BLITZ KRIEG
The secrets of Germany’s devastating military tactics in World War II revealed
Emperor, now that Guangxu was 17 and married. She retired to the new Summer Palace, which she had rebuilt following the destruction of the old one.
Disaster struck just a few years into Guangxu’s personal rule. The First Sino-japanese War erupted in July 1894 between Japan and China, primarily over the Korean Peninsula. While Cixi had developed the Chinese navy during her regency, Guangxu had halted naval and military development and maintenance. With a navy that was no match for the Japanese fleet, the Qing government was, unsurprisingly, defeated.
Guangxu and his government sought peace with Japan in February 1895, and the Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed two months later. China was required to pay Japan substantial war reparations and cede territory, including Taiwan, as part of the terms.
Guangxu believed that if the Qing dynasty was to survive, drastic reform was required following China’s humiliating defeat and concessions to Japan. Under the influence of reformist Kang Youwei and his student, Liang Qichao, he began the Hundred Days’ Reform in 1898. Guangxu issued numerous reform edicts aimed at modernising every aspect of Chinese society. Among these reforms, he wanted to abolish the old civil examination system and develop a constitutional monarchy, like those seen in Japan and the West.
Guangxu hoped to safeguard China’s future, but his desire for broad reform enraged conservative officials, including Cixi.
She staged a coup in September, putting Guangxu under house arrest at the Summer Palace and regaining control of the regency. Although Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao were able to flee abroad, Cixi arrested and executed six of their fellow reformers for their role in the Hundred Days’ Reform.
It is often stated that Cixi imprisoned Guangxu permanently following the coup. Despite the fact that Cixi was in power, Guangxu kept his title of Emperor and continued to play a role in government. According to letters from officials and foreign diplomats, he attended court audiences and even made personal comments on memorials to the throne, the official communication to the Emperor.
Much of what has been circulated about Cixi over the last century or so, shaping her narrative, has been the result of Kang’s
propaganda. While in exile, he claimed that Guangxu had asked for help in securing his freedom and that Cixi would try to kill the Emperor, portraying himself as a heroic reformer forced out by the Empress Dowager. He also claimed that Cixi used funds from the Chinese navy to build her new summer palace, depriving the navy of the money it required to develop, resulting in China’s defeat at the hands of Japan.
But Cixi had more pressing concerns than Kang’s writings from abroad. The Boxer Rebellion erupted in November 1899, with rebels violently attacking foreign diplomats, missionaries, and Chinese Christians. Known as the Boxers, the rebels were members of a secret society, the ‘Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists’, who initially opposed the Qing dynasty before focusing their vitriol towards foreigners. Cixi, seeing this as an opportunity to rid China of foreign interference, openly announced her support for them.
Cixi’s support for the Boxers, predictably, led to an increase in their violent attacks. To put down the rebellion, the Eight-nation Alliance – which included Britain, France, and Japan – occupied Beijing in August 1900. Cixi was forced to flee the city with the Emperor to Xi’an, where she stayed for the next 18 months.
After negotiations, the rebellion came to an end in 1901, with China being forced to pay a large indemnity to the foreigners for the revolt. Cixi even decided to issue an uncharacteristic ‘decree of self-reproach’ in which she accepted responsibility for the rebellion and blamed her poor judgement for it.
Cixi realised that China needed serious reform when she returned to Beijing in 1902. She began implementing a number of the reforms that she had stopped four years earlier with her coup. She abolished the examination system, abolished torturous punishments such as linchi, outlawed the practice of foot-binding, and worked to improve girls’ education. Cixi even began issuing reforms to establish elected assemblies and move towards a constitutional monarchy.
Cixi died on November 15, 1908, just one day after Guangxu, after ruling China for nearly five decades. Guangxu had no children but Cixi had not trained anyone to succeed her, because she did not want to risk losing the power and influence that she had worked so hard to achieve. Cixi chose two-year-old Puyi, Guangxu’s half-nephew, to succeed as Emperor shortly before her own death.
Cixi’s decision to accept reform, however, appears to have come too late. Three years later, the Qing Dynasty fell apart, and Puyi was forced to abdicate in 1912, ending two thousand years of imperial rule in China.
Cixi’s story is mysterious and speculative in many ways. Although revisionists have praised her efforts to modernise, she has been repeatedly vilified and subjected to damaging propaganda that blames her for Imperial China’s demise. While Cixi had her detractors both during and after her lifetime, she was undeniably a powerful woman and a force to be reckoned with.
“Cixi’s decision to accept reform, however, appears to have Come too late”
During September 1939 to June 1940 the German armed forces (Wehrmacht) achieved three decisive Blitzkrieg (‘lightning war’) successes. First, in just 36 days during September to October 1939 the Germans, aided by the Soviets, conquered Poland. Second, during 60 days’ combat in April–june 1940, German forces conquered Denmark and Norway, while also repelling an Anglo-french intervention. Finally, in just 47 days of fighting during May to June 1940 the Wehrmacht astonishingly conquered France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, while also driving the British Expeditionary Force back onto English soil. But here are some things you likely didn’t know about Blitzkrieg and why it succeeded.
1 THERE WAS NO SUCH THING AS ‘BLITZKRIEG’ WARFARE
Western journalists first coined the phrase Blitzkrieg during autumn 1939 to describe the fast-paced German mechanised operations seen in the Polish campaign, but it was not a term used in German military thought. Throughout World War II the key German doctrinal work remained The Command of Troops (1936). Later, as the Western Allies tried to comprehend these early German triumphs in the war, they became fixated with what they viewed as the revolutionary German military doctrine of Blitzkrieg, seemingly built around massed armour and Stuka dive-bombers.
But what did the term Blitzkrieg actually identify? It described an operational method that utilised rapid, strategically concentrated all-arms armoured forces. Blitzkrieg envisaged that spearhead ground formations, backed by air strikes, would quickly break through the enemy’s border defences by exploiting surprise, shock, speed and mobility. Once the panzer divisions had smashed through these initial defences, they would conduct fast, bold, risk-embracing strategic deep-penetration operations. These swift armoured advances deep into enemy territory, ignoring exposed flanks, would overrun enemy rear-area headquarters, depots, transport nodes and reserve forces’ assembly areas. This would inflict dislocation, paralysis and shock on the enemy. The tempo and momentum that the German panzer divisions developed were greater than that achieved by their enemies. The rapid execution of German operations enabled their forces not only to generate tempo and momentum, but also to get inside their enemies’ decision-making cycles. This helped paralyse their enemies’ reactions, largely by rendering any response out-of-date.
Instead of being a widely accepted German doctrinal approach, Blitzkrieg was an operational method developed by just a few forward-looking commanders (like Heinz Guderian and Erwin Rommel). In these campaigns – particularly the 1940 Western one – these apostles of fast-paced mobile operations proved the validity of their radical vision by securing success in battle. These triumphs were secured despite the qualms of the more conservative German commanders. These officers remained worried about the vulnerable flanks these rapid panzer advances created; to mitigate this risk senior commanders tried to halt the panzer advance. But such risk-aversion violated the key tenets of Blitzkrieg. Only by continuing to advance quickly could the panzers keep generating surprise, momentum and tempo while remaining inside the enemy’s decisionmaking cycle. The exposed German flanks were not a problem if the enemy was too overwhelmed to counter-attack these flanks. This offensive approach was what the term Blitzkrieg referred to.
2 HITLER’S RECKLESSNESS WAS KEY TO SUCCESS
The key event that led to Germany’s implementation of Blitzkrieg in 1939-40 was the rise to power of Hitler’s Nazi Party in 1933. The violently nationalistic, militaristic, racist and anti-semitic Nazi movement, led by Adolf Hitler, adopted foreign policy objectives that were very different to those of Weimar Germany. Hitler viewed war as the Nazi state’s preferred policy instrument in its drive for territorial expansion. The Nazis wished to regain the ‘German’ lands lost in the 1919 Versailles Treaty, and also to conquer eastern Europe to provide ‘Living Space’ for an economically self-sufficient future German nation. Hitler needed an offensive military capability to deliver these aggressive foreign policy objectives.
Tossing aside the Versailles agreement, Hitler embarked on a massive German rearmament programme. The development of German mechanised formations from 1935 fitted nicely within the Nazi mind-set that raw offensive military power could be used to reshape Europe. Propelled forward by Hitler’s fervent approval and by re-armament, during 1935 the German Army formed its first three panzer (armoured) divisions. These were well-balanced formations, built around a brigade of tanks, together with motorised infantry, semi-motorised artillery and anti-tank guns, as well as other mobile supporting arms (such as engineers, recce forces and a Luftwaffe air-support liaison detachment).
In addition, a key element to the advent of Blitzkrieg was Hitler’s reckless and optimistic commitment of Germany to war. The German military had not performed impressively during its 1938-39 movements into the Sudetenland, Austria and Bohemia-moravia. This led many senior German commanders to doubt the overall capabilities of the armed forces; ignoring such doubts, Hitler argued that Germany’s enemies were even less well-prepared for conflict and recklessly committed Germany to war against Poland in September 1939.
Although capable of delivering rapid, decisive victories against unprepared opponents, Blitzkrieg remained a very demanding form of offensive warfare. The tactic had inherent flaws that were obscured by the Germans’ triumphs of 1939-40 and subsequent Allied operations targeted with increasing effectiveness the deficiencies within Blitzkrieg. Success for the German forces depended on surprise, momentum, swift decision-cycles, adequate resupply, appropriate all-arms and inter-service co-operation, good situational awareness and flexibility. Increasingly, from late-1941 onwards, the battlefield situation altered and the Allies began to more effectively counteract and defeat this Blitzkrieg approach.
The intended target of a Blitzkrieg attack ‘merely’ had to slow down the invasion to increase its chance of not losing. In contrast, the Germans had to maintain their grip on the initiative and keep generating and exploiting surprise and momentum if they were to have any chance of victory.
To successfully maintain tempo and momentum the Germans had to exploit fleeting opportunities (such as an unguarded bridge). They also needed to avoid, outflank or encircle enemy reserves. This placed particular demands on appropriate situational awareness and effective sub-unit leadership. If the Germans lacked adequate command tanks and scouting aircraft to allow their spearhead commanders to obtain sufficient situational awareness, Blitzkrieg success was much harder. German command of the skies was therefore a crucial part of Blitzkrieg operations; it enabled aircraft to provide fire-support for the contact battle, reararea interdiction, air assault, air reconnaissance and air transport missions. Once the Allied forces began to wrest air superiority away from the Germans, Blitzkrieg attacks became increasingly difficult to pull off.
Blitzkrieg forces also needed an appropriate force structure, but throughout the war the Germans never enjoyed an entirely adequate force structure and weapons inventory. In Poland, for example, Germany’s panzer formations lacked adequate numbers of half-tracked armoured personnel carriers, mobile artillery and the heavier combat tanks. For most of the war, moreover, the panzer divisions only fielded limited numbers of self-propelled artillery pieces. As the Allies increasingly harnessed their industrial might, they gradually created force structures and weapon strengths that eventually surpassed the Germans’ as the building blocks for Blitzkrieg-style operations.
One final limitation of Blitzkrieg was that the rapid speed and large scale of the German advances placed enormous strain on their logistical resupply structures. The Germans struggled to deliver effective logistical sustainment of operations even when strategic victory required just a few envelopment or encirclement operations (known as ‘cauldron battles’), as in Poland (1939) and the West (1940). When during 1941 strategic defeat of the Soviets required a dozen envelopment operations, the sheer scale of the battle-space made it impossible for the Germans to adequately resupply their forces long enough for them to reach strategic victory over the enemy.