ARMOURED BALANCE IN 1939 BEFORE WWII
German, French, British, Americand and Russian Tanks and Weapons Before WWII in 1939
The tank was to be decisive in the coming campaign.
But the Germans did not have more or even markedly
better tanks than the Allies. They just used
them more imaginatively
Although the end of the First World War in November 1918 seemed outwardly to symbolise an Allied victory and total defeat for the German army, it did not in fact reflect the real balance of fighting power at the front nor illustrate the state which the revolution in warfare had reached. For in the last months of that war the Germans were still retiring in good order towards their homeland. Indeed they were beginning to stabilise the front as the offensive power of the Allied armies declined as a result of their losses and of the difficulties they were experiencing in maintaining men and material at increasing distances from their bases. Indeed, it was becoming progressively harder to drive the war-winning weapons –artillery and tanks –to the front, and there maintain them to fight in mass. And without their presence a relatively thin screen of machine-gunners could delay and hold up infantry and cavalry for sufficiently long to enable successive lines of defence to be prepared in the rear. By the beginning of November 1918, the Allied progress was getting slower and more feeble.
Yet the turning point had come in August and September when the defeats inflicted on the Germans signalised the failure of their own offensive, and underlined the war-weariness of the nation and army. The most decisive of these defeats occurred at Amiens on August 8, 1918, when 430 British tanks –in conjunction with cavalry and infantry –broke through the German lines, and thus convinced General Ludendorff, the controller of the German military machine, that the war had to be ended. The British tanks, fighting in close co-operation with the cavalry and infantry, did not penetrate much deeper than the forward German defences, but their employment in such numbers, carrying them forward 5 miles in one day, administered a shock to the German soldiers and their leader from which they did not fully recover.
The tanks of 1918 were neither fast enough nor sufficiently reliable to break through the enemy lines and then penetrate
deep into his rearmost tactical areas. But the tanks under construction for use in 1919 were meant to be capable of doing this very thing, and the Allied plans for that year were based on this kind of strategy. Against these new, faster, and more reliable machines, the Germans would have only been able to deploy conventional artillery, a number of inefficient light anti-tank rifles, and a few clumsy tanks of their own.
For Ludendorff had rejected tanks, thinking it unlikely that the early, slow, clumsy vehicles would ever become viable weapons of war. Anyway, when given new machines, armies take a long time to acquire the techniques necessary to keep them running and to use them to their best effect, so the lead which the Allies had built in two years could not be overtaken in a few months.
Atrophy
Thus the First World War ended at a moment when victory in the field was not clear-cut and its causes not sharply delineated. Many Germans were in no doubt that the surprise use of tanks, in large numbers in the least-expected sectors, had been a paramount factor in their defeat. General von Kuhl, who had been a staff officer in the army group attacked and defeated at Amiens, wrote ten years after the event that, in achieving surprise, the most important and decisive factor had been the tanks.
But the Allies were not similarly convinced and, gripped by inertia linked to their own war-weariness, were content to allow their military thinking to atrophy after 1918. As for the French, for over 20 years they persisted in a policy that compelled tanks to act merely as an adjunct to infantry on the one hand, and as a substitute for cavalry in the scouting role on the other. They envisaged all offensive operations taking place in a manner similar to those of 1918, and so locked themselves behind the fortifications of the Maginot Line, developing a purely defensive mentality. They could not believe that a war of manoeuvre fought by tank
armies would take place on their soil. Their tanks were therefore organised into battalions, the bulk of them (33 of between 45 and 60 tanks each) ordained to work in small groups in conjunction with infantry divisions.
The experiments carried out by the French army, starting in 1932, were based on their existing cavalry divisions. There evolved from these experiments three light mechanised divisions –with a fourth being formed in May 1940–each with 220 tanks, armoured cars, and a brigade of infantry. But this well-balanced force the French threatened to squander because the old cavalry doctrine dictated that it should be employed as a dispersed screen, or advance guard, ahead of the Allied armies when these advanced beyond the frontier to meet the Germans in Belgium.
After the destruction of the Polish army in September 1939, largely as the result of action by German tanks in conjunction with aircraft, the French hastily began to form four new tank divisions in which the machines were heavy ones and the infantry few in proportion to tanks. These were still not proper armoured divisions: their envisaged role was to breach a front through which other conventional formations could pass. They were thus merely an extension of the policy which tied tanks to infantry, and were not conceived as a balanced formation capable of driving deep into the enemy rear to strike at his nerve centres and his supplies–the very heart of his war-making capacity.
The British did not suffer from the same stagnation as the French, but in 1918 the nation that told itself that it had won the war, also persuaded itself that it could rest on its laurels. The heavy losses of tanks in the last few months of the First World War made a case for those who argued that the machine could not replace the horse as the agent of the decisive, mobile arm; the sentiment generated by a lifetime’s comradeship with the horse was strong–and so rejected change. Moreover, the formidable bills incurred in the manufacture and running of tanks, when presented to taxpayers who had had enough of war, were striking deterrents to new construction and expansion.
The ‘Tank Idea’
Nevertheless, real progress was made in Britain. The discovery that tanks and armoured cars offered a cheaper and better way of policing the more turbulent parts of the Empire encouraged experiment. And the persistence of a few enthusiasts projected the ‘Tank Idea’ as an element in warfare that intruded beyond the tactical battle into the realms of strategic decision. The names of Captain Liddell Hart, Generals Fuller, Lindsay, Broad, Pile, Hobart, and Martel appear at the head of the short list of pioneers who envisaged armoured forces becoming the decisive element in war, as well as being a straightforward economy of force when compared with the old horse and foot armies.
These men designed and trained tank units and formations that were unique both in their concept and technical proficiency. By the end of 1934, Hobart, as commander of the 1st Tank Brigade, had conclusively underlined what Broad and Pile had demonstrated in earlier years, namely that a mobile tank force could out-manoeuvre conventional forces by advances of prodigious length. And they showed that tanks could dominate the infantry of the day. These men were not dreamers. They were practical soldiers who based their judgements on the bitter experience gained by witnessing four years of slaughter during the First World War. They were often impatient with those who could not or would not understand, and who, by their slowness of mind, could not keep up with the pace demanded by mechanised forces.
Hobart, above all, with a ruthless driving force that he used to push his ideas ahead, would not permit the speed demanded by tank action to be slowed down by artillery, cavalry, and infantry units that were unable to keep up with his machines and their tempo of operation. By his requests for outstanding efficiency and speed, he frightened his more conventionally minded colleagues.
Eventually, there came about a reaction, accusing Hobart of demanding an all-tank army to the exclusion of the traditional arms. This was not entirely justified, since Hobart and his staff are clearly on record as having said they wanted infantry and artillery suitably mounted in armoured vehicles to go with their tanks; but the impression had been given they wanted an army based on armour, and the forces of reaction were quick to seize on this for use as a brake on the progress of the tank enthusiasts.
The traditionalists were also successful in acquiring political support; the Financial Secretary to the War Office, Duff Cooper,
stated in Parliament in 1934: ‘The more I study them [military affairs] the more I become impressed by the importance of [horsed] cavalry in modern warfare.’ In 1935 Duff Cooper became Secretary of State for War.
The traditionalists also insisted that some tanks should be designed and set aside for work in conjunction with the infantry, rather in the manner of the French. Thus Britain began to develop armoured forces of two kinds: the fast moving, all-arms groups, that were the genesis of future armoured divisions; and tank battalions designed for infantry work, equipped with so-called `I’ tanks.
But by investigating the entirely new problems inherent in mechanised forces, the British did train a small cadre of experts whose knowledge and experience were to be invaluable when war, and the need to expand, came. On the other hand, when at last, and too late, it was decided in 1937 to give tanks to a large number of cavalry regiments —instead of expanding the existing Tank Corps — another temporary brake was placed on improvements in quantity and quality at a moment when time was short in the race to catch up with German rearmament. Thus only a small proportion of the British tank units that went to war in May 1940 were experienced and imbued with an insight into mechanised warfare.
Of the British armoured forces ready for action in Europe in May 1940, there was only one armoured division and this was still training in England. In France there was a formation known as the 1st Army Tank Brigade comprising two battalions of the new ‘1′ tanks designed for close co-operation with the infantry. Of these units —the 4th and 7th Battalions, Royal Tank Regiment—the latter arrived in France on May 1 and was not as well-trained as the 4th. In addition there were with the BEF seven cavalry light armoured regiments mounted in light tanks: Their tasks of reconnaissance and co-operation with the infantry divisions were akin to the traditional cavalry role.
German enthusiasm
The restraints imposed on the French and British after 1918 were totally different from those imposed on the Germans. Because the Treaty of Versailles forbade Germany to have her own tanks, she was reduced to carrying out a few sporadic and subversive experiments, mostly under cover in Russia. But because the Germans had been defeated, as they thought, by the tank as much as any other weapon, they were more anxious than anything else to acquire knowledge of mechanised armoured forces. The same traditional reactions that beset the British innovators held back the progressive German soldiers too, but with the advent of Hitler the political atmosphere became the reverse of Britain’s.
As he cast aside the restrictions of Versailles, Hitler gave his enthusiastic backing to the soldiers whose ideas and experience were devoted to tanks. Those generals who had been associated with the early tank investigations — Guderian, Thoma, Lutz, Brauchitsch, Blomberg, and Reichenauwere now brought to the fore.
These men possessed imagination and insight, the appreciation of the strategic and psychological effect of deep thrusts, and the zest for speed and decision demanded by the nature of armoured operations. They were unanimous and generous in their acknowledgement of the profit they gained after studying, and often copying, the British experiments (Guderian is said to have toasted Hobart’s name in champagne after a successful German tank exercise before the war). They paid little attention to the French—not even to de Gaulle, who had published a short work on the ‘Army of the Future’. As a result, by 1936 the Germans were catching up fast in numbers and quality of machines, and had taken a clear lead in organisation and application over the British and the French, who two years before had been ahead in every department of armoured warfare.
