Guderian

Discussion in 'The Third Reich' started by brkeseel, Jan 15, 2015.

  1. brkeseel

    brkeseel New Member

    Does Guderian, anywhere in Panzer Leader or elsewhere (perhaps in letters exchanged with Basil Liddell Hart post war), talk about why he chose to disobey orders on May 15th 1940 during the Battle of Sedan and advance in spite of the order to halt and wait for the infantry to catch up? He alludes to his reasoning but is surprisingly reticent to discuss it in his overview of the XIX Panzer Corps' actions during the Battle of Sedan.
     
  2. Spacewrangler

    Spacewrangler Banned

    Read up, he got orders from Kluge for Reckon in Force, Guderian took the order to keep the Blietzkrieg across the Sedan going, he saw a coup de main and he followed instinct, von Mellenthin talks about it in one of his books also
     
  3. L J

    L J Senior Member

    I should dissuade everyone to believe even one word from Guderian .
     
  4. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    Was he dishonest or untruthful? I'll look at his books with a different eye if he was.
     
  5. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    In a way, I quite like Guderian. Probably mostly for his alleged Champagne toast to Hobart 'the new man'.
    Can't have been all bad if he saw what Hobart contributed.

    His books do little for me though. Nowhere near as dull as Manstein (who is!), but still a somewhat dry and self-serving list of moving Panzers about.
    Interesting as a memoir, when placed in context of who he was, but never especially informative I think.
     
  6. L J

    L J Senior Member

    In Panzerleader, he constantly attacked /stalked the dead von Kluge,he denied the role of Rundstedt in the halt order of Dunkirk, he said that he was not involved in the preparation of Barbarossa, he hided the fact that after he was fired in december 1941,he spent a lot of time searching an estate in occupied Poland (finally he found one the owner of which had "mysteriously" disappeared,probably to Buchenwald or Dachau).

    He also concealed the role of his predecessors in the development of the Panzerdoctrine.

    Let's not forget his role in the repression of the 20 july
    This for his dishonesty.



    About his ability:

    he said that after the campaign in the west,Hitler decreased the number of tanks per division to the half of 1 may 1940 ,something which is not true

    he said that if given the consent to advance to the Mediterranean,he could have gone to NA and advance to Suez,something which is nonsense

    he said that what was counting in a Panzer division was the number of tanks,something which is nonsense

    when in 1943 he became inspector-general of the panzer divisions,his aim was to create Panzer divisions with 400 tanks ,which was totally irrealistic and would be suicidal .
     
  7. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    In Panzerleader, he constantly attacked /stalked the dead von Kluge,he denied the role of Rundstedt in the halt order of Dunkirk, he said that he was not involved in the preparation of Barbarossa, he hided the fact that after he was fired in december 1941,he spent a lot of time searching an estate in occupied Poland (finally he found one the owner of which had "mysteriously" disappeared,probably to Buchenwald or Dachau).

    He also concealed the role of his predecessors in the development of the Panzerdoctrine.

    Let's not forget his role in the repression of the 20 july
    This for his dishonesty.



    About his ability:

    he said that after the campaign in the west,Hitler decreased the number of tanks per division to the half of 1 may 1940 ,something which is not true

    he said that if given the consent to advance to the Mediterranean,he could have gone to NA and advance to Suez,something which is nonsense

    he said that what was counting in a Panzer division was the number of tanks,something which is nonsense

    when in 1943 he became inspector-general of the panzer divisions,his aim was to create Panzer divisions with 400 tanks ,which was totally irrealistic and would be suicidal .


    Thanks for that info. I also like the way Von Poop described Panzer Leader. Exactly right.

    Was that estate in Poland his famlies ancestral home that he mentioned in the book?
     
  8. L J

    L J Senior Member

    From what I have read,the Deipenhof estate he captured in 1943 using his influence at Rastenburg,(the regional governor,Greiser,tried to prevent it,)was a new one.He had "received back " his ancestral home in 1939 already .
     
  9. Drusus Nero

    Drusus Nero Banned

    Guderian, like other committed supporters of the NSDAP, (I'm not sure if he was a member of the Partei), Guderian was on the recieving end of slush money payments, over and above his salary, over and above the presentation of 'gifts' from the state of estates from their former Jewish owners. It is these things that kept him loyal.

    Whilst in limbo after Hitler sacked him and before his appointment as Inspector General of the Kraftfahrtruppen, (excuse spelling), Heinz and his driver went on an extended tour of the Eastern 'territories', ostensibly to "recover" from the exertions of three campaigns. In actuality, Heinz was looking for a suitable package of house and land that the state could 'gift' to him. How do we know this? Because the State Archives have a very thick file of correspondance to and from Berlin. In it, Guderian constantly complains of the inadequacies of the estates that were already 'gifted' to him, stating quite clearly that he was looking for something more in keeping with a man of his station, that the land given him and the house on it was "not grand enough"

    Not going to comment on him as a commander, but I feel he was streets ahead of Rommel. He had graduated from staff college, (unlike Rommel.

    Heinz was Nazi to the core. Hitler's patronage had catapulted him from an obscure Colonel in an Arm of the Heer that nobody wanted. Hitler's interest in "Achtung Panzer" certainly got a lot of other people interested, and he bankrolled Heinz, giving him every Reichsmark he asked for, and lifing his book from obscurity. There were other exponents of this 'new' method', and after guderian they just faded into so much background noise.

    For all that, more people should have listened to his ideas, particularly in the campaign of 41'
     
  10. Drusus Nero

    Drusus Nero Banned

    Looking at Guderian's career from the perspective of historian Kenneth Macksey,
    from a book of essays, "Hitlers Generals", (Weidenfeld and Nicholson Pty Ltd, Great Britain, 1989)
    (with comments and thoughts from Drusus Nero).

    At the fateful meeting with Hitler in an Army demonstration at Kummersdorf in 1934, Macksey tells that Guderian's demonstrated elements....."Apart from a few motorcycle combinations, trucks and tracked vehicles, everything was in embryo. There was not even a proper tank to show, only the chassis of a tracked machine called an Agricultural Tractor."
    From this, Macksey guessed that "Whether Hitler understood the military significance of panzer divisions then, (or at any other time), is another matter."

    So, Guderian was dealing with someone who as, "...an ex-infantryman....(who) did not really comprehend the importance of tanks and other fighting vehicles until after they had been effectively demonstrated in Poland." Also, that funding for Army programs played a distant second fiddle to the lavish expenditure on the Luftwaffe. Goring, as an old party comrade, got the nod, for Hitler envisaged armed forces that could bluff and terrify people into thinking German forces were stronger than they actually were. The Luftwaffe was supposed to strike at distant centers of population and rapidly make nations grovel.

    "The older arms," Macksey says, "would take so much longer and might fail as they had failed before."

    So, Guderian's task became, ".....all the more difficult because Hitler actually sided with generals who wished to to create infantry, cavalry and artillery formations not so very different to those which had lost the war in 1918." Further, 1934 was the year in which.....
    "Guderian had to struggle continuosly and enormously in the corridors of power to win over collegues who were by no means sympathetic to his aims of making the Panzerwaffe an elite main striking force within the Army."
    Guderian made enemies, too, with his "reasoned propaganda campaign to educate the Army and the nation to his opinion that ' tanks would play their full part within a framework of a modern army when they are treated as that armie's principle weapon and were supplied with fully motorized supporting arms...permanently attached."

    By 1935, he had won approval for three divisions, "albeit without tanks since so few had been built, nor without opposition from the traditionalists who persisited in regarding the first panzer brigade as a prime instrument of support only."

    So, it's easy to see why Heinz Guderian eclipsed his co-theorists in other countries. Significant lobbying got more resources to build some of the the kind of tanks that he wanted to see. Money problems in the very early stages of Third Reich rearmament hampered his tasks all the way, forcing him to build and use that which the money allowed him to, rather than what he would have liked to.

    On Guderian's attitude to Hitler, Macksey uses Heinz's correspondence as a window into his relationship with Hitler, whom he saw as.....
    "something apart from the Nazi Party, much of which he disliked. "The von Blomberg scandal and the charges against his old chief, von Fritsch, in 1938 caught him in several minds; distaste for von Blomberg for marrying a prostitute, anger with the new CinC, Gen. Walther von Brauchitsch, for deserting his predessor, von Fritsch, when falsely accused of homosexuality; disapproval of senior party members (including Goring and Himmler) for their role in the affairs; and naive praise for Hitler, 'who acted, as usual, with the finest human decency."...(!!!!)

    A further dimension to Guderian's attitude to Hitler is related by Macksey from Guderian's days in the Reichswehr. Describing Heinz as following von Seeckt's maxim that officers in the 100,000 man Army were to be politically neutral. Guderian ....
    "supported the government in power - always longing, however, for the day when Germanie's Saviour would come. He was therefore, conditioned to follow the lead of such Nazi-oriented senior officers as Werner von Blomberg and Walther von Reichenau when as, respectively, Minister of War and Head of the Ministeramt they supported Hitler in power.
    And like so many others who fell under the new Chancellor's almost hypnotic spell, he pledged his loyalty to the head of state who was not only intent upon rearmament but seemed also to give priority to the fast, motorized panzer division idea."
    This meant that supporting Hitler was good for the Panzer arm, and good for Heinz Guderian as well. A natural move, therefore, in the great game of 'influence kreigspiel' being played out by senior office holders and high ranking soldiers across Germany.

    During the next four years from 1935-39, Guderian was to pay a heavy price in future times for .......
    "frequent appearences at Hitler's side when his troops marched into Austria and the Sudetenland.....causing jealousy in those who feared and disapproved the rise of the Panzerwaffe. No less than Generals von Brauchitsch and his Chief of Staff General Ludwig Beck....plotted the deflection of Guderian away from the main stream of promotion to the highest appointments. It was guilefully proposed to Hitler that he appoint Guderian as Chief of the Mobile Troops to control all the panzers and motorized infantry and cavalry - a worthless appointment in many ways because it lacked the power to implement changes.
    Thus the traditionalists would have their way, the panzers would be confirmed to orthodoxy and, to make quite sure it remained that way in war, Guderian's mobilization role as Reserve Infantry Corps Commander.

    The pattern forming here is that these machinations by Army staffers drove Guderian more and more to viewing Hitler as a seperate entity, someone to be favoured over his Army collegues, the High Command, and anybody else who had crossed swords with him.

    Guderian's natural intelligence and drive was not helped at all by his open mouth, and 'know-all' manner.

    The machinations of Brauchitsch and Beck, for instance, can be traced to a paper he wrote sometime in 1934 proposing that ......
    "the artillery adopt self-propelled armoured pieces, which could operate in the forefront of the tank battle....(this) was resisted by gunners who occupied most top appointments and who, as Guderian sardonically remarked, "being accustomed for 500 years to draw their guns with muzzle pointing backward, they successfully opposed this proposal (for a vehicle with a gun pointing forward.)"

    Brauchitsch and Beck were both Gunners!

    It seems that Heinz Guderian, for all his brilliance, managed to make TOO many enemies in high places. Many officers must have felt as if they were being given an unwanted lesson in a craft that they already considered themselves 'experten'.
    Professional jealousy was to cost Germany dearly.

    Guderian's attitude to Hitler was also mirrored by many common soldiers, and ordinary Germans. They all believed as he did, that somehow there were people in the Third Reich who were running the country 'at odds' to the wishes and attitudes of the Fuhrer. Many civilians, at the end of the war, swore that their leader had no knowlege of the Holocaust, for instance, and that Himmler and Koch were rogue ministers, governing conquered territories as they saw fit, rather than as a result of Fuhrer Orders. Hitler himself contributed to this collective state of mind by giving his Gauleiters a virtual free hand to run their Gaus. Hitler was only interested in results, not the method for getting them there.

    Another disasterous result of Guderian's intellect was his failure to prevent "misuse" of the Panzer arm throughout the war. His "reasoned arguments were met with bland excuses......or simply some long winded , rambling explanation designed to fob off a frustrated and bored listener who had something better to do..." Or, to put it another way, Hitler, too, saw himself as more intelligent than Guderian, a natural product of Heinz's eternally open mouth. Macksey also states that Guderian "could always be overuled by an ungovernable meglomaniac."
    Of course, the way to Hitler's heart was flattery and polite deference to his 'intellectual supieriority'. Adolf was not a stupid man by a long chalk, but he was very much out of his depth in his role as Commander of the Army. An advisor who knew how to get the best out of Hitler, (like Speer), knew this implicitly.
    But Guderian could not flatter, could not defer, could not keep any opinion to himself. He was, perhaps,a little too intelligent for his role. Many overly intelligent people are socially inept. General Heinz Guderian was no exception.
    Guderian's previous statements also made him far too many enemies among his brother officers. The most famous is his long running spat with Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge, (another Gunner!), whom he called "an over-cautious mediocrity." This was typical Heinz; brash, brilliant, open mouthed, hot headed. Von Kluge felt that Guderian's operations were conducted on a logistical shoestring, (a view Drusus shares), but his relationships with other Heer officers were coloured more by his overbearing personility, and 'clever cloggs' public statements.

    Macksey makes the point that Guderian got to the top of his profession, (very close to the end of the war), "despite repeated outbursts with those superior officers whose bungling tried his patience beyond limits."
    This would seem to confirm the view that Guderian WAS more intelligent than his superiors or his peers/underlings.
    It is a shame, therefore that his inability to keep his mouth closed, or to temper his comments with a measure of humility, both these robbed Germany of, (potentially) a Staff Officer who could have made a huge difference in the conduct of the war.

    Nazism squandered much that was vital for victory before a shot was fired.

    But Heinz Guderian achieved his own major career hassles all on his own. That is social ineptitude, with consequences for Germany that developed a life of their own on a grand scale.

    At the end, Heinz Guderian sincerely believed, (or so he told us), "When the head of state, (or King) makes a decision, it must be obeyed unswervingly." And whether he actually believed that is an open question. I surmise he was far to intelligent to believe it. It was, in my humble view, a method for Guderian to justify attaching his star to the most destructive and dangerous leader Germany had ever produced. It was also a convenient statement to hide behind when Guderian was accused of being a "dyed-in-the wool-Nazi".

    Kenneth Macksey emphatically refutes this idea, stating,
    "There has never been the slightest suggestion that Guderian was a Nazi sympathizer or, indeed, that he had any pronounced political leanings, other than as a Royalist who abhorred communism."

    Of course, Basil Liddell-Hart said the same thing about Erwin Rommel.

    The only snag with those assertions is thus; Both officers owed their advancement to Hitlers patronage..

    Without Adolf Hitler's favours, Guderian would have been sidelined behind a desk.
    Rommel would not have been given command of the 7th PzDiv in France, nor gone on to Afrika.

    And Hitler always favoured those people he considered to be "Good National Socialists", didn't he?

    They did not have to be paid-up Party members to be labelled as such by Hitler, either. Just "loyal to the movement".

    And Heinz Wilhelm Guderian most certainly was...(end).


    Hope you enjoyed!

    Christopher
     
  11. TriciaF

    TriciaF Junior Member

    A fascinating character. I read up a bit about him (only on Google I'm afraid) as he was mentioned in an earler thread, I think last year, about German generals who continued in service postwar.
    It seems that he was sacked and re-instated a few times, because of his lack of control over his mouth.
    I was wondering what you mean by "Nazi to the core" ? What did that entail?
    Aso your comment that they should have listened to him in 1941 - thank God they didn't!
     
  12. Drusus Nero

    Drusus Nero Banned

    As I tried to relate in the above long post, Guderian attached his star to hitler personally.

    It was a career move that turned out to be good for the army as well, but we see that with hindsight.

    Many, ( too many) of Guderian's peers and superior officers saw his ideas as a gigantic threat. None of them had his vision. Guderian was aan open mouthed "know all", (the personal price of higher intellect....social ineptitude). The plots from jealous officers that attempted, (and largely succeeded) in deflecting Guderian from where he should have been, (head of the Service) drove him into personal loyalty to a protector that could give him what he wanted professionally....Adolf Hitler.

    So, guderian became a very loyal man for hitler, even after his sacking in Russia.

    Therefore, even though he was no Partei 'hack', Guderian was, in actuality, one of Hitlers most loyal paladins.

    And Hitler described committed national socialists based on their loyalty. Remember the SS credo, "Loyalty is my honour"?

    So......Guderian was a "Nazi to the core"

    And yes, hindsight makes listening to guderian a bad move for everyone else....

    But a darned good move for the Germans!

    Christopher
     

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