I watched this for the first time on the Military Channel. Most Weaponology episodes are about 10 minutes of paid programming for whatever new, futuristic and expensive weapon system the US military is developing (or was when these programs were produced). And the rest is history about the subject. Some of it good and informative. Some of it bad. And with the episode about Tanks, well, some of it just perpetuating falsehoods the US Army has wrapped itself in.
Most of these falsehoods revolve around Germany's use of tanks in WW2 and their "proper" usage. They went as far as to quote German General Heinz Guderian several times, but I wonder if any of these people ever read his book. Or if they bothered to look at the CONTEXT in which Guderian was working. They also ignore the fact that latter in the war, when Guderian was no longer a field commander, but Chief of Staff his feelings about the proper deployment moderated somewhat. He became the man that advocated for Tracked Armored Fighting Vehicles to be included in all divisions rather than the commander at Sedan in 1940 who didn't ferry tanks across the Meuse on the first night to support the infantry because he wanted to keep the integrity of his armored units. But the US Army prefers Guderian the Purist over Guderian the Pragmatist.
The Context. In World War One German infantry adapted to the battlefield much better than Anglo-French (including US) forces. They developed new weapons and new tactics. The combination is known to us as Stormtroop tactics. Sometimes it's simply referred to as 'infultration' tactics, but that's a gross oversimplification. They launched three major offensives in 1918, each one failed to win the war. The reason wasn't tactics, but the lack of mobility to exploit these breakthroughs and the general state of war exhaustion in the German Empire. This was Guderian's point of reference when he began working on Panzer tactics. To him the tank wasn't the breakthrough weapon, but the weapon to exploit the breach in the enemies front line made by the infantry. To the Allies the tank was the breakthrough AND exploitation weapon. His one of his favorite quotes being that the Engine of the Panzer was as much of a weapon as it's main gun. The engine meant mobility and the German Army in 1939 was anything but mobile.
Why the obsession in concentrating his Panzers in a fairly small number of units at the beginning of the war? There were several reasons. First and foremost, the average unit of the German Army through out World War Two was the Infantry Division. And a very high number of these divisions still used horses for transport and to tow artillery. Just as they had done in World War One. Just as they had done for centuries. German industry simply didn't have the production capacity to produce all the vehicles needed. On the other hand horses were plentiful as were the veterinarians needed to keep them healthy and moving. This means the vast majority of units in the German Army suffered from the same lack of mobility that hampered their fathers' units in World War One. There were very few fully motorized Infantry divisions in the German army from 1939 to 1941. The second reason, as with the first, has to do with that same lack of production capacity. There were two few Panzers in the German Army. So spreading them around would have been counterproductive. Third was was the kind of Panzers available. Most in 1939 and 1940 were the Pz I and Pz II. These tanks were small, light weight and were meant to be nothing more then training tanks to be replace before war broke out. They were thinly armored and were equipped with medium machine guns at worst. At best they had 20mm heavy machine guns. Few of the larger Pz III and Pz IV were available. And the former too would find itself obsolete very quickly (as with the Czech built Pz 35(t) and Pz 38(t)). So to make up for the tanks individual weaknesses they were to be used en masse. And to be used to outmaneuver rather than outfight their enemies whenever possible. Later in the war things changed.
Several things altered many of Guderian's pre and early war beliefs. In 1942 Hitler put Germany on a wartime economy and war production went up considerably. The Pz IV became better armed and armored, as well as the Tigers and Panthers were introduced. This meant the German Army didn't have to have overwhelming numbers to have superiority on the battlefield. It also became clear that the infantry indeed needed considerable armored support, which took the form of assault guns and tank destroyers, to succeed on an increasingly complex and deadly battlefield. Though the problem of mobility, or even replacing all the horses with vehicles in the Infantry Divisions never happened because of a lack of productivity. So basically Guderian's Pre-War Orthodoxy wasn't the Alpha-to-Omega of armored theories. He had ignored one of the major rolls of the tank, to support infantry by providing them mobile, protected direct firepower on the battlefield.
Though these facts didn't effect the US Army's Armored Branch. It didn't bother them for a long time because they had an enemy who had a lot of tanks to kill, the USSR. They for a long time could pigeon-hole themselves into that very narrow mission. And from the early 1980's on the US Army Infantry Branch was willing to let them. They had long felt that tracked vehicles, no matter who's side they were on, where the 'enemy'. So they went largely to 'light' infantry divisions, which were like previous infantry divisions, but with greatly reduced artillery, almost no transportation, very limited logistics and most importantly for them, NO TANKS!!! Nor did the experience with Mounted Combat in Vietnam have any postiive effect on either Branch, nor their favorite 'platforms'.
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