Heinz Wilhelm Guderian was one of the most important generals of the Second World War and, perhaps, one of the greatest military theorists of the twentieth century who most influenced contemporary military art, with particular attention to land operations.
Born in 1888 in Kulm, he descended from a Prussian family. In fact, his hometown was in East Prussia, a region that after the First World War went to Poland.
Young Guderian enlisted in the Imperial German Army in 1907 and a year later achieved the rank of second lieutenant. In 1909, the officer transferred with the 10th Battalion Jager in Goslar (Lower Saxony) and, in 1912, was moved to the 3rd Telegraph Battalion in Koblenz (Rhineland-Palatinate).
At the outbreak of the First World War, Guderian was an intelligence officer for the Fourth Army of the Imperial German Army, took part in the Battle of Verdun (February-December 1916) and was subsequently appointed commander of the II Battalion of the 14th Infantry Regiment, a post he held until 24 October 1917.
In February 1918, the officer was sent to the German army general staff; a career step that Guderian would remember as “The proudest moment of my life”1.
He ended the First World War as an officer assigned to operations in Italy.
In the 1922s, the German officer was introduced to armored warfare tactics by Ernst Volckheim. The latter was a tank commander in World War I and, later, a prolific scholar and author on the subject. In this regard, in January 7, Guderian was transferred to the XNUMXth Bavarian Transport Battalion (in Munich) and the officer had his first contact with a unit equipped with military vehicles. Also, at that time, he was entrusted with the arduous task of “to study the possibility of employing armored troops in an army forbidden to have tanks, a challenge he took up with typical enthusiasm. He did all he could with the desperately inadequate supply vehicles he had at his disposal in the 7th (Bavarian) Motorized Transport Battalion and read everything available on the subject, lecturing until he became an authority on the subject of mechanized warfare and on tanks in particular.”2
Later, - in the 1930s - he played a decisive role in spreading the concept of the armoured division and the doctrine of mechanised offensive warfare (later known as Blitzkrieg).
In 1937, the essay “Achtung Panzer!” was published; in this work of military strategy, Guderian tried to contain in a very clear and concise way not only his conclusions on what the criteria for using large armoured units should be, but he also went on to describe the doctrinal features of the land military instrument, which was destined to base the centre of its power on these formations.
At the beginning of World War II, he led a tank corps in the invasion of Poland and commanded the tank units that routed the Allies in the Battle of France. In this regard, the Battle of France is one of the most impressive examples history has given us of the decisive effect of a new idea, translated into practice by a dynamic executor.
On that occasion, General Guderian did not miss the opportunity to put his ideas - on armored warfare - into practice. The result proved to be as decisive as those that had crowned the application of other new ideas in past historical eras: the use of the horse, the lance, the phalanx, the versatility of the legion, the horse archer, the bow, the musket, the cannon, the organization of armies into separate and maneuverable divisions. Indeed, the idea of the tank proved decisive perhaps even more quickly.3.
During the war, he led the Second Panzer Army during theOperation Barbarossa. However, after the Battle of Moscow he was removed from office.
From July 1944 to March 1945, he was Chief of Staff of the German Army High Command. After the Second World War, he was taken prisoner by the Allies and remained interned until 1948.
Heinz Guderian died on 14 May 1954 in Schwangau (Bavaria).
1 See F. Riggi, The great leaders of the Second World War, Newton Compton Editori, 2018, Rome, p.1129
2 Ibid., p.1131
3 See BH Liddell Hart, Military History of the Second World War. The Armies, the Fronts and the Battles, Mondadori, 2021, Milan, p.90
Photo: web
