Editing Blitzkrieg (section)

==Military evolution, 1919–1939==
===Germany===
{{Main|Infiltration tactics}}
In 1914, German strategic thinking derived from the writings of [[Carl von Clausewitz]] (1 June 1780 – 16 November 1831), [[Helmuth von Moltke the Elder]] (26 October 1800 – 24 April 1891) and [[Alfred von Schlieffen]] (28 February 1833 – 4 January 1913), who advocated maneuver, mass and envelopment to create the conditions for a decisive battle ({{lang|de|Vernichtungsschlacht}}). During the war, officers such as [[Willy Rohr]] developed tactics to restore maneuver on the battlefield. Specialist [[light infantry]] (''[[Stosstruppen]]'', "storm troops") were to exploit weak spots to make gaps for larger infantry units to advance with heavier weapons, exploit the success and leave isolated strong points to the troops that were following up. Infiltration tactics were combined with short [[hurricane bombardment|hurricane artillery bombardments]], which used massed artillery. Devised by Colonel [[Georg Bruchmüller]], the attacks relied on speed and surprise, rather than on weight of numbers. The tactics met with great success in [[Operation Michael]], the [[German spring offensive]] of 1918 and restored temporarily the war of movement once the Allied trench system had been overrun. The German armies pushed on towards Amiens and then Paris and came within {{convert|120|km|mi}} before supply deficiencies and Allied reinforcements halted the advance.{{sfn|Perrett|1983|pp=30–31}}

The historian James Corum criticised the German leadership for failing to understand the technical advances of the First World War, conducting no studies of the [[machine gun]] prior to the war and giving [[history of the tank|tank production]] the lowest priority during the war.{{sfn|Corum|1992|p=23}} After Germany's defeat, the [[Treaty of Versailles]] limited the [[Reichswehr]] to a maximum of 100,000 men, which prevented the deployment of mass armies. The [[German General Staff]] was abolished by the treaty but continued covertly as the ''[[Truppenamt]]'' (Troop Office) and was disguised as an administrative body. Committees of veteran staff officers were formed within the ''Truppenamt'' to evaluate 57 issues of the war to revise German operational theories.{{sfn|Corum|1997|p=37}} By the time of the Second World War, their reports had led to doctrinal and training publications, including H. Dv. 487, ''Führung und Gefecht der verbundenen Waffen'' ("Command and Battle of the Combined Arms)", known as ''Das Fug'' (1921–1923) and ''[[Truppenführung]]'' (1933–1934), containing standard procedures for combined-arms warfare. The ''Reichswehr'' was influenced by its analysis of pre-war German military thought, particularly infiltration tactics since at the end of the war, they had seen some breakthroughs on the Western Front and the maneuver warfare which dominated the [[Eastern Front (World War I)|Eastern Front]].

On the Eastern Front, the war did not bog down into [[trench warfare]] since the German and the Russian Armies fought a war of maneuver over thousands of miles, which gave the German leadership unique experience that was unavailable to the trench-bound Western Allies.{{sfn|Corum|1992|p=7}} Studies of operations in the East led to the conclusion that small and coordinated forces possessed more combat power than large uncoordinated forces.

After the war, the ''Reichswehr'' expanded and improved infiltration tactics. The commander in chief, [[Hans von Seeckt]], argued that there had been an excessive focus on encirclement and emphasised speed instead.{{sfn|Corum|1997|p=30}} Seeckt inspired a revision of ''[[Bewegungskrieg]]'' (maneuver warfare) thinking and its associated ''[[Auftragstaktik]]'' in which the commander expressed his goals to subordinates and gave them discretion in how to achieve them. The governing principle was "the higher the authority, the more general the orders were"; it was the responsibility of the lower echelons to fill in the details.{{sfn|Citino|2005|p=152}} Implementation of higher orders remained within limits that were determined by the training doctrine of an elite officer corps.{{sfn|Condell|Zabecki|2008|pp=3–5}}

Delegation of authority to local commanders increased the tempo of operations, which had great influence on the success of German armies in the early war period. Seeckt, who believed in the Prussian tradition of mobility, developed the German army into a mobile force and advocated technical advances that would lead to a qualitative improvement of its forces and better coordination between motorized infantry, tanks, and planes.{{sfn|Wheeler-Bennett|1980|p=101}}

===Britain===
[[File:IWM-Q-12329-armoured-car-Megiddo-1918.jpg|thumb|right|British armoured car and motorcycle at the [[Battle of Megiddo (1918)]]]]
The British Army took lessons from the successful infantry and artillery offensives on the Western Front in late 1918. To obtain the best co-operation between all arms, emphasis was placed on detailed planning, rigid control and adherence to orders. Mechanization of the army, as part of a combined-arms theory of war, was considered a means to avoid mass casualties and the indecisive nature of offensives.{{sfn|French|2000|pp=17–18}}{{sfn|Sheffield|2011|p=121}} The four editions of ''Field Service Regulations'' that were published after 1918 held that only combined-arms operations could create enough fire power to enable mobility on a battlefield. That theory of war also emphasised consolidation and recommended caution against overconfidence and ruthless exploitation.{{sfn|French|2000|pp=18–20, 22–24}}

During the [[Sinai and Palestine campaign]], operations involved some aspects of what would later be called blitzkrieg.{{sfn|Liddell Hart|1970|pp=435–438}} The decisive [[Battle of Megiddo (1918)|Battle of Megiddo]] included concentration, surprise and speed. Success depended on attacking only in terrain favouring the movement of large formations around the battlefield and tactical improvements in the British artillery and infantry attack.{{sfn|Woodward|2006|p=191}}{{sfn|Erickson|2001|p=200}} General [[Edmund Allenby]] used infantry to attack the strong [[Ottoman Empire|Ottoman]] front line in co-operation with supporting artillery, augmented by the guns of two destroyers.{{sfn|Wavell|1968|p=206}}{{sfn|Falls|Becke|1930|pp=470–1, 480–1, 485}} Through constant pressure by infantry and cavalry, two Ottoman armies in the [[Judea]]n Hills were kept off-balance and virtually encircled during the [[Battle of Sharon|Battles of Sharon]] and [[Battle of Nablus (1918)|Nablus]] (Battle of Megiddo).{{sfn|Hill|1978|pp=171–172}}

The British methods induced "strategic paralysis" among the Ottomans and led to their rapid and complete collapse.{{sfn|Liddell Hart|1970|pp=435}} In an advance of {{convert|65|mi|km}}, captures were estimated to be "at least {{formatnum:25000}} prisoners and 260 guns".{{sfn|Hughes|2004|pp=181–183}} Liddell Hart considered that important aspects of the operation had been the extent to which Ottoman commanders were denied intelligence on the British preparations for the attack through British air superiority and air attacks on their headquarters and telephone exchanges, which paralyzed attempts to react to the rapidly-deteriorating situation.{{sfn|Liddell Hart|1970|pp=435–438}}

===France===
Norman Stone detects early blitzkrieg operations in offensives by French Generals [[Charles Mangin]] and [[Marie-Eugène Debeney]] in 1918.{{Efn|Now came the riposte – a counter-attack […] from the forest of Villers-Cotterets [...]. The French had developed a light and fast-moving tank. Two generals, Debeney on the British right, and Mangin, to his right, began the tactics that were to become famous in 1940 as ''Blitzkrieg'' – tanks, fast-moving infantry, and aircraft flying low to keep the German gunners' heads down. Three hundred tanks (Renault) and eighteen divisions, two of them American, struck in open cornfield, entirely by surprise, and went five miles forward. With the whole of the German force in the Marne salient threatened by a cut-off, Ludendorff pulled back from it, back to Chemin des Dames. By 4 August the French had taken 30,000 prisoners and 600 guns.{{sfn|Stone|2008|pp=170–171}} }} However, French doctrine in the interwar years became defence-oriented. Colonel [[Charles de Gaulle]] advocated concentration of armor and airplanes. His opinions appeared in his 1934 book ''Vers l'Armée de métier'' ("Towards the Professional Army"). Like von Seeckt, de Gaulle concluded that France could no longer maintain the huge armies of conscripts and reservists that had fought the First World War, and he sought to use tanks, mechanized forces and aircraft to allow a smaller number of highly trained soldiers to have greater impact in battle. His views endeared him little to the French high command, but, according to historian Henrik Bering, were studied with great interest by [[Heinz Guderian]].{{sfn|De Gaulle|2009}}

===Russia and Soviet Union===
In 1916, General [[Alexei Brusilov]] had used surprise and infiltration tactics during the [[Brusilov Offensive]]. Later, Marshal [[Mikhail Tukhachevsky]] (1893–1937), {{ill|Georgii Isserson|ru|Иссерсон, Георгий Самойлович}} (1898–1976) and other members of the [[Red Army]] developed a concept of [[deep battle]] from the experience of the [[Polish–Soviet War]] of 1919–1920. Those concepts would guide the Red Army doctrine throughout the Second World War. Realising the limitations of infantry and cavalry, Tukhachevsky advocated mechanized formations and the large-scale industrialisation that they required. Robert Watt (2008) wrote that blitzkrieg has little in common with Soviet deep battle.{{sfn|Watt|2008|pp=677–678}} In 2002, H. P. Willmott had noted that deep battle contained two important differences from blitzkrieg by being a doctrine of total war, not of limited operations, and rejecting decisive battle in favour of several large simultaneous offensives.{{sfn|Willmott|2002|p= 116}}

The ''Reichswehr'' and the Red Army began a secret collaboration in the [[Soviet Union]] to evade the Treaty of Versailles occupational agent, the [[Military Inter-Allied Commission of Control|Inter-Allied Commission]]. In 1926 [[military exercise|war games]] and tests began at [[Kazan]] and [[Lipetsk]], in the [[Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic|Soviet Russia]]. The centers served to field-test aircraft and armored vehicles up to the battalion level and housed aerial- and armoured-warfare schools through which officers rotated.{{sfn|Edwards|1989|p= 23}}

===Nazi Germany===
After becoming [[Chancellor of Germany]] in 1933, [[Adolf Hitler]] ignored the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. Within the Wehrmacht, which was established in 1935, the command for motorized armored forces was named the ''[[Panzerwaffe]]'' in 1936. The ''[[Luftwaffe]]'', the German air force, was officially established in February 1935, and development began on ground-attack aircraft and doctrines. Hitler strongly supported the new strategy. He read Guderian's 1937 book ''[[Achtung – Panzer!]]'' and upon observing armored field exercises at [[Kummersdorf]], he remarked, "That is what I want – and that is what I will have".{{sfn|Guderian|2001|p=46}}{{sfn|Edwards|1989|p=24}}

====Guderian====
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-139-1112-17, Heinz Guderian.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Heinz Guderian]]]]
Guderian summarized combined-arms tactics as the way to get the mobile and motorized armored divisions to work together and support each other to achieve decisive success. In his 1950 book, ''[[Panzer Leader (book)|Panzer Leader]]'', he wrote:

{{Blockquote|In this year, 1929, I became convinced that tanks working on their own or in conjunction with infantry could never achieve decisive importance. My historical studies, the exercises carried out in England and our own experience with mock-ups had persuaded me that the tanks would never be able to produce their full effect until the other weapons on whose support they must inevitably rely were brought up to their standard of speed and of cross-country performance. In such formation of all arms, the tanks must play primary role, the other weapons being subordinated to the requirements of the armor. It would be wrong to include tanks in infantry divisions; what was needed were armored divisions which would include all the supporting arms needed to allow the tanks to fight with full effect.{{sfn|Guderian|2001|p=13}}}}

Guderian believed that developments in technology were required to support the theory, especially by equipping armored divisions, tanks foremost, with wireless communications. Guderian insisted in 1933 to the high command that every tank in the German armored force must be equipped with a radio.{{sfn|Guderian|2001|p=20}} At the start of World War II, only the German Army was thus prepared with all tanks being "radio-equipped". That proved critical in early tank battles in which German tank commanders exploited the organizational advantage over the [[Allies of World War II|Allies]] that radio communication gave them.

All Allied armies would later copy that innovation. During the Polish campaign, the performance of armored troops, under the influence of Guderian's ideas, won over a number of skeptics who had initially expressed doubt about armored warfare, such as von Rundstedt and Rommel.{{sfn|Murray|2011|p=129}}

====Rommel====
According to David A. Grossman, by the [[Battle of Caporetto|Twelfth Battle of Isonzo]] (October–November 1917), while he was conducting a light-infantry operation, Rommel had perfected his maneuver-warfare principles, which were the very same ones that were applied during the blitzkrieg against France in 1940 and were repeated in the [[Coalition of the Gulf War|Coalition]] ground offensive against Iraq in the [[1991 Gulf War]].{{sfn|Grossman|1993|pp=316–335}} During the Battle of France and against his staff advisor's advice, Hitler ordered that everything should be completed in a few weeks. Fortunately for the Germans, Rommel and Guderian disobeyed the General Staff's orders (particularly those of General [[Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist]]) and forged ahead making quicker progress than anyone had expected, on the way "inventing the idea of Blitzkrieg".{{sfn|Stroud|2013|pp=33–34}}

It was Rommel who created the new archetype of Blitzkrieg by leading his division far ahead of flanking divisions.{{sfn|Brighton|2008|p=247}} MacGregor and Williamson remark that Rommel's version of blitzkrieg displayed a significantly better understanding of combined-arms warfare than that of Guderian.{{sfn|Murray|MacGregor|2001|p=172}} General [[Hermann Hoth]] submitted an official report in July 1940 which declared that Rommel had "explored new paths in the command of Panzer divisions".{{sfn|Showalter|2006|p=200}}