Antitank Defense

Because the Allies used tanks impressively in 1918, German officers gave serious consideration to antitank defense methods. Rooted in their memories of the 1918 collapse was the nagging fear that-as Ludendorff had finally conceded-tanks had become the single most effective tool for prying open the German Elastic Defense. However, General Beck confined this interest to traditional channels.

Figure 4. German antitank concept

Beck, who in Truppenfuhrung returned the German Army to the Elastic Defense, held profoundly orthodox views. One symptom of this orthodoxy was Beck's reluctance to embrace new ideas about tank warfare. Beck's logic recalled the emphatic pronouncements of German officers in 1918 that tanks were merely nuisances to a properly organized elastic defense in depth. Beck saw the traditional combat arms -- infantry, artillery, and even cavalry -- as being decisive, and he resisted the notion that armored formations could have a pivotal battlefield impact. [54]

Given such a conception, Beck deemed antitank defense measures as secondary to the central problem of halting artillerysupported attacks by enemy infantry.

According to the new German field manuals, the key to defeating enemy combined arms attacks thus lay in separating the enemy's tank and infantry forces. German soldiers were trained to concentrate their small-arms fire on the enemy infantrymen in order to separate them from any supporting tanks. While shredding the attacking infantry forces, German defenders were supposed to dodge enemy tanks, leaving the destruction of these metal monsters to specially designated antitank teams. [55]

Once the opposing infantry attack had been smashed, any surviving tanks were considered both vulnerable and relatively inconsequential. Those tanks, rampaging through the German defensive zones like rogue elephants, could be dispatched almost at leisure by antitank weapons located to the rear.

Specific measures prescribed for antitank defense were mostly codifications of 1918 practices. Tanks were to be neutralized by a combination of obstacles, minefields, and antitank weapons. Although antitank rifles would be available in all parts of the German defensive zones, the crew-served antitank guns (Panzerabwehr Kanonen, or Paks) and direct-fire artillery would generally be located to the rear of the main line of resistance. [56] (The rearmed German Army of 1939 had a seven-man antitank section armed with three antitank rifles in each rifle company. Each infantry regiment also contained a Pak antitank company, and each infantry division had a divisional antitank battalion of three additional Pak companies. [57])

Although Pak sections could be attached to forward elements in certain circumstances, the Germans thought these guns could be used more effectively as a "backstop" for the main infantry trench systems. They reasoned that these rearward antitank weapons would be relatively safe from any preliminary artillery bombardment, would be free to mass opposite tank penetrations as necessary, and would be able to engage those tanks without embarrassment from enemy infantry (see figure 4). German doctrine also allowed for the creation of special antitank assault groups composed of small teams of infantrymen who would try to destroy enemy tanks with mines and explosive charges from close range. As always, all German units were expected to counterattack vigorously in order to regain any position, even if it had been temporarily overrun by hostile tanks.

Through the 1930s, German antitank doctrine thus corresponded to the techniques first hammered out in 1917 and 1918. The first task of the defending forces was to halt the enemy infantry; that done, the isolated enemy tanks would then be at the mercy of German antitank weapons and close assault. [58]

Virtually all German writings about antitank warfare in the interwar period were based on the assumption that tanks without infantry were pitifully vulnerable to antitank weapons, an article of faith reaching back to the difficult last days of the Great War. One retired general praised the ability of "nearly invisible" antitank riflemen to prey on enemy tanks. [59] Another German officer spoke for many when he asserted that experience in the Spanish Civil War confirmed that "the defense is superior" to tanks since every tank-antitank duel in Spain had allegedly ended with victory for the antitank gunners. [60]

Defensive Use of German Tanks