On 21st May 1940 a travel-stained German general, short in stature but powerful in enthusiasm, drove into Abbeville and gazed out across the English Channel. At the end of ‘this remarkable day', as he described it, he basked momentarily in the realisation of a dream because, in and around the precincts of the town, the army corps of his creation, strong in armoured vehicles, held undisputed possession by right of conquest at the culmination of a performance which was unique in military history. With scarcely a pause the German tank force had fought its way through the intricate Ardennes, breached a fortified river-line and defeated a major portion of the enemy's best troops as it cut a swathe through France. Still quite fresh, it had taken Abbeville practically unopposed because, at the end of an advance of nearly 220 miles in eleven days, it had, by the sheer speed of its progress, left the opposing forces far behind. The Anglo-French add Belgian armies, which the Germans had so comprehensively outpaced, lay broken in their trail: the rest of the Channel ports stood virtually undefended, ripe to seizing, and those out-manoeuvred allied forces which still retained a measure of cohesion could only look on, aghast in the realisation that they were on the verge of total envelopment.

General der Panzertruppe Heinz Wilhelm Guderian had arrived at the zenith of his career. At negligible cost and by the employment of a mere three divisions, with occasional assistance from others helped spasmodically by air power, he had thrown the Anglo-French allies into chaos and accomplished in a matter of days what the entire German Army had failed to achieve at unprecedented cost in the four years of war preceding 1918. In the process this General Officer had elevated himself to the eminence of Gustavus Adolphus by creating a truly revolutionary concept and weapon in time of peace and pursuing the idea to a successful conclusion in war: the difference in authority between a monarch and a quite junior officer, however, made his achievement all the more out-standing. The force he had created was motivated by speed allied to armoured protection for the fighting men, and the panzer divisions he commanded were dominated by the tank, a weapon which had barely demonstrated its potentiality before 1918. Yet on 21st May 1940 the sheer pace of Guderian's advance, which had stricken the Anglo-French armies by its dash and discreet selection of objectives, also baffled the conventionally minded strategists and tacticians of the Great German General Staff when they watched the unbelievable unfolding before them on their maps and heard the reports flooding back by radio from the panzer spearhead.

Let it not be imagined that the officers of the General Staff were laggard in their search for military improvements; for generations their preoccupation had been the harnessing of the latest technology and techniques to the acquisition of swift decision in battle in pursuit of the aim of resolving political problems by means of short wars. Yet with the prospect of a short war in sight the finishing touches to the design etched by the panzer force were bedevilled by paradox. Cautious leaders restrained Guderian for fear of his becoming over-extended at a moment when one more quick advance would have completed the envelopment of the enemy. The Allies were allowed, eventually, to escape via Dunkirk. At the same time the reaction of the German hierarchy to Guderian's success was euphoric. Generaloberst Alfred Jodl, the Chef des Oberkommandos der Wehmacht (OKW) Operations Staff, recorded how the Head of State and Supreme Commander, Adolf Hitler, was '... beside himself with joy and he already foresaw victory and peace'. France, it was true, would fall, but the triumph was incomplete, For the British, encouraged by their army's escape, declined to give up the struggle: tanks could not easily cross the Channel and aircraft, unlike armies, would not bring a decision on their own. Guderian's triumph of method now acted as a spur to disaster. With the seizure of such immense gains by the application of comparatively minimal force, Hitler and the uplifted members of his entourage came to believe that nothing was beyond the power of their tank and air forces. In due course German tanks would stamp their track marks across the rest of Europe, deep into Russia and along the North African shores. But never again would they wholly bring about the destruction of an entire major nation along with its army. The lessons which Guderian had learnt by studying the tactics employed against Germany in 1918 could themselves be copied. A colossal and unexpected military imbalance which had been revealed on the battlefield in 1940 was to be corrected.

Guderian: Table of Content

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