By 15 September, German forces including the
1st
and 2nd Panzer Groups had completed the largest
encirclement
in history: the
Battle of Kiev
. Owing to the 2nd Panzer Group's southward turn during the battle, the Wehrmacht destroyed the entire
Southwestern Front
east of
Kiev
, inflicting over 600,000 losses on the
Red Army
by 26 September. However, the campaign had been costly; the German forces had just half the tanks they had three months earlier. They were bogged down in a war of attrition for which the Wehrmacht was not prepared.
Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group was in the worst shape; it had just 21 per cent of its tanks in working order.
In mid-September, he was ordered to make a drive for Moscow.
On 30 September the
Battle of Moscow
began.
On 4 October, the
4th Panzer Division
, part of the 2nd Panzer Group, suffered a severe setback at
Mtsensk
, near
Oryol
. Guderian demanded an inquiry into the realities of tank warfare on the Eastern Front, eventually suggesting in November to senior German tank designers and manufacturers that the quickest solution was to produce a direct copy of the Soviet
T-34
tank.
By November, the attack by the 2nd Panzer Group on
Tula
and
Kashira
, 125 km (78 mi) south of Moscow, achieved limited success, while Guderian vacillated between despair and optimism, depending on the situation at the front.
Facing pressure from the German High Command, Field Marshal
Gunther von Kluge
finally committed the weaker south flank of his
4th Army
to the attack on 1 December. In the aftermath of the battle, Guderian blamed slow commitment of 4th Army to the attack for the German failure to reach Moscow. This assessment grossly overestimated the capabilities of Kluge's remaining forces.
It also failed to appreciate the reality that Moscow was a metropolis that German forces lacked the numbers to either encircle or to capture in a frontal assault.
In the aftermath of the German failure, Guderian refused to pass on Hitler's 'stand fast' order and fell out with Kluge, the new commander of the Army Group Centre. Guderian was relieved of command on 25 December.
The German formations on the Eastern Front ubiquitously implemented the criminal
Commissar Order
and the
Barbarossa Decree
. For all divisions within Guderian's panzer group where files are preserved, there is evidence of illegal
reprisals
against the civilian population.
In his memoirs, Guderian denied having given the Commissar Order. However, General
Joachim Lemelsen
, a corps commander within Guderian's panzer group, is documented as saying "prisoners, who could be shown to have been
commissars
, had to be immediately taken aside and shot" – and that the order came directly from Guderian.
Reporting to the OKW, Guderian is documented as saying his panzer group had "shunted off" 170 commissars by the beginning of August.
Inspector General of Armoured Troops
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]
On 1 March 1943, after the German defeat in the
Battle of Stalingrad
, Hitler appointed Guderian to the newly created position of Inspector General of Armoured Troops.
The latter had successfully lobbied to be reinstated, resulting in the new posting.
Guderian's responsibilities were to oversee the
panzer arm
and the training of Germany's panzer forces. He established a collaborative relationship with
Albert Speer
regarding the manufacture and development of
armored fighting vehicles
.
The military failures of 1943 prevented Guderian from restoring combat power to the armored forces to any significant degree. He had limited success with improved
tank destroyers
and fixing flaws in the third generation of tanks, the
Panther
and the
Tiger
.
Operation Citadel
, the last major German offensive operation in the east, was an attempt by the German army to regain the initiative.
Guderian opposed the offensive, on the grounds that a victory would be extremely costly and would achieve little, saying "it is a matter of profound indifference to the world whether we hold Kursk or not".
In a conversation with Hitler prior to the offensive, Guderian said: "Why are we attacking in the east at all this year?" Hitler responded, "You are right. Whenever I think of this attack, my stomach turns over." Guderian concluded, "Then you have the right attitude towards this situation. Leave it alone."
Acting Chief of Army General Staff
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]
Guderian became the Acting Chief of the General Staff of the
Army High Command
with the responsibility of advising Hitler on the Eastern Front.
He replaced General of the Infantry
Kurt Zeitzler
, who had abandoned the position on 1 July after losing faith in Hitler's judgement and suffering a nervous breakdown.
Germany was already heading to inevitable defeat, and Guderian could not shape the military situation nor Hitler's strategic decisions.
Hitler placed Guderian in charge of the "Honour Court": a
kangaroo court
for those accused of involvement in the
20 July Plot
.
Guderian himself denied any involvement with the plot; nevertheless, he had unexpectedly retired to his estate on the day of the assassination attempt.
The court discharged those found guilty of participating in the plot from the armed forces so that they could be tried by the
People's Court
, set up for the purpose of prosecuting the alleged plotters.
Those accused were tortured by the
Gestapo
and executed by hanging. Some plotters were hanged by a thin hemp rope, by Hitler's direct orders, so that they slowly strangled to death after a lengthy agony.
Post-war, Guderian claimed that he had attempted to get out of this duty and that he had found the sessions "repulsive".
In reality, Guderian had applied himself to the task with the vigour of a Nazi adherent, which perhaps was due to the desire to deflect attention from himself.
Hart writes that he fought to save Rommel's chief of staff,
Hans Speidel
, because Speidel could have implicated Guderian in the plot.
As head of the OKH, Guderian was faced with the pressing issues of the staff work being impacted by arrests, which among the OKH staff and their families eventually ran into the hundreds. Guderian had to fill serious gaps, such as one created by the suicide of General
Eduard Wagner
, the
quartermaster general
, in July. Even with vacancies filling up, a key problem remained: too many of the personnel were new to their roles and lacked institutional knowledge, including Guderian himself. Guderian relied heavily on Colonel
Johann von Kielmansegg
who was the most senior staff officer with experience at the OKH, but he was himself arrested in August. The situation was not improved by Guderian's long-standing bias against the General Staff which he blamed for having allegedly opposed his attempts to introduce modern armored doctrine into the army back in the 1930s.
The latter months of 1944 were marked by the ever-increasing strife between the OKH and the OKW (
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
), as the two organizations competed for resources, especially in the run-up to the last-ditch
German December, 1944 offensive on the Western Front
. After the war, Guderian blamed Hitler for frittering away the last German reserves in the operation; nonetheless, Germany's strategic situation was such that even twenty or thirty extra divisions would not have helped.
Guderian completed the total Nazification of the army general staff with a 29 July order that demanded that all officers join the party. He also made the
Nazi salute
obligatory throughout the armed forces.
He supported the politicization of the military, but failed to see why other officers perceived him as a Nazi.
As chief-of-staff of the OKH, Guderian did not object to the orders that Hitler and Himmler issued during the brutal suppression of the
Warsaw Uprising
nor the atrocities being perpetrated against the civilian population of the city.
At a
Volkssturm
rally in November, 1944, Guderian said that there were "95 million National Socialists who stand behind Adolf Hitler".
After the war, Guderian claimed that his actions in the final months as head of the OKH were driven by a search for a solution to Germany's increasingly-bleak prospects. This was supposedly the rationale behind Guderian's plans to turn major urban centers along the Eastern Front into so-called fortress cities (
feste Platze
). This fantastical plan had no hope of succeeding against the mobile operations of the Red Army. In any event, most of the "fortresses" were poorly provisioned and staffed by older garrison troops.
On 28 March, following the failed operation to retake the town of Kustrin (now
Kostrzyn nad Odr?
in Poland), Guderian was sent on leave. He was replaced by General
Hans Krebs
.
Guderian cultivated close personal relationships with the most powerful people in the regime. He had an exclusive dinner with Himmler on Christmas Day, 1944.
On 6 March 1945, shortly before the end of the war, Guderian participated in a propaganda broadcast that denied
the Holocaust
; the Red Army in its advance had just liberated several
extermination camps
.
Despite the general's later claims of being anti-Nazi, Hitler most likely found Guderian's values to be closely aligned with Nazi ideology. Hitler brought him out of retirement in 1943 and especially appreciated the orders he issued in the aftermath of the failed plot.
Later life and death
[
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Guderian and his staff surrendered to US forces on 10 May 1945. He avoided being convicted as a war criminal at the
Nuremberg Trials
because there was no substantial documentary evidence against him at that time.
He answered questions from the Allied forces and denied being an ardent supporter of Nazism.
He joined the
US Army Historical Division
in 1945 and the US refused requests from the Soviet Union to have him extradited.
Even after the war, Guderian retained an affinity with Hitler and National Socialism. While interned by the Americans, his conversations were secretly taped. In one such recording, while conversing with former Field Marshal
Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb
and former General
Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg
, Guderian opined: "The fundamental principles [of Nazism] were fine".
Guderian was released from internment in 1948. Many of his peers were ill-fated. Von Manstein was sentenced to 18 years and
Albert Kesselring
was given a life sentence.
Guderian had informed on his ex-colleagues and co-operated with the Allies, which had helped him evade prosecution.
He retired to
Schwangau
near
Fussen
in
Southern Bavaria
and began writing. His most successful book was
Panzer Leader
.
He remained an ardent German nationalist for the rest of his life. Guderian died on 14 May 1954 at the age of 65 and is buried at the
Friedhof Hildesheimer Straße
in
Goslar
.
After the Second World War, the
Central Intelligence Agency
was highly interested in using Guderian to rally the German right to the
Atlanticist
cause.
Writings and mythology
[
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]
Panzer Leader
myth
[
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]
Guderian's post-war autobiography
Panzer Leader
was a success with the reading public. He cast himself as an innovator and the "father" of the German panzer arm, both before the war and during the
blitzkrieg
years.
This allowed him to re-imagine himself as the master of the blitzkrieg between 1939 and 1941; however, this was an exaggeration.
Guderian's German memoirs were first published in 1950. At that time they were the only source on the development of panzer forces, German military records having been misplaced or lost. Consequently, historians based their interpretation of historical events upon Guderian's self-centred autobiography.
Subsequent biographers supported the myth and embellished it.
In 1952 Guderian's memoirs were reprinted in English. British journalist and military theorist
B. H. Liddell Hart
gained access to a group of German generals, imprisoned in the No. 1 POW camp in Grizedale Hall in the north of England from 9 August 1945, as a Political Intelligence Department lecturer taking part in the Re-education programme, in an effort to use that to re-establish his reputation as a military theorist and commentator. He asked Guderian to say that he had based his military theories on Liddell Hart's; Guderian obliged.
Liddell Hart, in turn, became an advocate for West German rearmament.
In newer studies, historians began to question Guderian's memoirs and criticize the myth that they had created.
Battistelli, examining Guderian's record, said he was not the father of the panzer arm.
He was one of a number of innovators.
He stood out from his arguably more able compatriot, Lutz, for two reasons. Firstly, he sought the limelight, and secondly, he fostered a close relationship with Hitler.
In portraying himself as the father of blitzkrieg and ingratiating himself with the Americans, he avoided being handed over to the Soviet Union.
Battistelli writes that his most remarkable skill was not as a theoretician or commander, it was as an author. His books
Achtung-Panzer!
and
Panzer Leader
were a critical and commercial success upon publication and continue to be discussed, researched and analysed many years after his death.
Guderian was a capable tactician and technician, leading his troops successfully in the
Invasion of Poland
, the
Battle of France
and during the early stages of the invasion of the Soviet Union: especially in the
advance to Smolensk
and the
Battle of Kiev
. Liddell Hart writes that most of his success came from positions of substantial advantage, and he was never able to accomplish victory from a position of weakness.
Hart suggests that his strengths were outweighed by his deficiencies, such as deliberately creating animosity between his panzer force and the other military arms, with disastrous consequences.
His memoirs omitted mention of his military failings and his close relationship with Hitler.
James Corum
writes in his book
The Roots of Blitzkrieg: Hans von Seeckt and German Military Reform
that Guderian was an excellent general, a first-rate tactician and a man who played a central role in developing Panzer divisions, irrespective of his memoirs.
Myth of the clean Wehrmacht
[
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]
Freelance historian Pier Battistelli argues that Guderian rewrote history in his memoirs, but notes that the biggest re-writing of history comes not in his putative fathering of the panzer force but in the cover-up of his culpability for war crimes during Operation Barbarossa.
Units under his command carried out the
Commissar Order
, which entailed the murder of Red Army political officers. He also played a large role in the commission of reprisals after the
Warsaw Uprising
of 1944.
Like other generals, Guderian's memoirs emphasized his loyalty to Germany and the German people; however, he neglected to mention that Hitler
bought this loyalty with bribes
, including landed estates and a monthly payment of 2,000
?︁?︁
.
Guderian wrote in his memoirs that he had been given a Polish estate as a retirement gift.
Worth 1.24 million ?︁?︁,
the estate covered an area of 2,000 acres (810 ha) and it was located at Deipenhof (now
Gł?bokie
, Poland) in the
Warthegau area of occupied Poland
. The occupants had been evicted.
Guderian also did not mention that he had initially requested an estate three times larger, but he was turned down by the local
Gauleiter
, with support from Himmler. The Gauleiter balked at giving such an opulent estate to someone with the rank of only a Colonel-General.
In 1950, Guderian published a pamphlet entitled
Can Europe Be Defended?
, where he lamented that the Western powers had picked the wrong side to ally themselves with during the war, even as Germany "was fighting for its naked existence", as a "defender of Europe" against the supposed Bolshevik menace. Guderian issued apologetics for Hitler, writing: "For one may judge Hitler's acts as one will, in retrospect his struggle was about Europe, even if he made dreadful mistakes and errors". He claimed that only the Nazi civilian administration (not the Wehrmacht) was responsible for atrocities against Soviet civilians, and scapegoated Hitler and the
Russian winter
for the Wehrmacht's military reverses, as he later did in
Panzer Leader
;
in addition, he wrote that six million Germans died during their
expulsion
from the Eastern territories by the
Soviet Union
and its allies,
while also writing that the defendants executed at the
Nuremberg trials
(for war crimes such as
the Holocaust
) were "defenders of Europe".
Ronald Smelser
and
Edward J. Davies
, in their book
The Myth of the Eastern Front
, conclude that Guderian's memoirs are full of "egregious untruths, half truths, and omissions", as well as outright "nonsense". Guderian claimed, contrary to historical evidence, that the criminal Commissar Order was not carried out by his troops because it "never reached [his] panzer group". He also lied about the
Barbarossa Decree
that preemptively exempted German troops from prosecution for crimes committed against Soviet civilians, claiming that it was never carried out either. Guderian claimed to have been solicitous towards the civilian population, that he took pains to preserve Russian cultural objects and that his troops had "liberated" Soviet citizens.
David Stahel
writes that English-speaking historians too readily presented a distorted image of German generals in the post-war era.
In his book
Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East
, Stahel wrote: "The men in control of Hitler's armies were not honourable men, carrying out their orders as dutiful servants of the state. With resolute support for the regime, the generals unquestioningly waged one war of aggression after the other, and, once Barbarossa began, willingly partook in the genocide of the Nazi regime".
In popular culture
[
edit
]
Guderian's memoirs remain popular. The favourable descriptions started with the British journalist and military theorist
B.H. Liddell Hart
, who described Guderian as one of the "Great Captains of History" in a book published by the mass-market
Ballantine Books
in 1957. As late as 2002, for the 55th anniversary of the first publication of the book,
The New York Times
,
Newsweek
,
The New Yorker
and other outlets published positive reviews, reinforcing the tenets of the
myth of the clean Wehrmacht
. The reviews stressed the separation between the professional soldiers and the Nazi regime, while
The New York Times Book Review
described the book as one of the best written by former German generals.
Kenneth Macksey
in his biography eulogized Guderian, inflating his true accomplishments.
In 1976, the leading
wargaming
magazine,
Strategy and Tactics
, spotlighted Guderian in a featured game of the month called
Panzergruppe Guderian
. The magazine cover included a photo of Guderian in military dress, with his Knight's Cross and a pair of binoculars, suggesting a commanding role.
The magazine featured a glowing profile of Guderian in which he was identified as the originator of blitzkrieg and lauded for his military achievements. Adhering to the postwar myths, the profile posited that a commander like this could "function in any political climate and be unaffected by it". Guderian thus came across as a consummate professional who stood apart from the crimes of the Nazi regime.
Works
[
edit
]
- Guderian, Heinz (1937).
Achtung ? Panzer!
(reissue ed.). Sterling Press.
ISBN
0-304-35285-3
.
Guderian reviews the development of armoured forces in the European nations and Soviet Russia, and describes what he felt was essential for the effective use of armoured forces.
- Guderian, Heinz (1942).
Mit Den Panzern in Ost und West
[
With the Panzers in the East and West
]. Volk & Reich Verlag.
OCLC
601435526
.
- Guderian, Heinz (1950).
Kann Westeuropa verteidigt werden?
[
Can Western Europe Be Defended?
]. Plesse-Verlag.
OCLC
8977019
.
- Guderian, Heinz (1952).
Panzer Leader
. Da Capo Press Reissue edition, 2001. New York:
Da Capo Press
.
ISBN
0-306-81101-4
.
Originally published in German, titled
Erinnerungen eines Soldaten
(Memories of a Soldier) (
Kurt Vowinckel Verlag
[
de
]
, Heidelberg 1950; 10th edition 1977).
Awards
[
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]
See also
[
edit
]
- Guderian-Plan
? for the fortification of the German East Front in 1944
References
[
edit
]
Bibliography
[
edit
]
- Battistelli, Pier (2011).
Heinz Guderian: Leadership, Strategy, Conflict
. United Kingdom: Osprey Publishing Ltd.
ISBN
978-1-84908-366-9
.
- Boot, Max
(2006).
War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today
. New York:
Gotham Books
.
ISBN
978-1-59240-222-9
.
LCCN
2006015518
.
- Citino, Robert M.
(2012).
The Wehrmacht Retreats: Fighting a Lost War, 1943
. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
ISBN
978-0-7006-1826-2
.
- Coogan, Kevin (1999).
Dreamer of the day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International
. Brooklyn, New York: Autonomedia.
ISBN
1-57027-039-2
.
- Corum, James
(1992).
The Roots of Blitzkrieg: Hans von Seeckt and German Military Reform
. University Press of Kansas.
ISBN
0-7006-0541-X
.
- Epstein, Catherine (2015).
Nazi Germany Confronting the Myths
. UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
ISBN
978-1-118-29479-6
.
- Fellgiebel, Walther-Peer
[in German]
(2000).
Die Trager des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939?1945
[
The Bearers of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross 1939?1945
] (in German). Friedberg, Germany: Podzun-Pallas.
ISBN
978-3-7909-0284-6
.
- Guderian, Heinz (1954).
Kann Westeuropa verteidigt werden?
. Translation into Russian (
Можно ли защитить Западную Европу?
. Moscow:
Voenizdat
.
- Hargreaves, Richard (2009).
Blitzkrieg w Polsce wrzesien 1939
[
Blitzkrieg Unleashed: The German Invasion of Poland, 1939
] (in Polish). Warsaw: Bellona.
ISBN
978-8311115774
.
- Hart, Russell A. (2006).
Guderian: Panzer Pioneer or Myth Maker?
. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books.
ISBN
978-1-59797-453-0
.
- Keegan, John (1989).
The Second World War
. New York: Viking.
ISBN
978-0-670-82359-8
.
- Kershaw, Ian (2000).
Hitler. 1936?45: Nemesis
. London: Allen Lane.
ISBN
978-0-14-027239-0
.
- Kreike, Emmanuel; Jordan, William Chester (2004).
Corrupt Histories
. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.
ISBN
978-1-58046-173-3
.
- Luther, Craig (2019).
The First Day on the Eastern Front
. Connecticut: Stackpole Books.
ISBN
978-0-8117-6765-1
.
- Mawdsley, Evan
(2005).
Thunder in the East: the Nazi?Soviet War, 1941?1945
. Hodder Arnold. p. 502.
ISBN
0-340-80808-X
.
- Megargee, Geoffrey P.
(2000).
Inside Hitler's High Command
. Lawrence, Kansas: Kansas University Press.
ISBN
0-7006-1015-4
.
- Muller, Rolf-Dieter
(2015).
Enemy in the East: Hitler's Secret Plans to Invade the Soviet Union
. London:
I.B. Tauris
.
ISBN
978-1-78076-829-8
.
- Romer, Felix
(2012). "The Wehrmacht in the War of Ideologies: The Army and Hitler's Criminal Orders on the Eastern Front". In
Alex J. Kay
;
Jeff Rutherford
;
David Stahel
(eds.).
Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front, 1941: Total War, Genocide, and Radicalization
.
University of Rochester Press
.
ISBN
978-1-58046-407-9
.
- Scherzer, Veit (2007).
Die Ritterkreuztrager 1939?1945 Die Inhaber des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939 von Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm sowie mit Deutschland verbundeter Streitkrafte nach den Unterlagen des Bundesarchives
[
The Knight's Cross Bearers 1939?1945 The Holders of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross 1939 by Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and Allied Forces with Germany According to the Documents of the Federal Archives
] (in German). Jena, Germany: Scherzers Miltaer-Verlag.
ISBN
978-3-938845-17-2
.
- Searle, Alaric (1998).
"A Very Special Relationship: Basil Liddell Hart, Wehrmacht Generals and the Debate on West German Rearmament, 1945?1953"
.
War in History
.
5
(3).
doi
:
10.1177/096834459800500304
. Archived from
the original
on 24 September 2021.
- Shepherd, Ben
(2016).
Hitler's Soldiers: The German Army in the Third Reich
. Yale University Press.
ISBN
978-0-300-17903-3
.
- Shepperd, Alan (1990).
France, 1940: Blitzkrieg in the West
. Oxford, UK:
Osprey Publishing
.
ISBN
978-0-85045-958-6
.
- Smelser, Ronald
;
Davies, Edward J.
(2008).
The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture
. New York:
Cambridge University Press
.
ISBN
978-0-521-83365-3
.
- Stahel, David (2009).
Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East
. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press
.
ISBN
978-0-521-76847-4
.
- Stahel, David
(2015).
The Battle for Moscow
. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
.
ISBN
978-1-107-08760-6
.
- Stahel, David
(2012).
Kiev 1941: Hitler's Battle for Supremacy in the East
. London:
Cambridge University Press
.
ISBN
978-1-107-01459-6
.
- Stein, Marcel (2007).
Von Manstein, A Portrait: The Janus Head
. UK: Helion & Company Ltd.
ISBN
978-1-906033-02-6
.
- Wegmann, Gunter (2009).
Die Ritterkreuztrager der Deutschen Wehrmacht 1939?1945 Teil VIIIa: Panzertruppe Band 2: F?H
[
The Knight's Cross Bearers of the German Wehrmacht 1939?1945 Part VIIIa: Panzer Force Volume 2: F?H
] (in German). Bissendorf, Germany: Biblio-Verlag.
ISBN
978-3-7648-2389-4
.
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Pohlmann, Markus (2016).
Der Panzer und die Mechanisierung des Krieges: Eine deutsche Geschichte 1890 bis 1945
. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schoningh.
ISBN
978-3-506-78355-4
.
- Searle, Alaric (2003).
Wehrmacht Generals, West German Society, and the Debate on Rearmament, 1949?1959
. Westport, CT:
Praeger Publishers
.
ISBN
978-0-275-97968-3
.
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