Blitzkrieg 3 Game

[Cecelia Seiner]

Blitzkriegis a term used to describe a method of offensive warfare designed to strike a swift, focused blow at an enemy using mobile, maneuverable forces, including armored tanks and air support. Such an attack ideally leads to a quick victory, limiting the loss of soldiers and artillery. Most famously, blitzkrieg describes the successful tactics used by Nazi Germany in the early years of World War II, as German forces swept through Poland, Norway, Belgium, Holland and France with astonishing speed and force.

In the wake of their defeat in World War I, German military leaders determined that a lack of mobile, maneuverable forces and flexible tactics had led that conflict to bog down in the deadly attrition of trench warfare.

As a result, while France focused its efforts between the wars on building up its defensive border, known as the Maginot Line, the Germans decided to prepare for a shorter conflict won through military maneuvers, rather than in the trenches.

With close air support from the Luftwaffe (German air force) and the benefit of radio communications to aid in coordinating strategy, the Germans blazed through northern France and toward the English Channel, bombing London and other cities while pushing the British Expeditionary Force into a pocket around Dunkirk. By the end of June, the French army had collapsed, and the nation sued for peace with Germany.

In 1941, German forces again employed blitzkrieg tactics in their invasion of the Soviet Union, expecting a short campaign like the one they had enjoyed in Western Europe the previous spring. But the strategy proved less successful against the highly organized and well-armed Soviet defenses, and by 1943 Germany had been forced into a defensive war on all fronts.

Rather than a completely new form of warfare, the strategy Germany followed in May and June 1940 had much in common with the strategy it employed at the outset of World War I, when strategists like Alfred von Schlieffen determined Germany should aim to defeat its enemies quickly and decisively, as it was ill-suited to win a long and drawn-out conflict against larger, better-prepared forces.

But unlike in 1914-18, German forces fighting in 1939-40 had the benefit of new military technology developed or improved in the 1920s and 1930s, including tanks, motor vehicles, aircraft and radios. These new tools, combined with an emphasis on speed, mobility, focused attacks and encirclements, enabled the Wehrmacht to turn traditional military tactics into a devastatingly modern brand of warfare.

After blitzkrieg failed in the Soviet invasion, however, Hitler and German military leaders distanced themselves from the concept, claiming it was an invention of their enemies; Hitler himself denied he had ever used the word.

The Allies adapted blitzkrieg to their own advantage by the end of World War II, including in the Battle of Stalingrad and the European operations commanded by U.S. General George Patton in 1944. Patton had carefully studied the German campaigns against Poland and France and also favored quick, decisive action as a way to avoid more costly, drawn-out conflicts.

During the interwar period, aircraft and tank technologies matured and were combined with systematic application of the traditional German tactic of Bewegungskrieg (maneuver warfare): deep penetrations and the bypassing of enemy strong points to encircle and destroy enemy forces in a Kesselschlacht (cauldron battle/battle of encirclement).[2][5] During the invasion of Poland, Western journalists adopted the term blitzkrieg to describe that form of armored warfare.[6] The term had appeared in 1935, in the German military periodical Deutsche Wehr ("German Defence"), in connection to quick or lightning warfare.[7]

Despite being common in German and English-language journalism during World War II, the word Blitzkrieg was never used by the Wehrmacht as an official military term except for propaganda.[8] According to David Reynolds, "Hitler himself called the term Blitzkrieg 'A completely idiotic word' (ein ganz bldsinniges Wort)".[10] Some senior officers, including Kurt Student, Franz Halder and Johann Adolf von Kielmansegg, even disputed the idea that it was a military concept. Kielmansegg asserted that what many regarded as blitzkrieg was nothing more than "ad hoc solutions that simply popped out of the prevailing situation". Kurt Student described it as ideas that "naturally emerged from the existing circumstances" as a response to operational challenges.[11] The Wehrmacht never officially adopted it as a concept or doctrine.[a]

In 2005, the historian Karl-Heinz Frieser summarized blitzkrieg as the result of German commanders using the latest technology in the most advantageous way according to traditional military principles and employing "the right units in the right place at the right time".[12] Modern historians now understand blitzkrieg as the combination of the traditional German military principles, methods and doctrines of the 19th century with the military technology of the interwar period.[13] Modern historians use the term casually as a generic description for the style of maneuver warfare practiced by Germany during the early part of World War II, rather than as an explanation.[b] According to Frieser, in the context of the thinking of Heinz Guderian on mobile combined arms formations, blitzkrieg can be used as a synonym for modern maneuver warfare on the operational level.[14]

The traditional meaning of "blitzkrieg" is that of German tactical and operational methodology during the first half of the Second World War that is often hailed as a new method of warfare. The word, meaning "lightning war" or "lightning attack" in its strategic sense describes a series of quick and decisive short battles to deliver a knockout blow to an enemy state before it can fully mobilize. Tactically, blitzkrieg is a coordinated military effort by tanks, motorized infantry, artillery and aircraft, to create an overwhelming local superiority in combat power, to defeat the opponent and break through its defences.[15][16] Blitzkrieg as used by Germany had considerable psychological or "terror" elements,[c] such as the Jericho Trompete, a noise-making siren on the Junkers Ju 87 dive bomber, to affect the morale of enemy forces.[d] The devices were largely removed when the enemy became used to the noise after the Battle of France in 1940, and instead, bombs sometimes had whistles attached.[17][18] It is also common for historians and writers to include psychological warfare by using fifth columnists to spread rumours and lies among the civilian population in the theatre of operations.[15]

The origin of the term blitzkrieg is obscure. It was never used in the title of a military doctrine or handbook of the German Army or Air Force,[8] and no "coherent doctrine" or "unifying concept of blitzkrieg" existed; German High Command mostly referred to the group of tactics as "Bewegungskrieg" (Maneuver Warfare).[19] The term seems to have been rarely used in the German military press before 1939, and recent research at the German Militrgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, at Potsdam, found it in only two military articles from the 1930s.[e] Both used the term to mean a swift strategic knockout, rather than a radically new military doctrine or approach to war.

The first article (1935) dealt primarily with supplies of food and materiel in wartime. The term blitzkrieg was used in reference to German efforts to win a quick victory in the First World War but was not associated with the use of armored, mechanized or air forces. It argued that Germany must develop self-sufficiency in food because it might again prove impossible to deal a swift knockout to its enemies, which would lead to a long war.[20]

In the second article (1938), launching a swift strategic knockout was described as an attractive idea for Germany but difficult to achieve on land under modern conditions (especially against systems of fortification like the Maginot Line) unless an exceptionally high degree of surprise could be achieved. The author vaguely suggested that a massive strategic air attack might hold out better prospects, but the topic was not explored in detail.[20]

A third relatively early use of the term in German occurred in Die Deutsche Kriegsstrke (German War Strength) by Fritz Sternberg, a Jewish Marxist political economist and refugee from Nazi Germany, published in 1938 in Paris and in London as Germany and a Lightning War. Sternberg wrote that Germany was not prepared economically for a long war but might win a quick war ("Blitzkrieg"). He did not go into detail about tactics or suggest that the German armed forces had evolved a radically new operational method. His book offered scant clues as to how German lightning victories might be won.[20]

The German popular press followed suit nine months later, after the Fall of France in 1940; thus, although the word had first been used in Germany, it was popularized by British journalism.[4][7] Heinz Guderian referred to it as a word coined by the Allies: "as a result of the successes of our rapid campaigns our enemies ... coined the word Blitzkrieg".[24] After the German failure in the Soviet Union in 1941, the use of the term began to be frowned upon in Nazi Germany, and Hitler then denied ever using the term and said in a speech in November 1941, "I have never used the word Blitzkrieg, because it is a very silly word".[25] In early January 1942, Hitler dismissed it as "Italian phraseology".[26][27]

On the Eastern Front, the war did not bog down into trench warfare since the German and the Russian Armies fought a war of maneuver over thousands of miles, which gave the German leadership unique experience that was unavailable to the trench-bound Western Allies.[31] Studies of operations in the East led to the conclusion that small and coordinated forces possessed more combat power than large uncoordinated forces.

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