Who first thought of "Blitzkrieg" and when was the word first used ?

Discussion in '1940' started by Tommygunner1309, Mar 26, 2011.

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  1. Vitesse

    Vitesse Senior Member

    The actual word

    The term was invented after the invasion of France in May 1940 by the Nazi propaganda machine to explain retrospectively, in the most favorable light, what had happened more by “Risiko und Wagnis” (risk and venture) and “Miracles on the Meuse” than by any grand design.

    I don't think so. :D See my post above - it was in use in English-language publications as early as April 1939 and I doubt either the LA Times or Bensons invented it themselves - they will almost certainly have drawn on published German sources. I've submitted that information to OUP, who will use it as part of revising the OED entry - when they get round to it!

    In his book "How War Came" Donald Cameron Watt also mentions that Hitler used the word "Blitz" in connection with his threats to invade Czechoslovakia in 1938.

    Unattributed quotes are not often helpful, BTW. In this case Mr Google was my friend: it's footnote 12 on this page -

    The U.S. Army Professional Writing Collection
     
  2. Tab

    Tab Senior Member

    One of the first to use these tactics was a General Rawlinson in WW1 when he attacked the Hindenburg line.

    During the war, Rawlinson was noted for his willingness to use innovative tactics. He organised one of the first major night attacks by a modern army in 1916. For a 1918 offencive, he combined attacks by aeroplanes and armoured units with the infantry.

    Is this not a blitzkrieg, he also used a creeping artillery barrage for the infantry to advance behind
     
  3. Vili Garvin

    Vili Garvin Member

    I don't think so. :D See my post above - it was in use in English-language publications as early as April 1939 and I doubt either the LA Times or Bensons invented it themselves - they will almost certainly have drawn on published German sources. I've submitted that information to OUP, who will use it as part of revising the OED entry - when they get round to it!

    In his book "How War Came" Donald Cameron Watt also mentions that Hitler used the word "Blitz" in connection with his threats to invade Czechoslovakia in 1938.

    Unattributed quotes are not often helpful, BTW. In this case Mr Google was my friend: it's footnote 12 on this page -

    The U.S. Army Professional Writing Collection

    I have a hard copy of the same essay. I didn't realise it was available on line and typed the quote myself. :(

    Still, I recommend reading the entire essay and then compare it to the newspaper excerpt you produce. Spooky?

    Maybe we have uncovered where General Bailey 'lifted' his original idea from. :wink:
     
  4. Vili Garvin

    Vili Garvin Member

    I found this interesting snippet, which seems to suggest that in early 1939 the Germans were perhaps rather keen to play down the concept of Blitzkrieg:

    [​IMG]

    Source: Straits Times, January 14th 1939

    Further to my previous. I've tried to find access to Straits Times archives and failed miserably. :(

    Can you please double check that that article appeared in 1939 and not, say, in 1940. Why? You may ask. Well, the article you post says that he is, "chief of the economic section of the Reich War Ministry."

    A biography of General Thomas shows he was, "Bei der Mobilmachung für den 2. Weltkrieg im Sommer 1939 wurde er zum Chef vom Wehrwirtschafts- und Rüstungsamt ernannt." Prior to that, in January '39, he was, "Als solcher wurde er am 1. Oktober 1935 zum Chef der Amtsgruppe Wehrwirtschaftsstab im Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH) ernannt."
    General der Infanterie Georg Thomas - Lexikon der Wehrmacht

    My German is rusty, but the former chronologically places him in the General Staff (OKH), the latter suggests perhaps the Ministry of War. The newspaper excerpt clearly identifies "Ministry".

    Not quibbling with your post; merely trying to satisfy my curiosity. :)
     
  5. Vili Garvin

    Vili Garvin Member

    Is this not a blitzkrieg, he also used a creeping artillery barrage for the infantry to advance behind

    These two words in the same sentence tend to contradict themselves. :)
     
  6. Vili Garvin

    Vili Garvin Member

    Continuing on with the debate, I managed to dig this out of a buried bundle of notes I had tucked away...

    The origins of the word blitzkrieg are as debatable as the actual concept itself. Germany never adopted it as a term to describe lightning-like campaigns until the British press first mentioned it in a Time magazine article on 25 September 1939 that described the fall of Poland. In German literature of the interwar period, the word Blitzkrieg first appeared during 1935 in a military service journal, Deutsche Wehr.4 In 1938, Oberstleutnant Braun titled an article “Blitzkrieg,” and discussed the concept of Stosstruppen, or a combined arms unit, capable of tactical shock against an enemy’s position. The term did not become part of the regular German vocabulary until the Time magazine article appeared. Subsequently, even Adolph Hitler used the term as a propaganda tool until the stalled Russian campaign in 1941.
     
  7. spidge

    spidge RAAF RESEARCHER

    Australian General Sir John Monash used these tactics with British General Rawlinson, no matter what name people wish to call it and who they attempt to credit it to post WW1.

    At the Battle of Hamel on 4 July 1918 Monash, with the support of the British 4th Army commander Sir Henry Rawlinson commanded the 4th Australian Division, supported by the British 5th Tank Brigade, along with a detachment of US troops, to win a small but operationally significant victory for the Allies.

    This in less than two hours.

    Monash, despite not being a professionally trained officer, was a noted advocate of the co-ordinated use of infantry, aircraft, artillery and tanks.


    Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery later wrote: "I would name Sir John Monash as the best general on the western front in Europe".[22] This statement illustrates the great deal of professional respect afforded Monash outside Australia.




    Monash wrote [10]:... the true role of infantry was not to expend itself upon heroic physical effort, not to wither away under merciless machine-gun fire, not to impale itself on hostile bayonets, nor to tear itself to pieces in hostile entanglements—(I am thinking of Pozières and Stormy Trench and Bullecourt, and other bloody fields)—but on the contrary, to advance under the maximum possible protection of the maximum possible array of mechanical resources, in the form of guns, machine-guns, tanks, mortars and aeroplanes; to advance with as little impediment as possible; to be relieved as far as possible of the obligation to fight their way forward; to march, resolutely, regardless of the din and tumult of battle, to the appointed goal; and there to hold and defend the territory gained; and to gather in the form of prisoners, guns and stores, the fruits of victory.
    Luckily he survived the back stabbing by his own countrymen. (Murdoch and Bean)

    Charles Bean, the official Australian war historian, noted that Monash was more effective the higher he rose within the Army, where he had greater capacity to use his skill for meticulous planning and organisation, and to innovate in the area of technology and tactics.[11]


    Bean had been no great admirer of Monash in his early career, in part due to a general prejudice against Monash's Prussian-Jewish background, but more particularly because Monash did not fit Bean's concept of the quintessential Australian character that Bean was in the process of mythologising in his monumental work 'Australia in the War of 1914-1918'.



    (Both Bean and Monash, however, having seen the very worst excesses of British military doctrines and the waste of life on the Western Front, were determined that the role of the commander was to look after, and protect as far as possible, the troops under their command.) Bean, who wrote in his diary of Monash "We do not want Australia represented by men mainly because of their ability, natural and inborn in Jews, to push themselves",[12]




    Bean conspired with Keith Murdoch to undermine Monash, and have him removed from the command of the Australian Corps. They misled Prime Minister Billy Hughes into believing that senior officers were opposed to Monash.[13] Hughes arrived at the front before the Battle of Hamel prepared to replace Monash, but after consulting with senior officers, and after seeing the superb power of planning and execution displayed by Monash, he changed his mind.[14]


    At the Battle of Hamel on 4 July 1918 Monash, with the support of the British 4th Army commander Sir Henry Rawlinson commanded the 4th Australian Division, supported by the British 5th Tank Brigade, along with a detachment of US troops, to win a small but operationally significant victory for the Allies. On 8 August 1918, the Battle of Amiens was launched. Allied troops under the command of Douglas Haig, predominantly Rawlinson's British 4th Army (consisting of the Australian Corps under Monash and the Canadian Corps under Arthur Currie, and the British III Corps) attacked the Germans. The allied attack was spearheaded by the Australian Corps, who had been given the capture of enemy artillery as a key objective in the first phase by Monash in order to minimize the potential harm to the attacking forces.[15] The battle was a strong, significant victory for the Allies, the first decisive win for the British Army of the war,[16] causing the Germans to recognise that for them the War was lost. The defeated German leader, General Ludendorff, described it in the following words: "August 8th was the black day of the German Army in the history of the war".[17] These operations were just a start of a broad Allied offensive across the Western Front. On 12 August 1918 Monash was knighted as a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath on the battlefield by King George V,[2][18] the first time a British monarch had honoured a commander in such a way in 200 years.[19] The Australians then achieved a series of victories against the Germans at Chignes, Mont St Quentin, Peronne and Hargicourt. Monash had 208,000 men under his command, including 50,000 inexperienced Americans. Monash planned the attack on the German defences in the Battle of the Hindenburg Line between 16 September and 5 October 1918. The Allies eventually breached the Hindenburg Line by 5 October, and the war was essentially over.


    By the end of the war Monash had acquired an outstanding reputation for intellect, personal magnetism, management and ingenuity. He also won the respect and loyalty of his troops: his motto was "Feed your troops on victory".[21]



     
  8. L J

    L J Senior Member

    There is a typo in the Lexicon der Wehrmacht :the Wehrwirtschaftsamt was a part of the OKW,not the OKH
     
  9. Vitesse

    Vitesse Senior Member

    My source for the Straits Times was the excellent Singapore National Library website:

    Newspapers - REICH DEFENCE EXPERT ON CHINA CONFLICT LESSONS
     
  10. Vili Garvin

    Vili Garvin Member

    Many thanks. :)

    There is a typo in the Lexicon der Wehrmacht :the Wehrwirtschaftsamt was a part of the OKW,not the OKH

    I'm in no position dispute your assertion.

    But, does it change my comment regarding it not being a ministerial department?
     
  11. Vili Garvin

    Vili Garvin Member

    I shall answer my own question with the comment: you silly boy!!!!!! :x
     
  12. L J

    L J Senior Member

    The OKW only was the department of war with an other name,unless you are thinking that Germany could do without a department of war .;)
    The 4 sections of the OKW existed before 1938,constituting the department of war :
    Landesverteidigung,becoming Wehrmachtfuhrungsamt(Jodl)
    Wehrwirtschaftsstab,becoming Wehrwirtschaftsamt (Thomas)
    Abwehrabteilung,becoming Amt Ausland-Abwehr (Canaris)
    Wehrmachthaushaltsabteilung becaming Amt Algemeine Wehrmachtangelegenheiten(Reinicke).
    And the same persons were leading these sections before and after 1938.
     
  13. Robert-w

    Robert-w Banned

    The term Blitzkrieg was actually invented by the American press I remember attending a tutorial by John Buckley in which he pointed out that Guderian only used the term twice in his writings and then only to explain that it was not a term used by the German army!
     
  14. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    First used by the British magazine, War Illustrated on 7 October 1939 and then again referenced by the same magazine on 9 December 1939.

    The magazine,was a publication from the stable of the Daily Telegraph and covered both World Wars.
     
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  15. Robert-w

    Robert-w Banned

    The term had already been used in reports from Poland by Harrison Forman (1904-1978), a Wisconsin journalist reporting in September 1939 and had appeared in The New York Post, The New York Daily News, and Travel magazine copies of which are still on file. Forman was evacuated to Roumania on October 1st
     
  16. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member


    "Filming the Blitzkrieg" first appeared with that title in the Travel edition of December 1939 which was made up of a collection of film that Forman had took during the German invasion of Poland.The fact that it was titled as such has no bearing that his title was the original reference to Blitzkreig.

    Forman's title,Filming the Blitzkreig came after the reference to "Blitzkreig" made by the War Illustrated published on 7 October 1939 which declared "In the opening stages of the war all eyes were turned on Poland where the German military machine was engaged in Blitzkreig ...lighning war....... with a view to ending as soon as possible"

    The first reference to Blitzkreig made by the New York Daily News was made on 19 October 1939,not exactly an anchor of recording history which declared "Now that Blitzkreig of puns is over".This was nearly a fortnight after the War Illustrated had used Blitzkreig in its 7 October
    1939 publication.
     
  17. Robert-w

    Robert-w Banned

    Yes filming came later but his reports had already been produced and the hard copy is on file
     
  18. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    No doubt you can produce an image of the original report as dated that you are referring to.
     
  19. Robert-w

    Robert-w Banned

    Try the 25 September 1939 issue of Time magazine
    “This was no war of occupation, but a war of quick penetration and obliteration— Blitzkrieg, lightning war.”
     
  20. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    A third relatively early use of the term in German occurs in Die Deutsche Kriegsstärke (German War Strength) by Fritz Sternberg, a Jewish, Marxist, political economist and refugee from the Third Reich, published in 1938 in Paris and in London as Germany and a Lightning War. Sternberg wrote that Germany was not prepared economically for a long war but might win a quick war ("Blitzkrieg").

    Blitzkrieg - Wikipedia.
     
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