Panzerwaffe Selection, Training and Organization

It is well known that older, traditional leaders of the German Army initially opposed mechanization and the Panzerwaffe. By the late 1930s, this resistance collapsed in the face of Hitler’s support and the tremendous expansion of the Third Reich which brought in masses of middle-class officers in place of the `aristocrats’. In his classic Misbrauchete […]

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German Doctrine 1918

While Erster Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff had busied himself during the Brest-Litovsk negotiations sketching future borders on European maps with reckless abandon, his field commanders and staff had assessed Germany’s prospects for 1918. They were not cheery. More than one million draft-eligible men remained in war-related industries at home, and the OHL estimated late in 1917 […]

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