He is the man who symbolizes the flash victory of the German army in 1940 against France. Father of the PanzerwaffeA supporter of the massive use of tank, General Heinz Guderian fell into disgrace after the rout of the Barbarossa operation, but was recalled by Adolf Hitler to lead the Eastern Front in the last months of the war.
But the most beautiful victory of Guderian is to have escaped Nuremberg trials, before publishing a successful autobiography which maintained its own legend as that of a German army which would have waged an impeccable war, being simply victim of the strategic errors of the Führer.
Director of Wars & History And a great military specialist, Jean Lopez signs a first biography in French of this visionary of modern war, but also a little brilliant character. Interview.
L’Express: Heinz Guderian staged himself like the father of Panzer and the main craftsman of the Blitzkrieg won in a lightning way against France in 1940. What is the share of truth and legend?
Jean Lopez: Heinz Guderian is undoubtedly the organizer of the Panzerwaffethe German armored army, but it is not the designer. Half a dozen German soldiers deserve this title more than him. In the 1920s, when the Treaty of Versailles prohibited “manufacturing and importing in Germany of armored tanks, tanks or any other similar device that can be used for war goals”, the Germans took the English in terms of modern and mechanized war as a model. They subsequently developed its own doctrine. Guderian is part of this movement. He boasted of being the father, but his superior, General Lutz, notably played a more important role.
The fact remains that it was Guderian who set up the first division Panzer In 1935, which remained a model for this type of training. The Soviets were ahead of tanks, but because of the internal purges, they marked the plunge. This means that the Germans found themselves alone in occupying the field of mechanized war. When they went to war in Poland in 1939, they still have questions. But they make the bet that these divisions of a new type will work as a kind of box opener capable of unravel all the defenses, thus offering a decisive advantage.
How to explain that France falls so quickly against Germany in 1940?
France has more tanks, and these are often of better qualities. Despite everything, she takes a historic beating. This is where we see the importance of doctrine. The French army dispersed its tanks, sending them in small packages, and its men are not trained. Guderian is a crazy training. He has always highlighted the training of men before the quality of the equipment. His great merit is to have formed soldiers with an armored weapon, with a new, hyperagressive spirit, taking up a little what had made the success of the cavalry of yesteryear, namely audacity.
Guderian is a crazy training
He also managed to cooperate tanks with other weapons. The division Panzerit is an interarm set with tanks, but also different cannons mounted on caterpillars, motorized infantry, as well as a small accompaniment aviation. A tank never attacks alone. We have seen it recently in Ukraine, when the Russian tanks wanted to move forward on the Donetsk, and that they took a monumental disappointment …
This triumph in France, according to you, represented an illusion for the German army. For what ?
Imagine the euphoria that took up the Germans. France was considered the first power in the world, with a considerable arsenal. The Germans had only a clear advantage in terms of aviation. They were therefore amazed at this incredible victory, acquired in just six weeks. They have undoubtedly lost any measure, giving up even more to their old demons, namely to think in terms above all military, and not political, diplomatic or economic. And in military matters, the Germans have always tended to reason above all in terms of operations.
But in the euphoria of this victory in France, they forgot their logistical weaknesses. Their army was dimensioned for the Western front, that is to say for small regions in which it is easy to move and feed the battle. It is thus amazing that nobody raised his hand when Hitler announced that he was going to attack the Soviet front. While these are territories where there are no roads, five or six times larger than in France, and faced with a Soviet adversary whose Germans were unaware of everything …
Have the Germans were also victims of their racial prejudices, considering the Slavs as “sub-men”?
There is a share of racism and ideology. But there is also a purely military blindness. Guderian knows that the Soviets have the greatest mechanized bodies in the world. Seeing his own difficulties in setting up an armored division, he tells himself that they will not be able to organize bodies five times larger. On this point, he was not mistaken, the Soviet armored bodies having been pitiful in the battle.
He is told to advance 30 kilometers, he is 100 kilometers.
But what, on the French front, was the strength of Guderian- audacity, aggressiveness, individualism, an ability to go beyond orders …- becomes counterproductive on Soviet territory. He is told to advance 30 kilometers, he is 100 kilometers. He has no team spirit, and keeps unraveling his superiors. He ends up exhausting his troops. He then realizes that the Soviets will fight until death, unlike the French.
After six months of the Barbarossa operation, Guderian collapsed physically and morally. On the front, the German soldiers finish like tramps. With his armored division, Guderian had a magnificent tool which he took ten years to build, but which he demolished in a few months. In December 1941, when Joukov’s counter-offensive triggered, it was a disaster. Hitler le Vire without manners right after Christmas.
Did Goderian have agreed to become responsible for the Eastern Front in July 1944 until March 1945, knowing that the situation was desperate?
He returned after the July 20, 1944 attack on Hitler. Guderian has the art of passing between drops. He knows there is a plot against the Führer, does not denounce the conspirators, but at the same time refuses to participate. He gets green to wait to see how it will turn. Hitler thus calls him to the head of the General Staff of the Army responsible for the Eastern Front. He then accepts that it is an infernal position, everyone knowing that Hitler is a very complicated, unpredictable and handling the lie. Guderian accepts by ambition.
He becomes a real Nazi general, participating in the full Nazification of the Wehrmacht. On the military side, it is the stampede, and Guderian does not shine. From July 1944, the German army fell back on all fronts and took terrible blows. It is Guderian who has the idea of Volkssurmthat is to say of a total military mobilization of the German people, transforming the old and the kids into a cannon chariot in the face of the advance of the Russian army. You imagine the result … Guderian, who has always prioritized the virtues of the offensive, must convert to the fortifications. But his war of war is disaster on disaster.
How, at the end of the war, does he manage to escape the Nuremberg court?
He goes again between the drops. His former colleagues do years in prison, such as Hermann Hoth or Georg-Hans Reinhardt. Why do they and not him? Because Guderian is prudent. The others left compromising writings, remained in the verbal field. In addition, the judges in Nuremberg were drowned under the documents. If they had known what current historians know about war crimes, Guderian would have made prison. He could also have had the rope around his neck for his role in the repression of the Warsaw Insurrection in the fall of 1944.
It is an amazing case in which the defeated the vision of the winner.
He participated in an atrocious battle that killed 200,000, most civilians. The Wehrmacht was present and participated in the total destruction of Warsaw. But Guderian was lucky politically. The Poles did not manage to bring this file to Nuremberg in priority, Poland then being divided between a pro-Western government and another prosoviet.
Guderian also benefited from American protection. Historical Division, an office of the War Department, was responsible for documenting the history of the Eastern Front. The prospect of the Cold War was already looming. Who knew the Red Army best than the high offices of the Wehrmacht? The German officers were therefore responsible for writing articles for the Americans. In return, they were not extradited, as asked by the Poles.
His biggest victory, you say, is the success of his Memoirs published in 1950, the first and most read of a former Wehrmacht general …
Guderian is the first, but not the only one, to defend the idea that the Wehrmacht was clean, the best army in the world. The German officers would have been men of honor who waged a correct war. They would have lost because of Hitler’s mistakes. The Western public has gobed this thesis. It is an amazing case in which the defeated the vision of the winner. It took seventy years of historical research to review the copy.
Among Guderian’s thuriferous, we find the famous journalist and military historian Basil Liddell Hart. It is an exchange of good processes. Liddell Hart helps Guderian to publish his memories. In exchange, Guderian publicly assures that it was Liddell Hart who, in the 1920s, would have been the real inspiration for Panzers and Blitzkrieg. This myth lasted until 1988, when the American academic John Mearsheimer, biographer of Liddell Hart, showed how much the latter rewritten history.
Heinz Guderian, the Panzers masterby Jean Lopez. Perrin, 568 p., € 26.