Editing Tank (section)

===Interwar period===
{{Main|Tanks of the interwar period}}
[[File:Hotchkiss H-39.jpg|thumb|French [[Hotchkiss H35#The Char léger modèle 1935 H modifié 39|Hotchkiss H-39 light tank of 1939]]]]
In the [[History of the tank#Between the wars|interwar period]] tanks underwent further mechanical development. In terms of tactics, [[J.F.C. Fuller]]'s doctrine of spearhead attacks with massed tank formations was the basis for work by [[Heinz Guderian]] in Germany, [[Percy Hobart]] in Britain, [[Adna R. Chaffee, Jr.]], in the US, [[Charles de Gaulle]] in France, and [[Mikhail Tukhachevsky]] in the USSR. [[B. H. Liddell Hart|Liddell Hart]] held a more moderate view that all arms – cavalry, infantry and artillery – should be mechanized and work together. The British formed the all-arms [[Experimental Mechanized Force]] to test the use of tanks with supporting forces.

In the [[Second World War]] only Germany would initially put the theory into practice on a large scale, and it was their superior tactics and French blunders, not superior weapons, that made the "blitzkrieg" so successful in May 1940.<ref name="Deighton1979"/> For information regarding tank development in this period, see [[History of the tank#Between the wars|tank development between the wars]].

Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union all experimented heavily with tank warfare during their clandestine and "volunteer" involvement in the [[Spanish Civil War]], which saw some of the earliest examples of successful mechanized combined arms&nbsp;—such as when [[Second Spanish Republic|Republican]] troops, equipped with Soviet-supplied tanks and supported by aircraft, eventually routed Italian troops fighting for the [[Nationalists]] in the seven-day [[Battle of Guadalajara]] in 1937.<ref>[[#TimeApril1937|Time (1937)]], ''Chewed up''</ref> However, of the nearly 700 tanks deployed during this conflict, only about 64 tanks representing the ''Franco'' faction and 331 from the ''Republican'' side were equipped with cannon, and of those 64 nearly all were [[World War I]] vintage [[Renault FT]] tanks, while the 331 Soviet supplied machines had 45mm main guns and were of 1930s manufacture.<ref>Manrique p. 311, 321, 324</ref> The balance of ''Nationalist'' tanks were machine gun armed. The primary lesson learned from this war was that machine gun armed tanks had to be equipped with cannon, with the associated armour inherent to modern tanks.

The five-month-long war between the Soviet Union and the Japanese 6th Army at ''Khalkhin Gol'' ([[Nomonhan]]) in 1939 brought home some lessons{{which|date=August 2015}}. In this conflict, the Soviets fielded over two thousand tanks, to the around 73 cannon armed tanks deployed by the Japanese,<ref>Goldman p. 19</ref> the major difference being that Japanese armour were equipped with [[diesel engine|diesel]] engines as opposed to the Russian tanks equipped with petrol engines.<ref>Coox p. 300, 318, 437</ref> After General [[Georgy Zhukov]] inflicted a defeat on the Japanese 6th Army with his massed combined tank and air attack, the Soviets learned a lesson on the use of gasoline engines, and quickly incorporated those newly found experiences into their new [[T-34]] medium tank during [[World War II]].<ref>Coox 998</ref>

Prior to World War II, the tactics and strategy of deploying tank forces underwent a revolution. In August 1939, Soviet General [[Georgy Zhukov]] used the combined force of tanks and airpower at [[Nomonhan]] against the Japanese 6th Army;<ref>Coox p. 579, 590, 663</ref> [[Heinz Guderian]], a tactical theoretician who was heavily involved in the formation of the first independent German tank force, said "Where tanks are, the front is", and this concept became a reality in World War II.<ref>[[#Cooper1979|Cooper and Lucas (1979)]], ''[[Panzer]]: The armoured Force of the Third Reich'', p. 9</ref> Guderian's armoured warfare ideas, combined with Germany's existing doctrines of ''Bewegungskrieg'' ("[[maneuver warfare]]") and [[infiltration tactics]] from World War I, became the basis of [[blitzkrieg]] in the opening stages of World War II.