17th November 1944
Heinz Guderian

Heinz Guderian (1888 - 1954)

Heinz Wilhelm Guderian was a German general during World War II who, after the war, became a successful memoirist. An early pioneer and advocate of the 'blitzkrieg' approach, he played a central role in the development of the panzer division concept. In 1936, he became the Inspector of Motorised Troops.

In the 1930s, Guderian played a significant role in the development of both the panzer division concept and a doctrine of mechanised offensive warfare that would later become known as blitzkrieg. Guderian's 3rd Motor Transport Battalion became the blueprint for the future German armoured force. However, his role was less central than he claimed in his memoirs and that historians repeated in the postwar era.

During the autumn of 1936, Lutz asked Guderian to write Achtung – Panzer! He requested a polemical tone that promoted the Mobile Troops Command and strategic mechanized warfare. In the resulting work, Guderian mixed academic lectures, a review of military history and armoured warfare theory that partly relied on a 1934 book on the subject by Ludwig von Eimannsberger. While limited, the book was in many respects a success. It contained two important questions which would require answering if the army was to be mechanised: how will the army be supplied with fuel, spares and replacement vehicles; and how to move large mechanised forces, especially those that are road-bound? He answered his own questions in discussions of three broad areas: refuelling; spare parts; and access to roads.

During August, 1939 Guderian took command of the newly formed XIX Army Corps. At short notice he was ordered to spearhead the northern element of the invasion of Poland which began on 1st September. Under his corps command was one of Germany's six panzer divisions; Guderian's corps controlled 14.5 per cent of Germany's armoured fighting vehicles. His task was to advance through the former West Prussian territory (which included his birthplace of Kulm), then travel through East Prussia before heading south towards Warsaw. Guderian used the German concept of 'leading forwar', which required commanders to move to the battlefront and assess the situation. He made use of modern communication systems by travelling in a radio-equipped command vehicle with which he kept himself in contact with corps command.

Guderian was involved in the strategic debates that preceded the invasion of France and the Low Countries. The plan was being developed by his classmate at the 1907 War Academy, Erich von Manstein. The Manstein Plan shifted the weight of the armoured formations away from a head-on attack through the Low Countries to one through the Ardennes. Guderian confidently proclaimed the feasibility of taking armor through the hilly Ardennes Forest and was subsequently told he may have to command the spearhead of the attack himself. He then complained about the lack of resources until he was given seven mechanised divisions with which to accomplish the task. The plan established a force for the penetration of the forest that comprised the largest concentration of German armour to that date: 1,112 out of Germany's total of 2,438 tanks.

In Guderian's 1937 book Achtung – Panzer! he wrote that 'the time has passed when the Russians had no instinct for technology' and that Germany would have to reckon 'with the Eastern Question in a form more serious than ever before in history'. However, during the planning for Operation Barbarossa—the German invasion of the Soviet Union—he had become optimistic about the supposed superiority of German arms. By May, 1941 Guderian had accepted Hitler's official position that Operation Barbarossa was a preemptive strike. He had accepted some core elements of National Socialism: the Lebensraum concept of territorial expansion and the destruction of the supposed Judeo-Bolshevik threat.

On 1st March 1943, after the German defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad, Hitler appointed Guderian to the newly created position of Inspector General of Armoured Troops. The latter had successfully lobbied to be reinstated, resulting in the new posting. Guderian's responsibilities were to oversee the panzer arm and the training of Germany's panzer forces. He established a collaborative relationship with Albert Speer regarding the manufacture and development of armored fighting vehicles. The military failures of 1943 prevented Guderian from restoring combat power to the armoured forces to any significant degree. He had limited success with improved tank destroyers and fixing flaws in the third generation of tanks, the Panther and the Tiger.

Guderian cultivated close personal relationships with the most powerful people in the regime. He had an exclusive dinner with Himmler on Christmas Day, 1944. On 6th March 1945, shortly before the end of the war, Guderian participated in a propaganda broadcast that denied the Holocaust; the Red Army in its advance had just liberated several extermination camps. Despite the general's later claims of being anti-Nazi, Hitler most likely found Guderian's values to be closely aligned with Nazi ideology. Hitler brought him out of retirement in 1943 and especially appreciated the orders he issued in the aftermath of the failed plot.

Guderian and his staff surrendered to US forces on 10th May 1945. He avoided being convicted as a war criminal at the Nuremberg Trials because there was no substantial documentary evidence against him at that time. He answered questions from the Allied forces and denied being an ardent supporter of Nazism. He joined the US Army Historical Division in 1945 and the US refused requests from the Soviet Union to have him extradited. Even after the war, Guderian retained an affinity with Hitler and National Socialism. While interned by the Americans, his conversations were secretly taped. In one such recording, while conversing with former Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb and former General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg, Guderian opined: 'The fundamental principles [of Nazism] were fine'.

Guderian was released from internment in 1948. Many of his peers were ill-fated. Von Manstein was sentenced to 18 years and Albert Kesselring was given a life sentence. Guderian had informed on his ex-colleagues and co-operated with the Allies, which had helped him evade prosecution. He retired to Schwangau near Füssen in Southern Bavaria and began writing. His most successful book was Panzer Leader.

He remained an ardent German nationalist for the rest of his life. Guderian died on 14th May 1954 at the age of 65 and is buried at the Friedhof Hildesheimer Straße in Goslar.

Source: Wikipedia

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