Quickly recalling the Second World War, after the war in the European battlefield was detonated, Germany almost formatted the entire of Europe in less than two years, and in the battle, whether it was the Wehrmacht or the SS, once the offensive was launched, it was basically like fighting chicken blood.
Germans
In the Polish campaign, the German army with its 6 armored divisions, 4 light armored divisions and 4 motorized divisions directly tore through the defense line of about 800,000 people of the 6 polish armies, and in the French campaign, the German armored forces in order to maintain the speed of the wild rush was not interrupted, and they would not pay attention to the large number of surrendered Anglo-French troops.
Surrendered French troops
Twenty years ago, in World War I, the German army spent a full 4 years failing to enter Paris, but in World War II, a big city like Paris, the German army could completely occupy it in only six weeks, and countries with little strategic depth such as Denmark, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands could be easily taken by Germany in just a few days.
A large part of the reason why the German army was able to increase its combat effectiveness to the extreme in such a short period of time was due to the invention of blitzkrieg.
So how was this tactic of sweeping Europe discovered? Why did the Blitzkrieg, which produced great power in the early days of World War II, end in failure?
German troops
After the end of the First World War, the defeated Germany was not only swallowed up by the Allies in all its overseas colonies and controlled the national army, but also had to cede important industrial areas to France and pay huge war reparations, which left every German people in a quagmire.
The main reason why France treated defeated Germany so harshly was to suppress Germany's industrial potential and make it completely lose the opportunity to make a comeback, but what the French did not expect was that such a paper treaty not only failed to abolish Germany, but further expanded Germany's national hatred.
The Treaty of Versailles was signed with the main purpose of weakening Germany
In 1933, the subversion of the German regime made the long-suppressed Germany break free of the chains like a tiger, the radical speech of the new head of state made the German people generally believe that the Fuehrer could bring hope for life to Germany, the people independently called on Germany to expand its armaments and fight against bullying, in addition, under the stimulation of the military industry, many German workers who were unemployed due to the economic crisis were given the opportunity to re-employ, the vested interests of the people were initially satisfied, and the position of the Fuehrer was completely stabilized.
But with the support of the people, after the army, how should the battle be fought, if Germany still attacks according to the old way of the First World War, there is no doubt that the final defeat will be a big defeat, at this time Guderian, Manstein and other new generals actively exert their subjective initiative, and finally under the joint efforts of many generals, the blueprint of blitzkrieg began to brew.
German workers marching during the Great Depression were desperate to get out of the status quo
Blitzkrieg is simply to defeat the enemy in the form of surprise attacks, its core elements are speed, surprise attack and concentration, this tactic is actually not the first in World War II, as early as the end of World War I, the German army on the battlefield has used the "assault group tactics", the main offensive idea is to use a small number of sophisticated troops interspersed into the opponent's defense system, cut off the connection between its defensive deployment, and carry out the enemy rear attack, after achieving a certain effect, the large troops will follow up one after another, with the weakest point of the opponent's defense as a breakthrough point to continue to attack The troops in charge of the assault went around and cooperated with the main force to carry out multi-faceted attacks on the enemy.
German soldiers on assault missions
However, the effect of this tactic in The First World War was not ideal, mainly because the concept of mechanized combat in World War I was still in its infancy, tanks and armored vehicles only appeared on the battlefield as a tool to support infantry, and although Germany realized the importance of surprise attacks and surprise attacks, it was difficult to achieve a breakthrough effect only by relying on legs and flesh and blood.
Many times the Germans had already touched the weak points of the opponent's defense line, but once the opponent's machine guns turned on strafing mode, the Germans were still powerless to resist. In addition, the German army was also easily targeted by all the support fire of the opponent during the assault, and without the fire cover of the large troops, the German army could only become a living target on the battlefield.
During World War I, the Allies used trench warfare to attack the assaulting Germans from a distance
However, this tactic of being chased and fought during World War I was injected with new vitality during World War II, and the technological innovation of mobile forces gave the assault group more choices, and the previous human assault could be replaced by armored clusters, and air fire support could be carried out using ground attack aircraft, which laid the foundation for the emergence of blitzkrieg.
Technological innovations in mobile forces during World War II gave new results to German assault tactics, pictured in the production workshop of German artillery shells
Of course, this kind of armored cluster tactics was not discovered only by Germany at that time, in 1932, the British military theorist John Frederick Charles Fuller proposed a new type of war theory with the deepening breakthrough of the armored force causing the strategic paralysis of the enemy as the core, which was actually the prototype of blitzkrieg, but the decadent bureaucratic generals of the victorious countries such as Britain and France at that time believed that the establishment of new armored forces would greatly reduce the deployable resources of their own troops, and the stupid and coarse armor mobility was too poor, and the output was not comparable to that of infantry.
John Frederick Charles Fuller: British general, military theorist, and one of the founders of mechanized warfare theory.
In addition, at that time, the thinking mode of many victorious generals was still stuck in the optimism of trench warfare in World War I, and they generally believed that trench warfare would be the main mode of warfare in the future battlefield, so the repair of the French Maginot Line cost almost half of the French military expenditure.
Trench warfare during World War I: Turning the land of Europe into a vast fortress
With the guidance of the overall tactical ideology, the next variety of tactical details are much simpler, and soon the famous German general Guderian drew up a complete tactical implementation plan, according to the plan, after the battle began, the German army first attacked with fighters and ground attack aircraft to strike at the opponent's air power, if necessary, it could completely destroy the opponent's airfield, fully grasp the air superiority, and then the medium and long-range strategic bombers followed close behind, disrupting the enemy's front-line traffic and reserve deployment. In the form of airborne troops, they detoured behind enemy lines to occupy the main traffic routes.
In September 1939, the German air raid on a bomb exploded somewhere in Poland
After solving these problems, the German dive bombers can pour out of the nest and blow up the enemy's defensive front, and finally the armored troops will flock to the enemy at maximum speed to rush to the enemy's depth and detour, cooperate with the motorized infantry to quickly occupy the control breakthrough, and when the subsequent huge infantry arrives, the mechanized troops will continue to go to the next breakthrough to cycle this operation.
In this process, aircraft, tanks, armored vehicles, and motorcycles formed a highly coordinated offensive echelon, like a sharp blade to strike the enemy like lightning, and there were radio detachments for air-ground communication that always followed the ground troops, and their task was to feedback ground combat information and call for air support at any time.
In September 1939, during the German invasion of Poland, two tanks of the SS Panzer Division crossed the Bzura River
In September 1939, the Blitzkrieg debuted in Poland, the German Army Group North and army group South with the Polish capital Warsaw as the core, launched a huge pincer offensive in Poland, so that the Polish army headquarters could not effectively command the Polish army groups, the Polish army soon lost its combat effectiveness, the battle was carried out until October, the Polish army accumulated 66,300 casualties, 210,000 wounded, 694,000 people voluntarily surrendered, and the German casualties were only more than 30,000.
German armored groups reached the polish hinterland
In May 1940, the Germans repeated the attack on France, in this operation, the German Army Group A first pretended to attack in Belgium, so that the French commander mistakenly believed that the main Force of the German Army must be on the left flank of the French Army, and the German Army would definitely encircle the Maginot Line to the south, so the French army gathered a large number of troops in the southern part of the Ardennes area, which was regarded as the main defensive area.
A group of journalists climbed onto the roof of a fortress somewhere on the Maginot Line, and a French escort pointed them to the "no man's land" separating the Franco-German army.
But in fact, the German army did not plan to go south to encircle the Maginot Line, but with the main armored force of the German Army Group B breaking through the defensive line from the Ardennes Forest, which the French considered the most unlikely to invade, directly pushing the battle line to the English Channel, in just one week, the German army surrounded 400,000 British and French troops in Dunkirk, and the British army was forced to take the largest military retreat in history.
Dunkirk evacuation
The Battle of France lasted only 42 days, and as a result of the war, 330,000 Allied troops sneaked back to the British mainland from Dunkirk overnight, and the French army, known as the first Army in Europe, was captured by 1.85 million people, and until the end of the war, the French high command still did not understand the course of action of the German army and did not organize any effective counterattack.
Under the rapid attack of the Blitzkrieg, the French army had no time to formulate a new battle plan against Germany, and when all hopes were shattered, France had to choose to surrender, and when the German army surrendered its weapons, more than half of the French troops had not yet participated in the battle.
French soldiers surrendering to the Germans
On June 22, 1941, after the basic settlement of the war on the Western Front, Germany broke the Entente and pinned the next target of attack on the Soviet Union, in order to swallow the Soviet Behemoth as soon as possible, the German Army dispatched 190 divisions, 5.5 million troops with three groups of northern, central and southern armies to attack the Soviet Union in three ways, the Northern Army Group was responsible for Leningrad, the Central Army Group was in charge of Moscow, and the Southern Army Group was seizing the Caucasus oil fields.
In the face of the menacing German army, the Soviet Union was in a precarious situation at that time, the just-concluded Soviet-Finnish War caused the Soviet Union to lose nearly a million troops, and Stalin's great purge left the Soviet Union with few capable generals, according to the situation in the Soviet Union at that time, this was basically a war that must be lost, so the German side dared to clamor for "the destruction of the Soviet Union in three months".
Germany formulated the Barbarossa Plan, marking the outbreak of the Soviet-German War
After the war broke out, Germany still launched a pincer offensive against the Soviet Union from three directions according to the blitzkrieg offensive route, and the unprepared Soviet Union was simply unable to cope, and in just three months the Soviet Union lost millions of troops, of which the Minsk Campaign lost 340,000, the Smolensk Campaign lost 450,000, the Kiev Campaign lost 840,000, and countless prisoners were captured, and in addition to the loss of troops, 60% of the Soviet Union's industrial production capacity was also destroyed by Germany.
According to normal logic, at this time, the victory and defeat of the Soviet-German war had already been decided, and Germany had a huge advantage in all aspects, but what the Germans did not expect was that the loss of these millions of troops was only the tip of the iceberg for the Soviet Union, and there were tens of millions of Soviet soldiers waiting to fight with the German army to the end.
A classic World War II scene of a Soviet Red Army planting a red flag on the roof of the Reichstag building in Berlin
It is undeniable that the Germans did master the open-hanging tactics and could sweep throughout Europe, but unfortunately, they encountered a country with an open-hanging, and under the continuous torrent of steel, the morale of the German army was consumed little by little, and with the onset of the Siberian winter, Germany could no longer hold on, and the blitzkrieg was finally completely engulfed by the steel torrent.