Heinz Guderian

German general

• Born: June 17, 1888
• Birthplace: Culm, Germany (now Chełmno, Poland)
• Died: May 15, 1954
• Place of death: Schwangau bei Füssen, West Germany (now in Germany)

Guderian was the tactical innovator who created the modern armored division, using tanks with motorized support as a battle formation. He led German panzers with great success in the early years of World War II.

Early Life

Heinz Guderian (hints gew-DAY-ree-ahn) was born in Culm, Germany (now Chełmno, Poland), the eldest son of Friedrich Guderian, a Prussian officer and later a general, and Clara Kirchoff. The families were more Junker gentry than officer in background. Heinz attended the Karlsruhe Cadet School at Baden from 1901 to 1903, the Cadet School at Gross-Lichterfelde, Berlin, from 1903 to 1907, and the War School at Metz in 1907. He became an ensign in February, 1907, and a second lieutenant in January, 1908, in the Tenth Hanoverian Jäger Battalion, then under his father’s command. Fairly short, broad-faced with a light brown mustache, and stockily built but trim, Guderian was an outdoorsman, though equally fond of dancing parties. He was also studious, serious, and ambitious; his sometimes introspective diary noted: “To run with the mob is nothing to be proud of” and “If only I could find a friend.” This friend was to be Margarete Goerne, whom he married on October 1, 1913; they had two sons.

Guderian’s first year at the Berlin War Academy was interrupted by the outbreak of war in August, 1914, and his immediate assignment first lieutenant, wireless operations was on the western front, where he spent the war. Promoted to captain in 1915, Guderian completed a staff officers’ course in occupied Sedan and in 1918 gained a place on the general staff. At war’s end, he did staff work on eastern defenses plus volunteer service in the Baltic area. Although he apparently acquired some of the Freikorps bitterness against the Weimar Republic as well as the Versailles Treaty, Guderian’s assignments kept him within the small army (four thousand officers plus ninety-six thousand other ranks) that was headed by Colonel-General Hans von Seeckt.

In 1922, Guderian accepted a chance to return to general staff work and was assigned to the Motorized Transport Department, pursuing Seeckt’s “mobility” gospel with trucks but forbidden by Versailles to have tanks or tracked vehicles. With no knowledge of tanks, Guderian educated himself largely from British publications, reading General John FrederickCharles Fuller’s writings on “deep penetration” and becoming a disciple of Captain Basil Henry Liddell Hart.

Life’s Work

Guderian’s first hands-on experience with tanks in Sweden in 1929 convinced him that tanks alone or with regular infantry divisions could never achieve decisive importance. Instead, he proposed a radical change in division operations as well as tank use: Instead of distributing tanks to support or lead infantry divisions, those tanks could be concentrated into a special division under a tank commander. The combat units would then have to have armor (panzer), and the whole division would have to be motorized. The division general, in a forward tank (Panzerkampfwagen), would radio commands to engineers, tanks, mobile artillery, airplanes, and all the motorized support for a continuing penetration and disorganization of the enemy’s defense structure.

In a Reichswehr (German army) with only ten divisions altogether, a shortage of large engines, and little faith in the mechanical reliability of tanks, Guderian’s ideas made slow progress until Adolf Hitler began preparatory remilitarization in 1933. “That’s what I want!” was Hitler’s quick verdict on Guderian’s vehicles, and, in 1935, the first three panzer divisions started training.

Guderian was a tactician rather than a mechanical expert, but he contributed tank design ideas to the Ordnance Department. The 1933 two-man light trainer (Panzerkampfwagen I) and 1934 three-man variant (PzKw. II) were already essentially set, but Guderian pushed his three-man turret in a five-man tank idea for the 1936 medium PzKw. IV and the 1937 PzKw. III “tank killer.” These excellent vehicles were initially weakened in armor and gunpower by being kept within the 24-metric-ton weight limit of German bridges. The 1942 heavies, PzKw. V “(Panther”) and VI (“Tiger”), more nearly embodied Guderian’s ideas.

Guderian popularized his ideas in articles and a 1937 book, Achtung! Panzer! (Attention! Tanks! , 1937) while enjoying rapid promotions, becoming lieutenant-colonel in 1931 and general of Panzer troops in 1938. Not surprisingly, he was enthusiastic about the dictator who made it possible. Like most officers, he had found the Republic “unlovable” and saw the Third Reich in generally positive terms, although he did not join the Nazi Party and was disquieted by the power of Heinrich Himmler’s Schutzstaffel (SS). Hitler’s successes in the Rhineland, Spain, Austria, and Czechoslovakia confirmed Guderian’s faith in the führer, and, while he reacted more soberly to war on the Polish question in 1939, he was encouraged that the Hitler-Stalin pact had secured Russia’s cooperation.

The September, 1939, Polish campaign vindicated Guderian’s tactics, and, as a close-to-the-action commander of the 19th Army Corps of Panzer Group Kleist, he showed how boldness against a weak defense could carry enemy positions without wasting men. In the 1940 Blitzkrieg in the west, Guderian’s 19th Army Corps, with three panzer divisions, spearheaded Panzer Group Kleist’s breakthrough at Sedan on May 13-14. Cutting across northern France according to the Manstein Plan, they reached Abbeville on May 20, forcing the British to evacuate at Dunkirk and leading to the surrender of France on June 22. This thunderclap breakup of Anglo-French defenses in a matter of days established Guderian’s fame as a military wizard whose tanks were the new “kings of battle,” at least in journalistic accounts. More prosaically, tank concentration had been a strategic and tactical factor, as had Guderian’s use of the speed and superior handling of German tanks, to cut around French strength rather than attacking it directly.

Guderian’s proposals for a Mediterranean campaign in 1941 were ignored, and he found himself commanding an enlarged corps under Field Marshals Günther von Kluge and Fedor von Bock, for Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia that Hitler launched on June 22, 1941. Guderian, from his 1932 visit to the Soviet Union, believed that the führer’s high command, creating panzer divisions with only half the tanks needed, underestimated the scale of Russian distances, people, and production.

Starting on June 22 from west of Brest-Litovsk, Guderian’s forces crossed the Berezina River on July 1 and took Smolensk on July 16, a spectacular advance of more than four hundred miles in twenty-five days. Yet the infantry was far behind, Guderian’s tanks were choked up with dust, and his repair facilities were at least five hundred miles away on incompatible rail gauges and with a supply system in chaos. The next two hundred miles to Moscow did not look easy. The center group commanders all wanted to take Moscow, but each wanted even more not to be blamed for failing to take it. Guderian’s superiors set him up for a headquarters presentation of the Moscow case to Hitler, who had already decided to shift Guderian’s forces southward to pressure Kiev for a time and then return them for the fall drive on Moscow. The accusation that Guderian betrayed them by finally giving in to Hitler’s decision makes little sense coming from the superiors who had cast him for the scapegoat role. The December Russian counteroffensive at Moscow forced Guderian to retreat in defiance of Hitler’s orders, and he was among the thirty-five generals dismissed in the winter of 1941-1942.

Invalided by heart trouble in 1942, Guderian, in March of 1943, was made inspector general of Armored Troops. He reorganized panzer formations around the new Panthers, but these tanks were not mechanically ready when thrown into Hitler’s July offense against the strong defenses of the Kursk salient. The mutual slaughter of attrition was less affordable to Germany than to Russia. Guderian resumed a less active role.

Hitler named Guderian to succeed Kurt Zeitzler as chief of staff after the July 20, 1944, generals’ attempt to assassinate the führer. Guderian took the post to preserve unity, defend the eastern front, and protect the army from the SS, but he was no longer vigorous and probably never had the talents needed for a chief of staff. His collaboration with Albert Speer increased the output of weapons, but Hitler used these against the Western Allies, that a Russian occupation might teach Germany the real meaning of defeat. Himmler’s deterioration reduced the threat of an SS takeover of the army, and Guderian’s shouting matches with Hitler led to the general’s final retirement on March 28, 1945.

Imprisoned without charge by the Allies from 1945 to 1948, Guderian composed his memoirs, which achieved international success. After his release, he authored two books questioning West German defense policy. Guderian died May 15, 1954, at Schwangau bei Füssen, Bavaria, and was buried at Goslar, West Germany.

Significance

Guderian’s work as a military innovator reinforced the lesson that new technology often requires new methods. Just as the elder Helmuth von Moltke had geared the Prussian army to railways, so Guderian geared the armored division to the tank and a radio command system. Equally important was Guderian’s principle of using the armored division’s shock capacity against weak sectors to accomplish the deep penetrations that would cut off the enemy’s stronger defense units.

Colonel-General Guderian also achieved success as a great field commander. His reputation as a difficult subordinate seems to have been well earned but so also was his popularity as an inspiriting and fair chief for those who served under him. Clearly, he could win a battle and move an army while doing so, which cannot be said of all generals, even in World War II. In broader strategic and military terms, Guderian’s shortcomings are clear. Although neither a Nazi nor a war criminal, he served Hitler in increasingly important roles virtually to the end. In separating the idea of a “good Hitler” from the crimes of Hitler’s rule, Guderian credulously accepted the Nazi propaganda that made service to Hitler the sole test of German loyalty. The narrow view produced by this sleight of hand denied the general any real understanding of the great world coalition of moral opinion and military strength assembled against Nazi Germany. An inventive tactician and good soldier, Guderian as chief of staff failed to prevent Germany from losing the war.

Bibliography

Clark, Alan. Barbarossa. New York: William Morrow, 1965. A readable analysis of the highlights and controversies of the Russian war. Somewhat impressionistic, but well organized and easy to follow.

Goerlitz, Walter. History of the German General Staff, 1657-1945. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1953. The best generally available account of Guderian’s tenure as chief of staff. Gives the agenda of problems more clearly and comprehensively than do Guderian’s memoirs.

Guderian, Heinz. Panzer Leader. Translated by Constantine Fitzgibbon. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1952. This work is readable, insightful, exciting, persuasive, and informative as history and autobiography.

Hart, Russell A. Guderian: Panzer Pioneer or Myth Maker? Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2006. Hart maintains that Guderian, in his memoirs, created a legend about his military career. Hart attempts to debunk that legend and instead present a true record of Guderian’s career and accomplishments.

Horne, Alistair. To Lose a Battle. London: Macmillan, 1969. While told from the French view, this detailed but well-organized and readable chronology is unequaled as a handy guide to 1940 operations.

Keegan, John. Guderian. New York: Ballantine Books, 1973. The brief text gives little biographical information not in Guderian’s account, but provides interesting analysis. Includes a good collection of photographs.

Liddell Hart, B. H. The German Generals Talk. New York: William Morrow, 1948. The author’s interviews with other generals are pertinent, and the book gives a useful context for Guderian’s ideas.

Macksey, Kenneth John. Guderian, Panzer General. Rev. ed. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2003. When it was originally published in 1997, this was the only full-scale biography of Guderian in English. It has been revised and continues to be a systematic corrective to Guderian’s memoirs.

Mellenthin, F. W. von. German Generals of World War II. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977. Largely secondhand, by an officer under Rommel, but some additional insights are here.