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Authors: Dennis Showalter
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November the original company had been expanded into a two-battalion regiment, with a second created at the training ground of Ohrdruf.
Adolf Hitler might have run for office in good part on the strength of his wartime service as a muddy-boots infantryman. But the Führer also had a predilection for high-tech displays. Hitler’s use of airplanes in his later election campaigns was as much for show as for convenience. His speeches approached the level of sound and light shows. And his fondness for muscle cars and fast driving was familiar. In early 1934, accompanied by Hermann Göring, he made what probably began as a routine inspection of new equipment. Guderian instead put on what later generations of soldiers would describe as a dog-and-pony show. For a half hour he showed off a motorcycle platoon, a platoon of the 37mm antitank guns just coming on line, a couple of armored car platoons, and the pièce de résistance: a platoon of the new training tanks. Chassis only, with no turrets, no armament, they nevertheless impressed the Führer. Guderian quotes him as repeatedly exclaiming, “That’s what I want! That’s what I want to have!”
Did Hitler actually see the military possibilities of these few dozen small vehicles? More likely he was taken by their potential for reinforcing his comprehensive propaganda campaigns, domestic and foreign, in the same context as his admonition to Göring that numbers of planes took precedence over their types and combat value. Certainly he did nothing specific to expand the armored force as such. The High Command and the General Staff took care of that on their own. In 1934, as the original seven Reichswehr divisions began to triple themselves, their motor battalions produced fourteen antitank battalions and seven motorized reconnaissance battalions. The 1st and 2nd Cavalry Divisions took delivery of several hundred motor vehicles. The 3rd not only traded in its horses altogether, but came under command of the Inspectorate of Motorized Combat Troops.
That last was the result of a suggestion made by one of the army’s rising stars. Then-Brigadier General Walther von Reichenau is best known as one of Hitler’s early open sympathizers among the Reichswehr’s senior officers. He was also interested in motorization, and as an artillery specialist was concerned with keeping even an embryonic armored force from becoming too much a thing in itself. As chief of the Wehrmachtamt, he was in a position to influence policy. It was the kind of gesture Lutz welcomed as one of the preliminary steps intended to produce an armored force of three divisions, plus two or three independent tank brigades, by the end of 1938.
On July 1, 1934, the Inspectorate of Motor Combat troops was reorganized. The Inspectorate for Army Motorization was made responsible for overall supervision of the process. The Motor Combat Troops Command would control the projected panzer divisions, in effect becoming a corps-level field command. Lutz assumed command of both agencies; his ambitious amanuensis Heinz Guderian became Motor Combat Troops Chief of Staff—a fast-track posting, if the holder could develop it. Lutz had no doubts.
II
THE PROJECTED GERMAN force structures were hardly unique. France’s horsed cavalry divisions were not very different from the German models. Contemporary Polish mobilization plans projected mobile or “mixed divisions.” In the course of the decade, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria would collect their respective tank and motorized elements into ad hoc “fast divisions,” though these reflect available forces rather than any real doctrine. But the German stress on mobility, deep penetration, envelopment, and initiative was original. It reflected growing institutionalization of the concept that future campaigns would be decided at neither tactical nor strategic levels, but in the previously vaguely defined intermediate sphere of operations.
The question nevertheless
Adolf Hitler might have run for office in good part on the strength of his wartime service as a muddy-boots infantryman. But the Führer also had a predilection for high-tech displays. Hitler’s use of airplanes in his later election campaigns was as much for show as for convenience. His speeches approached the level of sound and light shows. And his fondness for muscle cars and fast driving was familiar. In early 1934, accompanied by Hermann Göring, he made what probably began as a routine inspection of new equipment. Guderian instead put on what later generations of soldiers would describe as a dog-and-pony show. For a half hour he showed off a motorcycle platoon, a platoon of the 37mm antitank guns just coming on line, a couple of armored car platoons, and the pièce de résistance: a platoon of the new training tanks. Chassis only, with no turrets, no armament, they nevertheless impressed the Führer. Guderian quotes him as repeatedly exclaiming, “That’s what I want! That’s what I want to have!”
Did Hitler actually see the military possibilities of these few dozen small vehicles? More likely he was taken by their potential for reinforcing his comprehensive propaganda campaigns, domestic and foreign, in the same context as his admonition to Göring that numbers of planes took precedence over their types and combat value. Certainly he did nothing specific to expand the armored force as such. The High Command and the General Staff took care of that on their own. In 1934, as the original seven Reichswehr divisions began to triple themselves, their motor battalions produced fourteen antitank battalions and seven motorized reconnaissance battalions. The 1st and 2nd Cavalry Divisions took delivery of several hundred motor vehicles. The 3rd not only traded in its horses altogether, but came under command of the Inspectorate of Motorized Combat Troops.
That last was the result of a suggestion made by one of the army’s rising stars. Then-Brigadier General Walther von Reichenau is best known as one of Hitler’s early open sympathizers among the Reichswehr’s senior officers. He was also interested in motorization, and as an artillery specialist was concerned with keeping even an embryonic armored force from becoming too much a thing in itself. As chief of the Wehrmachtamt, he was in a position to influence policy. It was the kind of gesture Lutz welcomed as one of the preliminary steps intended to produce an armored force of three divisions, plus two or three independent tank brigades, by the end of 1938.
On July 1, 1934, the Inspectorate of Motor Combat troops was reorganized. The Inspectorate for Army Motorization was made responsible for overall supervision of the process. The Motor Combat Troops Command would control the projected panzer divisions, in effect becoming a corps-level field command. Lutz assumed command of both agencies; his ambitious amanuensis Heinz Guderian became Motor Combat Troops Chief of Staff—a fast-track posting, if the holder could develop it. Lutz had no doubts.
II
THE PROJECTED GERMAN force structures were hardly unique. France’s horsed cavalry divisions were not very different from the German models. Contemporary Polish mobilization plans projected mobile or “mixed divisions.” In the course of the decade, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria would collect their respective tank and motorized elements into ad hoc “fast divisions,” though these reflect available forces rather than any real doctrine. But the German stress on mobility, deep penetration, envelopment, and initiative was original. It reflected growing institutionalization of the concept that future campaigns would be decided at neither tactical nor strategic levels, but in the previously vaguely defined intermediate sphere of operations.
The question nevertheless
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