"There are no desperate situations, there are only desperate people." -- Heinz Guderian
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian (17 June 1888 – 14 May 1954) was a military theorist and innovative General of the German Army during the Second World War. Germany's panzer forces were raised and fought according to his works, best-known among them Achtung — Panzer!. He held posts as Panzer Corps commander, Panzer Army commander, Inspector-General of Armoured Troops, and Chief of Staff of the Army (Chef des Generalstabs des Heeres). He rose to the rank of full general (General der Panzertruppe) in July 1940 and was later promoted to Generaloberst. He later also became Chief of the German General Staff.
"If the tanks succeed, then victory follows.""It is decisive to completely destroy Warsaw.""It is sometimes tougher to fight my superiors than the French.""Logistics is the ball and chain of armored warfare.""The engine of the tank is a weapon just as the main-gun.""Whenever in future wars the battle is fought, armored troops will play the decisive role.""You hit somebody with your fist and not with your fingers spread."
Guderian was born in Culm (Kulm, Che?mno, now in Poland), West Prussia. From 1901 to 1907 Guderian attended various military schools. He entered the Army in 1907 as an ensign-cadet in the (Hanoverian) Jäger Bataillon No. 10, commanded at that point by his father, Friedrich Guderian. After attending the war academy in Metz he was made a Leutnant (full Lieutenant) in 1908. In 1911 Guderian joined the 3rd Telegraphen-Battalion (Wireless-Battalion), Prussian Army Signal Corps. In October 1913 he married Margarete Goerne with whom he had two sons, Heinz Günter (1914—2004) and Kurt (born 1918) who would both become highly decorated Wehrmacht officers during World War II (and in the case of his older son, a Panzer general in the German Bundeswehr after the war).
During the First World War he served as a Signals and General Staff officer. This allowed him to get an overall view of battlefield conditions. He often disagreed with his superiors and ended up being transferred to the army intelligence department where he remained until the end of the war. This second assignment, while removed from the battlefield, sharpened his strategic skills.
After the war, Guderian stayed in the reduced 100,000-man German Army (Reichswehr), where he was made company commander of the 10th Jäger-Battalion after which he joined the 'General Staff'-in-waiting, the Truppenamt (a German General Staff being explicitly forbidden by the Versailles Treaty). In 1927 Guderian was promoted to major and transferred to the Truppenamt group for Army transport and Overseer of motorized tactics based in Berlin. This key role put him at the centre of the development of the resources that would later come to dominate what became known as blitzkrieg. Fluent in both English and French, he gathered ideas by the British maneuver warfare theorists J.F.C. Fuller and, debatably, B.H. Liddell Hart, as well as the writings, interestingly enough, of the then-unknown Charles de Gaulle. Their works were translated into German by Guderian. In 1931 he was promoted to Oberstleutnant (Lieutenant-Colonel) and became chief of staff to the Inspectorate of Motorized Troops under Generalleutnant (Major-General) Oswald Lutz and in 1933 promoted to Oberst (Colonel). In this time he had written many papers on motorised warfare which were seen as authoritative and moving the development of this area significantly. These papers were based on extensive wargaming without troops, with paper tanks and finally with armoured vehicles. In October 1935 he was posted to the newly created 2nd Panzer Division (one of three) as commander. On 1 August 1936 he was promoted to Generalleutnant, and on 4 February 1938 he was promoted to General and given command of the XVI Army Corps.
Achtung - Panzer! was written in 1936-37 as an explanation of Guderian's theories on the role of tanks and aircraft in modern warfare. It was actually a compilation of not only Guderian's own theories but also the ideas of other proponents of armored and combined-arms warfare within the general staff, though the bulk of the credit rightly is Guderian's. The panzer force he created would become the core of the German Army's power during the Second World War and would deliver the core of the fighting style known as blitzkrieg. To this day, his contributions to combined arms tactics are studied throughout military schools.
Although initially promoted and partially implemented by the British Army, the concepts of "blitzkrieg" were not fully developed. The German army of the First World War had worked out the complexities of breaking through a front with highly concentrated resources. This technique, however, failed the Germans in their offensives of March 1918, largely because the breakthrough elements were on foot and could not sustain the impetus of the initial attack. Motorized infantry was the key to sustaining a breakthrough, and this would have to wait until the 1930s to have a chance at being realized. Tukhachevsky, in Russia, can be said to have already grasped this potential, but the influence of his military philosophy in the ongoing development of the Red Army diminished after he was no longer able to advocate for it personally (he was executed by Stalin in 1937). Guderian was the first who fully developed and advocated the strategy of blitzkrieg and put it into its final shape. He summarized the tactics of blitzkrieg as the way to get the mobile and motorized armored divisions to work together and support each other in order to achieve decisive success. In his book Panzer Leader he wrote:
In this year (1929) I became convinced that tanks working on their own or in conjunction with infantry could never achieve decisive importance. My historical studies; the exercises carried out in England and our own experience with mock-ups had persuaded me that the tanks would never be able to produce their full effect until weapons on whose support they must inevitably rely were brought up to their standard of speed and of cross-country performance. In such formation of all arms, the tanks must play primary role, the other weapons being subordinated to the requirements of the armor. It would be wrong to include tanks in infantry divisions: what was needed were armored divisions which would include all the supporting arms needed to fight with full effect.
Guderian believed that certain developments in technology needed to take place in conjunction with blitzkrieg in order to support the entire theory, especially in communication and special visual equipment with which the armored divisions in general, and tanks specifically, should be equipped. Guderian insisted in 1933, within the high command, that every tank in the German armored force must be equipped with radio and visual equipment in order to enable the tank commander to communicate and perform a decisive role in blitzkrieg.
Guderian's claim to be the 'Father of Blitzkrieg' has, however, been challenged (Corum 92 pp 137—141) as gross self-exaggeration. His publications before 1936 were few, relatively mundane and did not address questions of fundamental doctrine. The famous Guderian book, Achtung Panzer, while an early military publications advocating tank warfare and while forcefully written, it was not particularly original. The true mainspring of German armored doctrine was the unsung Ernst Volckheim, who receives only passing mention in Guderian's memoirs. Moreover, Guderian's claim that the Panzer advocates, of whom he claims to have been foremost, were met with resistance from within the army, especially from Ludwig Beck, has been exposed as deceitful. All Reichswehr leaders from Seeckt onwards enthusiastically endorsed armor. The Reichswehr's basic doctrine emphasized speed and maneuver. The famed Panzer doctrine was little but its application to armor with its improvement in mobility.
In the Second World War, Guderian first served as the commander of the XIX Corps in the invasion of Poland. He personally led the German forces during the Battle of Wizna and Battle of Kobryn testing his theory against the reality of war for the first time. After the invasion he took property in the Warthegau area of occupied Poland, evicting the Polish estate owners. In the Invasion of France, he personally led the attack that traversed the Ardennes Forest, crossed the Meuse River and broke through the French lines at Sedan. During the French campaign, he led his panzer forces in rapid blitzkrieg-style advances and earned the nickname "Der schnelle Heinz" (Hurrying Heinz) among his troops. Guderian's panzer group led the "race to the sea" that split the Allied armies in two, depriving the French armies and the BEF in Northern France and Belgium of their fuel, food, spare parts and ammunition. Faced with orders from nervous superiors to halt on one occasion, he managed to continue his advance by stating he was performing a 'reconnaissance in force'. Guderian's column was famously denied the chance to destroy the Allied beachhead at Dunkirk by Hitler's personal order.
In 1941 he commanded Panzergruppe 2, also known as Panzergruppe Guderian, in Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, receiving the 24th award of the Oak Leaves to his Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on 17 July of that year. From 5 October 1941 he led the redesignated Second Panzer Army. His armored spearhead captured Smolensk in a remarkably short time and was poised to launch the final assault on Moscow when he was ordered to turn south towards Kiev (see Lötzen decision).
He protested against Hitler's decision and as a result lost the Führer's confidence. He was relieved of his command on 25 December 1941 after Fieldmarshal Günther von Kluge, not noted for his ability to face up to Hitler, claimed that Guderian had ordered a withdrawal in contradiction of Hitler's "stand fast" order. Guderian was transferred to the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH) reserve pool, his chances of being promoted to fieldmarshal, which depended on Hitler's personal decision, possibly ruined forever. Guderian would deny that he ordered any kind of withdrawal. Ironically this act of apparent insubordination is cited by his admirers as further proof of his independence of spirit when dealing with Hitler. Guderian's own view on the matter was that he had been victimized by von Kluge who was the commanding officer when German troops came to a standstill at the Moscow front in late autumn/winter 1941. At some point he so provoked von Kluge with accusations related to his dismissal that the field marshal challenged him to a duel, which Hitler forbade.
After his dismissal Guderian and his wife retired to a sequestered country estate at Deipenhof in the Reichsgau Wartheland.
In September 1942, when Erwin Rommel was recuperating in Germany from health problems, he suggested Guderian to OKW as the only one who could replace him temporarily in Africa, the response came in the same night: "Guderian is not accepted". Only after the German defeat at Stalingrad was Guderian given a new position. On 1 March 1943 he was appointed Inspector-General of the Armoured Troops. Here his responsibilities were to determine armoured strategy and to oversee tank design and production and the training of Germany's panzer forces. He reported to Hitler directly. In Panzer Leader, he conceded that he was fully aware of the brutal occupation policies of the German administration of Ukraine, claiming that this was wholly the responsibility of civilians, about whom he could do nothing.
According to Guderian, Hitler was easily persuaded to field too many new tank designs, and this resulted in supply, logistical, and repair problems for German forces in Russia. Guderian preferred large numbers of Panzer IIIs and IVs over smaller numbers of heavier tanks like the Tiger, which had limited range and could rarely go off-road without getting stuck in the Russian mud.
On 21 July 1944, after the failure of the July 20 Plot in which Guderian had no involvement, Guderian was appointed chief of staff of the army (Chef des Generalstabs des Heeres) as a successor to Kurt Zeitzler, who had departed July 1 after a nervous breakdown. During his tenure as chief of staff, he let it be known that any General Staff officer who wasn't prepared to be "a National Socialist officer" wasn't welcome on that body. He also served on the "Court of Military Honour," a drumhead court-martial that expelled many of the officers involved in the July 20 Plot from the Army before handing them over to the People's Court.
However, he had a long series of violent rows with Hitler over the way in which Germany should handle the war on both fronts. Hitler finally dismissed Guderian on 28 March 1945 after a shouting-match over the failed counterattack of General Theodor Busse's 9th Army to break through to units encircled at Küstrin; he stated to Guderian that "your physical health requires that you immediately take six weeks convalescent leave," ("Health problems" were commonly used as a facade in the Third Reich to remove executives who for some reason could not simply be sacked, but from episodes Guderian describes in his memoirs it is evident that he actually did suffer from congestive heart failure.) He was replaced by General Hans Krebs. The Enigma Machine belonging to Guderian is on display at the Intelligence Corps museum in Chicksands, Bedfordshire.
Together with his Panzer staff, Guderian surrendered to American troops on 10 May 1945 and remained in U.S. custody as a prisoner of war until his release on 17 June 1948. Despite Soviet and Polish government protests, he was not charged with any war crimes during the Nuremberg Trials, as his actions and behavior were ruled to be consistent with those of a professional soldier.
After the war he was often invited to attend meetings of British veterans' groups, where he analyzed past battles with his old foes. During the early 1950s he was active in advising on the redevelopment of the German army: Bundeswehr (see Searle's Wehrmacht Generals).
Guderian died on 14 May 1954 at the age of 65, in Schwangau near Füssen (Southern Bavaria) and is buried at the Friedhof Hildesheimer Strasse in Goslar.
Guderian's son, Heinz Günther Guderian, became a prominent General in the post-war German Bundeswehr and NATO.
In 2000, a documentary titled Guderian, directed by Anton Vassil, was aired on French television. It featured Heinz Guenther Guderian (Guderian's surviving son, the other died in the Second World War) along with other notables such as Field Marshal Lord Carver (129th British Field Marshal), expert historians Kenneth Macksey and Heinz Wilhelm. Using rarely seen photographs from Guderian's private collection, the documentary provides an inside view into the life and career of Guderian and draws a profile of Guderian's character and the moral responsibility of the German general staff under Hitler.
Guderian describes what he would do if he were in charge of German tank forces.
Guderian describes what he did when he was in charge of German tank forces. It was originally published with the German title Erinnerungen eines Soldaten (Memories of a Soldier) (Kurt Vowinckel Verlag, Heidelberg 1950; 10th edition 1977).
