Heinz Guderian – Blitzkrieg & the Panzer Corps Documentary

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#Biography #History #Documentary

The man known to history as Heinz Guderian  was born as Heinz Wilhelm Guderian on the   17th of June 1888 in the town of Kulm,  West Prussia in the Kingdom of Prussia   within the German Empire. Today Kulm is  the town of Chelmno in northern Poland.

His father was Friedrich Guderian. Friedrich came  from a family with extensive experience serving   in the Prussian military, one of the greatest  land fighting forces in the eighteenth century.   Prussia’s repeated defeats at the hands of France  during the Wars of the French Revolution and the  

Napoleonic era damaged the Prussians’ reputation.  Following the end of the Napoleonic War, Prussia’s   leaders re-established their military dominance  by the mid-nineteenth century. The Guderian men,   like many Prussian military families, viewed  military service as a hereditary occupation,   one which their sons and grandsons  would engage in after them. Friedrich  

Followed in his father’s footsteps by  becoming a Prussian military officer,   rising to become a lieutenant in the 9th Jager  Battalion, despite having joined the Kadet School   in 1872 and missed most of the major wars fought  by Prussia between 1863 and 1871 against Denmark,  

Austria and France which resulted in the emergence  of the German Empire under the heavy influence of   the Kingdom of Prussia. Heinz’s mother was Alice  Guderian. She and Friedrich married in 1887 and   gave birth to Heinz, their first child in 1888.  A brother Fritz was born two years later in 1890.

Heinz’s youth was dictated by his  father’s military career. In 1891,   when both he and Fritz were still infants, the  young family moved to Colmar in the province of   Alsace on the opposite end of the German Empire,  one of the two provinces which Prussia had wrested  

From France during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870  to 1871. It, along with the other province seized,   Lorraine, were heavily militarised in the late  nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This was   done out of fear France would one day initiate a  war of revenge. Friedrich Guderian and his family  

Were just one of many military families that  ended up here as a result and in 1900, after   nine years in Alsace, the Guderians undertook the  short move to St Avold in Lorraine not far from   the regional capital Metz. Heinz did not spend  long there. Although he was barely a teenager by  

Modern standards, in 1901 he left home to follow  in his father and grandfather’s footsteps and   become a military officer, joining the Karlsruhe  Cadet School in the province of Baden in southern   Germany. Fritz joined him there two years  later, the pair becoming versed in History,  

Mathematics and several foreign languages  including French and English before Heinz   was transferred at sixteen years of age to  the Principal Kadet School in Berlin in 1904. Guderian spent the next three years in Berlin.  He was clearly an accomplished student with an  

Especially good memory and an aptitude for  military history. The reports on him noted   his promise and when he completed his time  at the cadet school he was transferred to   Metz in Lorraine where he was commissioned  under his father’s battalion. He was also  

Promoted to the rank of lieutenant in January  1908. His diary from these years indicates   that while he was a young officer with much  potential he was somewhat socially aloof,   with entries from his journal hinting at  conflicts with fellow officers. Interestingly,  

After he had been in Metz for a year, and a  cohort of new officers arrived from Berlin in   the summer of 1908, he got along better with them.  It was to be a lifelong tendency of Guderian’s in  

Which he would find it difficult to find common  ground with fellow commanders of an equal rank,   but was well-admired by more junior officers.  The years prior to the First World War were also   notable for Guderian’s growing associations with  a number of individuals who would become prominent  

Figures in the German Wehrmacht in the 1930s,  including Erich von Manstein and Bodewin Keitel,   brother of Wilhelm Keitel, the future head  of the Wehrmacht during the Second World War. In October 1909 Guderian’s unit was transferred  to the Harz Mountains in the Saxony region of  

Northern Germany. Shortly after his arrival he met  and began a relationship with Margarete Goerne,   or Gretel as Heinz called her. Her father  Ernest, was not fond of Guderian and when   he proposed to her in December 1911 her  father objected on the basis that she was  

Just eighteen. This was hardly a young age to  be married at in the early twentieth century   and Heinz had himself only turned twenty-three  a short time earlier. Reluctantly they agreed   to postpone marriage, although they did  announce their engagement in February  

1912. They finally married in October 1913. Their  first son, a boy named Heinz after his father,   followed soon after in August 1914, while a  second son named Kurt came in 1918. Margarete   had a tremendous influence in Guderian’s  career over the next several decades,  

Encouraging his ambitions and putting up with his  long absences, one of which occurred during their   courtship when he had headed to Berlin for further  training as a radio communications officer. Guderian’s early years in the German military  were during a time of growing tensions between  

Germany and many of the other European powers.  For instance, in the spring of 1911 tensions had   ratcheted up between Germany and France over  both countries’ efforts to gain influence in   Morocco. The Agadir Crisis, so named after the  flashpoint being the port of Agadir in Morocco,  

Lasted for half a year before a compromise was  worked out whereby French influence over Morocco   was agreed to and German Cameroon was expanded  with a grant of French territory in the Congo.   This was just one of several near misses  when it came to the possible development  

Of a European war. Somewhat surprisingly  to many Europeans, the next European war   began not out of colonial rivalries, but instead  because of a Balkan conflict between Austria and   Russia in the summer of 1914. By early August  the conflict had exploded as each of the major  

Power declared war on each other. Germany, allied  with Austria found itself at war with Britain,   France and Russia. Much of the most intense  fighting over the next four years would be on   the trenches of the Western Front in north-eastern  France. When the war broke out Guderian was in the  

Midst of his apprenticeship as a communications  officer, but he soon began serving as a first   lieutenant in France where his reputation as  a promising military commander was cemented. In the spring of 1915 Guderian was assigned as  a signals or communications officer in the 4th  

Army which had formed the core of the German  force which invaded Belgium in August 1914,   alongside the 5th Army. It remained in Belgium  throughout the war. Guderian was assigned to the   4th during the Second Battle of Ypres in the  summer of 1915. He subsequently was sent to  

France as part of the Battle of Verdun in 1916,  the longest engagement of the entire war on the   Western Front. It was while Guderian and others  were fighting at Verdun that the first tanks   were employed in the history of warfare at the  Battle of Flers-Courcelette in mid-September 1916,  

An engagement of the wider First Battle of  the Somme. The first models were devised by   the British and were designed to try to break  the deadlock of trench warfare that had come   about as a result of the widespread use of  machine guns on the Western Front. The first  

Tanks were developed as giant, moving metal  boxes that would protect soldiers from enemy   machine-gun fire as they traversed No Man’s Land  between the trenches. The French would become the   primary producers and users of tanks down to the  end of the war. Conversely, the Germans barely  

Tried to adopt the new weaponry during the First  World War. They would only do so in later years,   becoming the pre-eminent masters of tank  warfare in the 1930s. Guderian gave exemplary   service during the First World War and was  successively promoted from lieutenant to captain,  

Then placed in charge of an infantry division  and finally admitted to the General Staff Corps   in February 1918, an event which Guderian later  described as “the proudest moment of my life.” By the time Guderian joined the General Staff  the outcome of the war was looking inevitable.  

The United States had joined the conflict  on the side of the British and the French   in 1917 and with men and resources pouring into  Western Europe from North America in the months   that followed the stalemate was broken in  north-eastern France. By the autumn of 1918  

The German position was desperate, as Guderian  would have been well aware. He and the rest of   the General Staff were particularly shaken by  the Battle of Amiens on the 8th of August 1918,   wherein the French and British deployed  hundreds of tanks and had a devastating  

Impact in the engagement. The Germans suffered  a major defeat, but Guderian learned an early   lesson about the benefits of tank warfare from  it, as he related years later in his writings   promoting the large-scale adoption of tank  divisions in the Germany army. After Amiens  

The German lines were in danger of collapsing  entirely, but in the end it was a revolution   and collapse of the imperial government back in  Germany in early November 1918 which brought about   an armistice and an end to the war, rather than  the taking of the conflict into Germany. Under  

The terms of the Treaty of Versailles Germany  not only lost extensive territory in the east   to re-establish Poland as a sovereign nation, but  it was forced to demilitarise extensively, with   the German imperial army replaced by a Reichswehr  which was capped at 100,000 troops. As a result,  

The vast majority of German soldiers were  decommissioned in 1919 and 1920, as were   a very large proportion of Germany’s military  officers. Guderian’s wartime record served him   well and he was one of the 4,000 men selected  to remain as officers in the new Reichswehr.

The years that followed were chaotic ones for  Guderian and more so for Germany. The end of the   war did not bring peace to Europe, which spent  the next five years dealing with revolutions,   wars of independence, civil wars and the wreckage  of the Spanish Flu pandemic. Germany was one of  

The worst affected, with 1919 being characterised  to a large extent by civil war in the country,   particularly so in cities like Berlin and  Munich as communist groups tried to follow   the example of the Russian Revolution to establish  a radical socialist state. Owing to the unrest,  

Guderian was not free to return to his young  family once the war ended. Instead he ended up   being assigned to the Eastern Frontier  Force under General Hans von Seeckt,   which was charged from early 1919 onwards with  defending Germany’s eastern border by ensuring  

That the Russian Civil War and the wars of  independence attendant on it in Poland and   the Baltic States region did not spill over into  Germany. There he was involved in military action   as far north-east as the city of Riga, but he  and his colleagues were devastated to learn  

In the course of this campaign that they  were fighting for nothing, as it had been   decided at the peace talks in France that this  region would be stripped from the German state   as part of the Treaty of Versailles. Guderian’s  nationalistic politics were only encouraged by  

These events and the sense of injustice which he  and many other former military men felt in 1919. As the initial chaos of 1919 gave way to the  early 1920s, Guderian’s new military position   became clearer within the General Staff of the  Reichswehr. In 1922 he was assigned the task of  

Investigating the concept of motorization within  the German army. Under the terms of Versailles   the Reichswehr had not only been limited  to 100,000 men, but had also been banned   from developing either an air-force or having  tank divisions. But the government of Weimar  

Germany in the interwar period constantly tried  to stretch these restrictions and Guderian was   one of several officers charged with ensuring  that when the time came to try to introduce a   tank division into the Reichswehr, they  would have the technical know-how to do  

So efficiently. In this he worked closely  with Ernst Volckheim, one of the few German   commanders who had been involved in developing  strategies for the use of tanks during the war.   He also read whatever he could find in terms  of technical manuals from abroad, notably from  

Britain where rapid innovations in tank design  were being made in the 1920s and the development   of tank strategy was being furthered under the  aegis of the Experimental Mechanised Force. In 1924 Guderian’s talents in military history and  strategy were recognised in his appointment to the  

Military training school at Stettin, which  was in German Prussia at the time, but which   is just over the German-Polish border today.  There he was primarily a military historian,   but he had many other roles. For instance, there  were years in which he was writing extensively,  

Producing reports on military strategy and  also subtly introducing his political views   into his discussions, arguing that a failure to  adopt tank warfare during the First World War   had contributed significantly to Germany’s  defeat. This was an over-simplification,   but it does indicate his growing belief  in the necessity of the extensive use of  

Motorised divisions in modern warfare. And the  Reichswehr was preparing for this in line with   his reports. While the government was prohibited  from creating divisions at home in Germany, in the   second half of the 1920s it began developing  a small number of tanks and testing them in  

Sweden and in a base near the Ural Mountains  in the Soviet Union, thus circumventing the   terms of the Treaty of Versailles. In return the  Russians received technical advice from a German   officer Corp which was still the most skilful and  knowledgeable in Europe on many military matters.

Guderian’s life would be changed immensely, like  those of tens of millions of others across Europe,   by the events of the late 1920s and early 1930s.  The Wall Street Crash occurred in the autumn   of 1929, leading to an immense economic crisis  across the western world and the Great Depression.  

Germany was one of the worst effected countries,  with spiralling inflation and unemployment leading   to immense economic damage and a turbulent  political environment. This allowed for the   rise of the National Socialist German Workers  Party or Nazis under their leader Adolf Hitler,  

Which rose from being a minor political party  with a tiny amount of support in Bavaria in the   1920s to become the second biggest party  nationally in the elections of September   1930 and then the biggest in 1932. Early in  1933 Hitler worked out an arrangement with  

The centrist parties and business leaders of  Germany whereby he would become Chancellor of   the country. Within weeks they had secured  complete control over the state apparatus,   transforming the country into a one-party state  based on the Anti-Semitic, Anti-communist and   ultranationalist ideology of the Nazis who  were determined to launch a new European war  

To make Germany the pre-eminent political  and military power on the continent. Over   time in the 1930s Guderian would become more  and more central to their military planning. Guderian’s progress within the German military  during the Nazi rise in popularity in the early  

1930s and seizure of power in 1933 was  closely tied to Oswald Lutz. Lutz had   risen within the Bavarian divisions of the  German imperial army in the 1890s and 1900s,   before specialising as well in the motorised  divisions in the 1920s. As a considerably more  

Senior-ranking and older officer than Guderian  he was appointed in 1931 as inspector of the   Motorized Transport Troops and made a general.  He hired Guderian as his chief of staff. It was   during the early stages of their collaboration,  before the Nazis had ever come to power, that Lutz  

And Guderian began overseeing the development of a  new German light tank called the Panzerkampfwagen,   meaning ‘armoured fighting vehicle’, though  this model and the subsequent models built   down to 1945 are today more widely known simply as  Panzers. This breach of the Versailles treaty was  

Undertaken in secret, while Guderian, Lutz and  others within the motorized division continued   to develop strategies for how tank divisions would  operate alongside infantry units to move speedily   in campaigns. Something of a misnomer, though, is  the idea that Guderian or anyone else was working  

On the idea of Blitzkrieg or ‘lightning war’  during these years. There are only a handful   of references within German military documents  from the 1930s referring to Blitzkrieg and where   these appear they more often than not involve  discussion of how an army could be effectively  

Supplied with food and ammunition if it was  moving forward swiftly in a military invasion. Guderian and Lutz’s early work in establishing  production of the first Panzers in 1932 was   given a notable boost from 1935 onwards as  the Nazis intensified the programme of German  

Rearmament which in reality had been underway  in a clandestine manner since the late 1920s.   Though Britain and France politely objected they  did nothing in practice to oppose these moves.   As this occurred Guderian became the foremost  advocate within the German military of the idea  

Of developing a major Panzerwaffe or Panzer-wing  to the military as a means of having fast-moving   armies that could strike against Germany’s enemies  in any future war. But his and Lutz’s arguments   often met with opposition, particularly  from Hermann Goering who wanted resources   pumped into his Luftwaffe air-force instead. In  response, Guderian, with Lutz’s encouragement,  

Began working on a book promoting tank warfare  in 1936 and published it the following year as   Achtung – Panzer! or ‘Attention – Tank’, though it  could also be transliterated as ‘Beware the Tank’.   Though he did not apply the term, the basic tenets  of Blitzkrieg warfare, with the use of fast-moving  

Tank divisions accompanied by infantry divisions  and air support, were described by Guderian.   His efforts were not an overnight success, but  production of the Panzer I continued steadily and   the Panzer II was soon in production. Buoyed by  the experience of the Spanish Civil War, in which  

The utility of tanks was further demonstrated,  by the end of the 1930s thousands of Panzers   had been built or were under construction, while  the Panzer III and Panzer IV, the most successful   operation tanks used by the Germans during the  war, were under development from 1936 onwards.  

That the Panzer programme was as advanced as  it was in Germany by the time the war broke   out in September 1939 was in large part owing  to the championing of it by Lutz and Guderian. Despite their collaboration through the  1930s, Guderian and Lutz would not work  

With each other beyond the first weeks of 1938.  While Germany had rearmed and the wider country   was firmly under the dictatorial rule of the  Nazis by the mid-1930s, many senior commanders   within the military retained an independent  political stance, particularly the War Minister,  

Werner von Blomberg, and the commander-in-chief  of the German army, Werner von Fritsch. These were   individuals who shared the fervent nationalism  of the Nazis, but were otherwise not committed   National Socialists. In advance of the coming  war, Hitler moved to get rid of them early in 1938  

And did so by exploiting a marriage scandal and  concocting charges of homosexuality against von   Fritsch in order to force them out of their posts  and replace them with more loyal individuals. Von   Blomberg and von Fritsch, however, were just the  most publicly visible faces of this purge and many  

Other officers were removed or demoted in tandem  in 1938. These included Oswald Lutz, Guderian’s   collaborator and senior commander. In a betrayal  of his close advisor, Guderian, whose relationship   with Hitler and the Nazis was much better and  who was becoming a committed Nazi over time,  

Accepted the position as head of the motorized  divisions which had been vacated by Lutz. Guderian was becoming more prominent within  the German military just as the race to war   was speeding up. Initially Hitler and the other  senior leaders of the Nazis intended to wait until  

As late as 1942 or 1943 before launching a war,  but as they had rearmed speedily in the mid-1930s,   Britain and France were extremely slow to respond.  In light of this, Hitler pushed ahead in the first   months of 1938 with the Nazi goal of uniting  Germany and Austria into a greater Germany  

Under the rule of Berlin, a political union  which was specifically prohibited under the   terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Political  pressure was applied on the Fatherland Front   government of Austria and eventually in mid-March  1938 German armed divisions rolled into Austria  

To complete a bloodless annexation of Austria.  Guderian was part of the Austrian operation,   but it was not a success for him, with the tank  divisions moving slowly towards Vienna amidst poor   communications. More successful was Guderian’s  role in the occupation of the Sudetenland region  

Of Czechoslovakia in the autumn of 1938.  By then Britain and France’s willingness to   appease Germany had been stretched to breaking  point, but it somehow lasted beyond the full   annexation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. It  was only when the Nazis invaded Poland on the 1st  

Of September 1939 that Britain and France finally  declared war. The Second World War had now begun. Guderian and his Panzers were involved  in the war from the very beginning. He   personally led the 19th Panzer Corps over the  border, proceeding with speed over the Polish  

Corridor which was relatively well defended  and passing by his birth place at Kulm on his   way towards Warsaw. The Polish capital had  been surrounded by mid-September. A two week   siege followed before German troops entered the  city on the 1st of October. Guderian’s divisions  

Had operated well during this push. One of the  benefits he was able to bring to the campaign was   his effective use of radio communications even as  his Corps moved speedily eastwards, combining his   earlier experience as a communications officer  with his more recent role as a tank commander.  

As the campaign neared its end he received a  message from Hitler inquiring if his reaching   of all of his targets on time or ahead of schedule  had been a result of the Polish troops in front of   his divisions having been weakened by the bombing  raids conducted by Goering’s Luftwaffe. Guderian  

Responded succinctly, “No. By our Panzers!”  Hitler was impressed and it was not just him,   as many within the Nazi government and the  military high command were now convinced of   the efficacy of swift moving tank divisions  as a forward unit in invasion campaigns.

The invasion of Poland was also significant  in terms of Guderian’s growing knowledge of   the crimes of the Nazi regime. When the invasion  commenced the Nazis had already drawn up lists of   tens of thousands of Poles who were political,  cultural and religious leaders of various kinds  

With the goal of either murdering them or  detaining them during and after the invasion.   The goal of Operation Tannenberg, as it was termed  after a major battle which the German Empire had   won against Russia in Poland in the first weeks  of the First World War, was to rob Poland of its  

Political and moral leadership, a form of genocide  in and of itself according to many definitions of   genocide. Between September 1939 and January  1940 a minimum of 20,000 people were killed,   tens of thousands more were arrested and  the numbers may have been significantly  

Higher. Thereafter the corralling of the country’s  massive Jewish population into ghettoes in Warsaw,   Krakow and other towns and cities and the  systematic starving of them began. Guderian   had left Poland and returned to Germany before  much of this was initiated, so he didn’t witness  

Much of it personally at this early stage in  the war, but he was aware that it was occurring   on report by his son and namesake, Heinz Jr.,  who had joined the military like his father,   grandfather and great-grandfather and was also  involved in the invasion and subsequent occupation  

Of Poland. Consequently, Guderian was aware of the  atrocities of the regime from early on in the war.   The significance of this will become clearer later  as Guderian became one of the major proponents of   the myth of the clean Wehrmacht, which following  the war saw leading German military commanders  

Claim that they were unaware of the extent of  the war crimes being perpetrated by the Nazis. Guderian was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the  Iron Cross, the highest military honour within the   German Wehrmacht, for his role in the invasion  of Poland. He was also promoted to a position  

Of consultancy on the plans for the invasion of  France which were being worked out in late 1939   and into 1940. His involvement was encouraged by  Erich von Manstein who had known Guderian for more   than quarter of a century since when they were  beginning their military careers. The plan for the  

Invasion of France was to bypass the extensive  band of fortifications and defences which the   French had erected along the Franco-German border  known as the Maginot Line by repeating exactly   what the Germans had done in 1914: invading  Belgium. There was a debate, though, as to whether  

To proceed through the Ardennes Forest, which  is largely located in Luxembourg and Belgium, or   further to the north exclusively through Belgium.  The former plan was eventually decided on when   Guderian stated that he could bring his motorized  divisions speedily through the hilly forests of  

The Ardennes region and then carry on towards  the coast of the English Channel. Guderian’s   19th Army Corp would consequently largely lead  the invasion of the Low Countries and France. The invasion of the Low Countries and France  commenced on the 10th of May 1940 after months  

Of the Allies waiting for the German campaign to  begin. Guderian’s 19th Corps moved quickly through   the Ardennes and was involved with other divisions  in the Battle of Sedan between the 12th and 15th,   a site where the Germans elected to mass their  forces to cross the River Meuse. The plan to  

Navigate the river here was largely Guderian’s  idea and he won out over Colonel-General Gerd   von Rundstedt who wished to cross the river  elsewhere. After winning a major victory at   Sedan and crossing the river, Guderian began  a rapid pincer movement as he drove the 19th  

Corp towards the English Channel with the goal  of cutting the British Expeditionary Force off   from the main French army further to the south.  Guderian’s forces led the ‘race to the sea’ and   on the 21st of May he was able to report back  that the British and some French divisions  

Had been cut off. Such was the speed of the  advance that when Hitler and the high command   received updates of the 19th Corp’s location in  mid-May that they believed they were receiving   inaccurate information and that Guderian could  not have advanced westwards as quickly as he had.

This was not just the efficacy of tank warfare.  Guderian’s troops were also awake for days on end   during the drive to the English Channel, fuelled  by Pervitin, a form of amphetamine which Guderian   had begun having his tank crews issued with during  1939. However, to his disappointment, the success  

In surrounding the British at the French port of  Dunkirk so quickly was not followed up on with a   full barrage of the expeditionary force there  as Goering delayed matters by wanting to bomb   the British into oblivion, allowing him to claim  that his Luftwaffe had been responsible for the  

Destruction of the British Expeditionary Force.  Instead, during the delay the famous evacuation   of Dunkirk was effected from the 26th of May  onwards. As he was dispatched southwards to secure   parts of eastern France southwards to Switzerland  Guderian must have fumed that the success of his  

Panzer divisions in executing such a rapid advance  through northern France was not fully capitalised   on. Nevertheless, while the British evacuated  their troops and lived to fight another day,   Paris was entered by the Nazis on the 14th of June  and France surrendered on the 25th. Guderian’s  

Advance into France in May 1940 and the subsequent  cutting off of the British Expeditionary Force at   Dunkirk led to a growing belief in the efficacy  of Blitzkrieg during the Second World War. In November 1940 Guderian was promoted again  as his divisions were expanded into the 2nd  

Panzer Group, which would later be made into  the 2nd Panzer Army. This rapid growth came   as hundreds of Panzers were manufactured in the  Reich every month. This was all in anticipation   of the invasion of the Soviet Union, with  Hitler determining that the campaign,  

Codenamed Operation Barbarossa, would begin in the  summer of 1941. This was to be initiated without   defeating Britain first, Hitler’s ideological  rigidity having convinced him that the British   would eventually see sense and join with Germany  once it saw that the real enemy were the Bolshevik  

Communists of Russia. Guderian was one of the more  vocal opponents within the high command of the   Wehrmacht to the idea of opening a second front in  Eastern Europe while Britain remained undefeated.   But his objections were completely ignored.  Defeated in this Guderian tried to make the best  

Of a bad situation and began impressing on Hitler  and the other senior members of the Nazi regime   that tank production would need to be increased  significantly in order to begin producing upwards   of 800 tanks a month. This was not realistically  achievable and while an increase was seen,  

It was nowhere near what Guderian believed to  be necessary. While believing the invasion to   be too soon, Guderian was a supporter of the Nazi  desire to create Lebensraum or ‘Living Room’ for   Germans by conquering Eastern Europe, a sign of  his growing adherence to more elements of Nazism.

The goal of Operation Barbarossa was to advance  into the Soviet Union at immense speed and defeat   the Soviets in a matter of weeks, much as  had happened in France a year earlier. And   for a time when the invasion commenced on  the 22nd of June 1941 it seemed as though  

This might be reality as the Germans rolled  across hundreds of kilometres of territory   in the space of a few weeks. Guderian’s 2nd  Panzer Group was on the frontlines as part   of Army Group Centre under the overall command  of Fedor von Bock. This prong of the invasion  

Achieved a number of spectacular successes  in the first six weeks of the invasion,   driving towards the city of Minsk in Belarussia  once the fighting began and encircling a vast   portion of the Red Army at the end of June.  Guderian’s Panzers were directly involved in  

Closing off the Minsk Pocket and allowing for  the capture of several hundred thousand Russian   troops in one of the biggest tactical victories  won by the Germans in the entire war. This done,   Guderian’s tanks were again responsible  for a complete encirclement of the Soviets,  

This time surrounding the 13th Army after a  surprise movement over the River Dnieper to   Smolensk in mid-July. Though the easy victories  ended and although the wider Battle of Smolensk   was a major German victory on paper, it led  to over 100,000 German troops being killed,  

Wounded or captured and slowed the advance  on Moscow, a delay which ultimately resulted   in the capital not being seized by the  Nazis before the Russian winter set in. Guderian had already been dispatched to the  southeast before the Battle of Smolensk ended  

In September 1941. He did so with the Knight’s  Cross with Oak Leaves, a new honour which Hitler   had introduced in 1940. The goal of his diversion  was to join the Battle of Kyiv. Against the wishes   of many of his generals Hitler had insisted on  prioritising the capture of the Ukrainian capital  

Above Moscow, believing there was ample time  to take Kyiv and then Moscow before the winter.   Von Bock and Guderian both objected to this  strategy, believing Moscow should be prioritised,   but when they met with Hitler Guderian’s nerve  failed him and after Hitler presented the case  

For proceeding on to Moscow, Guderian  largely backed down and placated Hitler,   later stating that the decision had already been  made and as a Prussian officer he was duty bound   to implement the directives of the government.  Thus, in later August his 2nd Panzer Group moved  

South to Kyiv to aid in the encirclement of the  city. In the end hundreds of thousands of Soviet   troops were captured in the Ukrainian offensive  and the Soviets lost 600,000 men cumulatively,   but again the diversion had delayed the strike  on Moscow as the winter loomed ever nearer.

By the time Moscow became the priority again in  late September and early October the number of   functional German tanks across the Eastern Front  had nearly halved. Production was ramping up in   Central Europe, but it still could not meet the  rate of attrition on the frontlines. Guderian’s  

2nd Panzer Group was badly affected, with only  a quarter of the tanks he had led into eastern   Poland and Belarussia in late June still being  operational. Nevertheless he was ordered to the   Russian capital, where he was assured new units  would be available. It was here that Guderian  

Would fail to achieve major victories for the  first time. His divisions did win a substantial   victory at Bryansk, completing another massively  damaging encirclement of the Soviet 3rd, 13th   and 50th armies, but the effort to follow this  up by capturing the Tula region was a step too  

Far. Here Guderian’s tanks became bogged down for  the first time and it took three weeks of intense   fighting between Army Group Centre and the Red  Army before the outskirts of Tula were reached,   dramatically slowing the overall progress towards  Moscow. Consequently, it was early November before  

The Germans began closing on the capital and by  this time the cracks in the invasion strategy were   multiplying, with a drastic lack of supplies and  number of fully operational tanks and motorized   vehicles having plummeted. Even worse, the worst  winter that would be seen in the twentieth century  

Was beginning and temperatures plummeted at  times to nearly -40 degrees Celsius in Russia,   causing the diesel in the engines of the German  Panzers to freeze, eventualities which Guderian,   Lutz and the other advocates of tank warfare  over the past ten years had never prepared for.

It was not just Guderian who was beginning to  suffer his first setbacks. So was the wider Nazi   state. The German advance into the Soviet Union  had been incredibly swift in the late summer and   autumn of 1941, but the invasion first slowed  and then stalled in the early winter outside  

Moscow and Leningrad. As the bitter Russian winter  arrived, German soldiers, who were ill-prepared   for the brutal weather, died in large numbers for  the first time during the war. At the very same   time, Germany’s new ally, the Empire of Japan,  initiated a war against the United States in  

December 1941. This brought the Americans into  the war in Europe as well. The first major signs   of the impact of US involvement in the conflict  were seen in North Africa where the Italians and   German North Afrika Korps had nearly succeeded in  seizing Egypt and the Suez Canal in 1941. In the  

Course of 1942 and early 1943 the Allies won the  campaign here and soon opened a Southern Front in   Europe with an invasion of Sicily and southern  Italy. Yet all of this paled by comparison with   the disaster which began to unfold on the Eastern  Front for the Nazis. In the autumn of 1942 Hitler  

Focused his energies on securing the city of  Stalingrad in south-western Russia and from there   the oilfields of the region beyond as a means of  depriving the Soviets of the fuel. It led in early   1943 to the first massive defeat experienced by  the Wehrmacht with the virtual destruction of the  

German 6th Army at Stalingrad. From this juncture  the Germans were fighting a defensive war as the   Soviets began pushing them back westwards  into Belarussia, Ukraine and then Poland. Guderian was largely uninvolved in the war  effort while these reverses were occurring. On  

The 26th of December 1941 after his divisions  had been involved in several failed missions,   including an inability to fully secure Tula,  Guderian was dismissed from active service.   Von Bock had been relieved of the command  of Army Group Centre when he was unable to  

Proceed any further than a position where his  divisions could see Moscow in the distance but   not seize the city. Guderian did not get along  with his successor, Field Marshal Gunther von   Kluge. The tank commander had also visited Hitler  in his Wolf’s Lair headquarters in Prussia and  

Pleaded for a withdrawal or some other measure  to look towards the welfare of the men of Army   Group Centre in the freezing weather. This was not  only refused, but accelerated Hitler’s decision to   dismiss Guderian. Heinz also suffered a mild  heart attack around this time and his ailing  

Health led him to return to Germany and to not  petition for a new command throughout 1942. Guderian retained close correspondence with  many German commanders through this career   hiatus. Eventually a call came from the Fuhrer  in February 1943 to resume his military life,  

No doubt spurred by the disaster at Stalingrad  and Hitler’s increasing tendency to cycle   through generals who had displeased him. By 1943  Hitler was coming back to those he had dismissed   earlier. In this instance he promoted Guderian  to become Inspector General of the Panzer Troops,  

Effectively making him the operational head of  tank warfare in the Third Reich. In this post   Guderian did not lead divisions of tanks at  the front, but instead largely operated from   Germany and Poland, collaborating with individuals  like the newly appointed Minister for Armaments,  

Albert Speer, to ensure that tank production was  maximised. Much of this was achieved through the   slave labour of Czechs, Poles and  Ukrainians in German factories,   something Guderian was entirely aware of. It  was also hampered by an ideological insistence  

By Hitler that tanks should be replaced by new  tanks, whereas Guderian had informed Speer that   many damaged tanks could be repaired effectively,  with much faster and with less expense. His range   of responsibilities increased even beyond this  over time. In the summer and autumn of 1944,  

For instance, as the Russians pushed the  German armies towards Poland and then Germany,   he drew up the Guderian Plan, a large scheme  for the erection of defensive lines across   Eastern Europe along the course of rivers like the  Oder and Vistula, as well as through additional  

Fortifying of cities like Danzig and Posen. As  such, while most of Guderian’s major successes   on the battlefield were won in the first years of  the war, he was never in a more senior position   within the military than the two-year period after  his recall and promotion in the spring of 1943.

Much of this was the result of the trust which  Hitler placed in Guderian. The tank commander   was almost unquestionably a committed Nazi by  this time, swerving little from any established   ideologies and doctrines. This would explain  why when an attempt was made to kill Hitler  

And several other senior Nazi ministers before  overthrowing the government in July 1944 Guderian   was appointed to chair the Honour Court which was  set-up to prosecute hundreds of military officers   connected in any form with the leaders of the  plot. Many were tortured and executions were  

Carried out in a brutal fashion. Guderian later  claimed that he had been reluctant to undertake   the task and had only agreed to do so in  the tense environment of late July 1944,   when a refusal to carry out orders could just  as easily have led to him being tortured and  

Executed. Yet there is no evidence to suggest  that he was reluctant in any way. Conversely,   in the days that followed he was heavily  involved in a campaign for the total   Nazification of the army by demanding  that all officers serving anywhere in  

German territory were to join the Nazi  Party and swear oaths of allegiance. The events of July 1944 came with a promotion.  On the 21st of July, the day after the attempted   assassination of Hitler, Guderian was appointed as  the Chief of the General Army Staff, effectively  

Placing him in charge of the administration and  organisation of the Wehrmacht. There were still   more senior commanders than him, but Guderian now  ran much of the day-to-day organisation between   different branches and departments, and was in  charge of staff on a general level within the  

Command corp. This added to his responsibilities,  which were largely focused on slowing the Russian   advance. This had been made more difficult  by the Battle of Kursk that raged for seven   weeks in Russia between early July and late August  1943. This was the largest tank battle in history,  

Involving over 3,000 German tanks all told, but  it resulted in the complete loss of hundreds of   tanks and damage being inflicted on well  over a thousand more. When combined with   the new fronts being opened in Italy and  then in France with the D-Day landings,  

Guderian could not replace the resources which  were being lost and after the autumn of 1944 the   Russian advance began to speed up as cracks in the  German lines developed in Poland and Ukraine. Even   as he was overseeing the Honour Court in Berlin,  Guderian was also keeping an eye on the Russian  

Advance on Warsaw which neither he nor the other  senior German commanders could do much to halt.   Matters only became more difficult in the months  that followed as Hitler became determined to pull   vital resources away from the Eastern Front  to launch a counter-offensive in the west,  

For what eventually became the Ardennes  Offensive or the Battle of the Bulge.. The last months of the war were peculiar ones for  Guderian, ones in which he would rapidly rise to   become one of the closest confidantes within the  military of many of the most senior Nazi figures,  

But then just as quickly be dismissed. By the  winter of 1944 he was viewed as a completely   trustworthy figure, one who would follow orders to  the bitter end even as teenage boys and pensioners   were being armed to defend the home country  against the final Soviet push into Germany  

Early in 1945. Tellingly, he was increasingly  allied with Heinrich Himmler during this period,   the individual who had built the SS into  an ideological machine and was in charge of   overseeing the concentration camp system across  Europe. Such a close relationship makes it very  

Difficult to not assume that Guderian was fully  aware of what had happened in the death camps   in Poland over the previous three years. But  while he was aligning himself with Himmler,   who was clandestinely trying to discover what  terms German surrender might be considered by  

The Western Allies, Guderian was increasingly  at odds with Hitler, a drug-addled figure in the   final stages of the war, wracked by ill health  and delusional. In numerous meetings between   the Fuhrer and his senior commanders in the first  months of 1945, as related by Albert Speer in his  

Lengthy memoirs years later, Guderian clashed with  Hitler, arguing against measures which he saw as   being reckless or counter-productive. For several  months this was allowed. Yet eventually Hitler’s   patience wore thin when matters came to a head  on the 27th of March 1945. At this meeting Hitler  

Asked everyone else except Keitel and Guderian  to leave the room before informing Guderian that   he needed to take six weeks of sick leave to  recover from whatever was ailing him. He was   effectively being relieved of his positions. It  would not matter anyway. Five weeks later Hitler  

Committed suicide in the same bunker where he  had relieved Guderian of his duties. A week after   Hitler’s death the war came to an end. Guderian  surrendered to the Allies on the 10th of May 1945. Like many other Germans, Guderian was detained  for some time once the war came to an end as  

The Allies attempted to resolve the enormously  complex issues of who was going to be charged   with crimes. Guderian was one of a great  many senior and middling German military   officers who would not be charged with the  more serious crimes such as fomenting the war  

Or engaging in genocide and war crimes. Instead  figureheads were chosen to stand trial as part   of the marquee trials being held before the  international tribunal at Nuremburg in the   years following the war. In the case of the  Wehrmacht, Wilhelm Keitel, brother of Bodewin,  

Who Guderian had known for nearly forty years,  was placed on trial and executed at Nuremburg   as the head of the armed forces. Other senior  generals were given life sentences or years   in prison. Guderian avoided all this, despite  efforts by the re-established Polish government  

To have him extradited to Poland and stand  trial there for various crimes committed in   Poland during the war. The Western Allies  refused to punish or extradite Guderian,   primarily because he was acting as an informant  with the US CIA. At the time there was admittedly  

Little evidence to tie him to war crimes,  though in the decades since it became apparent   that he was aware of the regime’s more sinister  actions and that he was largely a committed Nazi. After undertaking Denazification and being  released in 1948 Guderian retired to southern  

Germany and resumed his writing. He published  two books in the early 1950s. Kann Westeuropa   verteidigt warden? or Can Western Europe be  Defended?, published in 1950. This book explored   the position of West Germany as a bulwark against  the westward expansion of the Soviet Union. It  

Was deliberately written with the intention of  creating the idea that former Nazis and German   military commanders were now the natural allies  of the US, Britain and France against Russian   communists. A great many politicians in these  countries agreed with him and in the early  

1950s several of Guderian’s former colleagues  within the General Staff of the Wehrmacht had   their prison sentences drastically reduced  and were returned to civil society to begin   working for the armed forces of West Germany. More  widely read was Guderian’s memoir, Panzer Leader,  

Published in Germany in 1950 and then in an  English translation in 1952. In it Guderian   presented himself as the great innovator in  tank warfare and the architect of Blitzkrieg,   an interpretation which was accepted for  years by historians, but which has been  

Tempered in recent decades by an understanding  that while Guderian played a significant role   in advocating for a major motorized element to  the German Wehrmacht, he was just one of several   innovators in this regard and the Panzer programme  owed as much to Oswald Lutz and even the British  

Developments in tank warfare in the 1920s which  Guderian learned much from. Panzer Leader was a   major success with the German public and abroad  and by 1977 it had gone through ten editions. Guderian’s books also contributed to the myth of  the “clean Wehrmacht”. This was the interpretation  

Of the war which was pushed by Guderian and  others like von Manstein through memoirs and   autobiographies in the 1950s. They argued that  the German military commanders were not actually   acting in unison with the Nazi regime. They  tried to present themselves as honour-bound  

Military officers in the old Prussian tradition  who were not responsible for the worst crimes   perpetrated by Hitler, his ministers and the SS.  They stated that the military elite were allegedly   unaware of what was happening to the Jews and  other groups. Some even tried to suggest that  

They were opposed to the regime, but continued  to serve out of patriotic nationalism. For many   years the myth of the clean Wehrmacht was believed  in many circles, but as historians have produced   biographical studies of figures like Guderian,  von Manstein, Keitel and others over the past half  

Century it has been possible to identify that they  had clear and extensive knowledge of the Holocaust   and other crimes, made no efforts to object to  these policies and in many instances were guilty   of war crimes themselves on the Eastern Front. Guderian’s final years were spent in the glow of  

The minor celebrity status which he had achieved  through his writings, with publications as far   afield as the Times in London discussing a  prediction he had made that if the United   States committed too many resources to fighting  the Korean War or involving itself in trying to  

Stop communism replacing French colonial rule in  Indochina it might leave Western Europe vulnerable   to Soviet aggression. He also maintained a vibrant  correspondence with many of his former colleagues   from the General Staff of the Wehrmacht during  the war. At the same time his health was failing  

Him as he entered his mid-sixties. He died on the  14th of May 1954 at the age of 65 in his adopted   homeland in Schwangau. With his own home-place  in Poland now under Soviet control there was to   be no burial there. Instead he was laid to  rest in his wife Margarete’s family’s plot  

In Goslar in Saxony. A year after his death  West Germany was admitted to the US-led North   Atlantic Treaty Organisation and six months  later a new West German army, the Bundeswehr,   was created. It was the realisation of the  political and military rehabilitation that  

Guderian had campaigned for in his final years.  His son and namesake Heinz Gunther Guderian   served as a tank commander in this new force and  before his retirement in 1974 rose to the position   of Inspector of Panzer Troops, the post his  father had held decades earlier under the Nazis.

Heinz Guderian was one of the most important  of Germany’s military commanders during the   Second World War. There is no doubt of his  importance in the development of the Panzer   tank programme and the centrality of fast-moving  motorized divisions within the Wehrmacht during  

The 1930s. Furthermore, he was the commander  who led the rapid race to the sea in May 1940   and cut the British Expeditionary Force off from  the main French army. Had it not been for Hermann   Goering’s desire for the Luftwaffe to claim the  victory over the British thereafter, the British  

Force might well have been obliterated at Dunkirk  in the week following Guderian’s action. However,   it is excessive to suggest that Guderian  was the architect of Blitzkrieg and that   this has even been suggested owes more to his  own self-promotion through his writings than  

Anything else. He certainly did contribute  enormously to the development of Germany’s   tank programme prior to the war, but others did  as well and the Germans were also drawing on   technical work undertaken by the British in the  1920s. Moreover, his staggering success in the  

French campaign was not matched on the Eastern  Front where Guderian faced tougher odds. There   was insufficient evidence to charge him with  complicity in the regime’s crimes at that time,   but much has been revealed in the interim which  paints him in a damning light. Consequently, we  

Have here an ultranationalist, one whose political  views were broadly aligned with the Nazis and   became more so over time, while also being  aware of and at times complicit in its crimes. What do you think of Heinz Guderian? Was he the  architect of the Blitzkrieg, and one of the most  

Skilled of all the German commanders during the  Second World War, or were his victories primarily   due to being in a hugely advantageous position  such as during the invasions of Poland and France?   Please let us know in the comment section, and in  the meantime, thank you very much for watching.