German Army 1933-1945 (1990) by Matthew Cooper

In Poland in September 1939 – and then in even more dramatically in France eight months later – the German army shocked the world with the speed and audacity of their armored invasions that seemed to break all the rules. It was an entirely new style of war called blitzkrieg – “Lightning War.” Conceptualized during the fiscally lean interwar years by a group of maverick German officers, the Nazi party wholeheartedly embraced the theories of blitzkrieg and poured money into making it a reality after sweeping to power in 1933. The military leadership in France, Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States, meanwhile, remained wedded to old concepts, the unimaginative tactics that led to the bloodletting on the Western Front, completely blind to the reality that the agility and power of the modern tank made front lines useless and exposed flanks a non-issue.

That’s the narrative that many believe about the German army and blitzkrieg during World War II. Matthew Cooper’s 1979 study, “The German Army: 1933 – 1945,” argues that it’s completely wrong. In fact, most of what you think you know about the Wehrmacht is a lie, including that there was ever such a think a blitzkrieg. There wasn’t, he says. The American media made it up out of whole cloth, mainly to help explain why the allies were performing so poorly against the Germans.

Cooper’s core argument is that the German Army’s leadership never embraced the radical armored warfare concepts promulgated by Heinz Guderian and other innovators, a concept that Cooper calls “the armored idea.” Blitzkrieg is a myth, according to the author. Ironically, the term itself was coined not by the Germans but by Time Magazine. The Germans had no coherent theory as such. The German army had not been organized and equipped along a line that supported armored warfare. In fact, Hans von Seekt’s strategy to build a New German Army on quality over quantity was defeated by Hitler and his call for conscription and massive expansion. Von Seekt had sought to re-ground the German Army in what had made the Prussians great: individual honor and pride in the regiment as inspired by Frederick the Great; intensive training combined with a willing, intelligent, but unquestioning discipline as established by Scharnhorst; and the strategic doctrine of decisive maneuver aimed at total destruction of the enemy as crafted by Moltke and Schleiffen.

The author notes that the Wehrmacht’s leadership – many of whom came from the artillery branch (e.g. Fritsch, Brautisch, Beck, Halder, Jodl, Keitel) – never really understood the armored idea. The leadership remained committed to what the Great Prussian General Staff called “vernichtungsgedanke” – the battle of annihilation that called for decisive maneuver, physical destruction of the enemy, well-coordinated flanking and encirclement, guarded flanks, unbroken supply lines, dominated by large infantry armies. Hannibal at Cannae (216 BC) and Frederick the Great at Leuthen (1757) were their historical inspirations.

The armored idea was very different; the only commonality with “vernichtungsgedanke” was a focus on decisive maneuver. Guderian and other armor pioneers sought to paralyze the enemy, not annihilate him. Unsupported thrusts deep into the enemy’s rear and independence of action were the hallmarks of the armored idea, not centralized control. In the end, Cooper writes, “Guderian and his supporters failed; the military establishment triumphed.”

That fact can be construed from the German order of battle in September 1939. The Wehrmacht possessed just 3,200 tanks, 90% of them obsolete, and 155,000 horses. In fact, the Germans would go through nearly twice as many horses in the Second World War (2.7 million) than they had in the First (1.4 million). At no time, Cooper claims, was the panzer arm given the status or any special attention by the military establishment that indicated it had accepted armor as the most important component of a new form of warfare.

“From the outset, the armoured idea was stillborn,” Cooper, writes. The Polish campaign was a classic double envelopment. Indeed, it was the largest such encirclement battle in history. The author maintains that no principles of the armored idea were used. All mechanized forces were subordinated to the strategy of encirclement and the rigid protection of flanks.

The same goes for the Wehrmacht’s stunning victory over France in 1940. Manstein’s plan called for a “fast, well-coordinated attack in which infantry formations would play a major part.” The plan was undeniably audacious and relied on surprise, speed, and daring – all core components of the armored idea – but it was to be a campaign of organized and coordinated velocity, not the independence of action with panzer units performing deep thrusts behind enemy lines to foment chaos and command paralysis.

Cooper makes many credible points here, but he overstates his case, at least in this reviewer’s opinion. His primary thesis – that the Wehrmacht’s most celebrated victories early in the war did not adhere strictly to the concepts articulated by Guderian – is certainly true. However, his overall damning assessment of German leadership at both the tactical and strategic level fails to hold water. Most often, the difference between victory and defeat is determined relatively, not absolutely. In that view, the German’s understanding and execution of armored warfare may not have been absolutely complete, but it was relatively vastly superior to that of the allies, at least at the outset of the war.