![]() ![]() ![]() 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. German commander Erwin Rommel, who led a Panzer division during the invasion of France, later employed blitzkrieg tactics against British forces in the deserts of North Africa in 1941-42.Īfter 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. 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. 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.īut 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. But in reality, though the word “blitzkrieg” had been used in German military writings before World War II to describe a short conflict, as opposed to a drawn-out war of attrition, it was never officially adopted as a military doctrine. In the stunned aftermath of France’s fall, both Nazi propaganda and Western media attributed Germany’s success to the revolutionary new form of warfare known as blitzkrieg. How Was the US Involved in WWII Before Pearl Harbor? Was Blitzkrieg Truly a New Form of Warfare? By the end of June, the French army had collapsed, and the nation sued for peace with Germany. 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, pushing the British Expeditionary Force into a pocket around Dunkirk. In May 1940 came Germany’s invasion of Belgium, the Netherlands and France, during which the the Wehrmacht (German army) used the combined force of tanks, mobile infantry and artillery troops to drive through the Ardennes Forest and quickly penetrated the Allied defenses. Blitzkrieg 3 tank bodies series#Then in April 1940, Germany invaded neutral Norway, seizing the capital, Oslo, and the country’s main ports with a series of surprise attacks. German forces employed some tactics associated with blitzkrieg in the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and the invasion of Poland in 1939, including combined air-ground attacks and the use of Panzer tank divisions to quickly crush the poorly equipped Polish troops. After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 and made clear his intention to rearm the nation, he encouraged younger commanders like Heinz Guderian, who argued for the importance of both tanks and aircraft in this mobile approach to warfare. This focus on mobile warfare was in part a response to Germany’s relatively limited military resources and manpower, as a result of the strictures imposed on it by the Treaty of Versailles. ![]()
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