Editing Blitzkrieg (section)

===Poland, 1939===
{{Main|Invasion of Poland}}
[[File:Poland2.jpg|thumb|alt= A map of Poland showing the German invasion from eastern Germany, East Prussia and German-occupied Czechoslovakia in September 1939|In Poland, fast-moving armies encircled Polish forces (blue circles) but not by independent armored operations. Combined tank, artillery, infantry and air forces were used.]]
Although journalists popularized the term ''Blitzkrieg'' during the September 1939 invasion of Poland, the historians Matthew Cooper and J. P. Harris have written that German operations during the campaign were consistent with traditional methods. The Wehrmacht strategy was more in line with ''[[Vernichtungsgedanke]]'', a focus on envelopment to create pockets in broad-front annihilation. The German generals dispersed Panzer forces among the three German concentrations with little emphasis on independent use. They deployed tanks to create or destroy close pockets of [[Polish Army|Polish forces]] and to seize operational-depth terrain in support of the largely-unmotorized infantry, which followed.{{sfn|Harris|1995|p=339}}

The Wehrmacht used available models of tanks, Stuka dive-bombers and concentrated forces in the Polish campaign, but the majority of the fighting involved conventional infantry and artillery warfare, and most Luftwaffe action was independent of the ground campaign. Matthew Cooper wrote:

{{blockquote|Throughout the Polish Campaign, the employment of the mechanised units revealed the idea that they were intended solely to ease the advance and to support the activities of the infantry.... Thus, any strategic exploitation of the armoured idea was still-born. The paralysis of command and the breakdown of morale were not made the ultimate aim of the... German ground and air forces, and were only incidental by-products of the traditional maneuvers of rapid encirclement and of the supporting activities of the flying artillery of the Luftwaffe, both of which had as their purpose the physical destruction of the enemy troops. Such was the ''Vernichtungsgedanke'' of the Polish campaign.{{sfn|Cooper|1997|p=176}}}}

John Ellis wrote that "there is considerable justice in Matthew Cooper's assertion that the panzer divisions were not given the kind of ''strategic'' mission that was to characterize authentic armored blitzkrieg, and were almost always closely subordinated to the various mass infantry armies".{{sfn|Ellis|1990|p=}}{{page needed|date=December 2021}} [[Steven Zaloga]] wrote, "Whilst Western accounts of the September campaign have stressed the shock value of the panzer and Stuka attacks, they have tended to underestimate the punishing effect of German artillery on Polish units. Mobile and available in significant quantity, artillery shattered as many units as any other branch of the Wehrmacht."{{sfn|Zaloga|Madej|1985|p=}}{{page needed|date=December 2021}}