Heinz Wilhelm Guderian (German: [haɪnts ˈvɪlhɛlm ɡuˈdeːʁi.an]; 17 June 1888 – 14 May 1954) was a German army general and military theorist. A pioneer and advocate of what would come to be called the "blitzkrieg" approach, he played a central role in the development of the panzer division concept and tank warfare more broadly.
In 1936, after serving in the military since leaving school, including in World War I, he was promoted to Heer Generalmajor (Major General) and became the Inspector of Motorized Troops. At the beginning of World War II, Guderian led an armoured corps in the Invasion of Poland with the rank of General der Panzertruppe. During the Invasion of France, he commanded the armoured units that attacked through the Ardennes forest and overwhelmed the Allied defenses at the Battle of Sedan. He led the 2nd Panzer Army with the rank of Generaloberst (Colonel General) during Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The campaign ended in failure after the German offensive Operation Typhoon failed to capture Moscow, and after a disagreement with Hitler, Guderian was dismissed.
In early 1943, Adolf Hitler appointed Guderian to the newly created position of Inspector General of Armoured Troops. In this role, he had broad responsibility to rebuild and train new panzer forces but saw limited success due to Germany's worsening war economy. Guderian was appointed Acting Chief of the General Staff of the Army High Command, immediately following the 20 July Plot to assassinate Hitler. Guderian was appointed as a member of the "Court of Honour" by Hitler, which in the aftermath of the plot was used to dismiss people from the military so they could be tried in the "People's Court" and executed. He was Hitler's personal advisor on the Eastern Front and became closely associated with the Nazis. Guderian's troops carried out the criminal Commissar Order during Barbarossa, and he was implicated in the commission of reprisals after the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.
Guderian surrendered to US forces on 10 May 1945 and was interned until 1948. He was released without being charged and retired to write his memoirs. Entitled "Memoirs of a Soldier", the autobiography was published in 1950 and became a bestseller. Guderian's writings received backlash in the decades since their release, with historians finding the original works to contain post-war myths, including that of the "clean Wehrmacht". Guderian portrayed himself as the sole originator of the panzer force and refused the stipulation that units under his command committed crimes of war. These criticisms were partially addressed in his 1952 re-release edition of the book, newly entitled Panzer Leader, which mended some historic inaccuracies and introduced a foreword from B. H. Liddell Hart. Guderian died in 1954 and was buried in Goslar.
Guderian was born in Kulm, West Prussia (since 1920 Poland), on 17 June 1888, the son of Friedrich and Clara (née Kirchhoff). His father and grandfathers were Prussian officers and he grew up in garrison towns surrounded by the military. In 1903, he left home and enrolled at a military cadet school. He was a capable student, although he performed poorly in his final exam. He entered the army as an officer cadet on 28 February 1907 with the 10th Hanoverian Light Infantry Battalion (Hannoversche Jäger-Bataillon Nr. 10) , under his father's command. He became a second lieutenant on 27 January 1908, receiving his patent backdated to 22 June 1906. On 1 October 1913 he married Margarete Goerne, with whom he had two sons: Heinz Günther (1914–2004) and Kurt (1918–1984).
At the outbreak of World War I, Guderian served as a communications officer and the commander of a radio station. In November, 1914 he was promoted to first lieutenant. Between May, 1915 and January, 1916 Guderian was in charge of signals intelligence for the 4th Army. He fought at the Battle of Verdun during this period and was promoted to captain on 15 November 1915. He was then sent to the 4th Infantry Division before becoming commander of the Second Battalion of Infantry Regiment 14. On 28 February 1918, Guderian was appointed to the General Staff Corps. Guderian finished the war as an operations officer in occupied Italy. Guderian disagreed with Germany signing the armistice in 1918, believing that they should have continued the fight.
Guderian was strongly opposed to the Treaty of Versailles. He particularly objected to the fact that much of West Prussia was ceded to the Second Polish Republic, including Kulm. This was due to a strong belief that Kulm would be negatively affected by Polish control, as Guderian held anti-Polish prejudices; he wrote to Margarete about the ceding of West Prussia, and described Poles as "poor, dirty, incompetent, stupid and vulgar, depraved and treacherous."
Early in 1919, Guderian was selected as one of the four thousand officers allowed by the Versailles Treaty in the reduced-size German army, the Reichswehr. He was assigned to serve on the staff of the central command of the Eastern Frontier Guard Service which was intended to control and coordinate the independent freikorps units in the defense of Germany's eastern frontiers against Polish (who were not attacking Germany) and Soviet forces engaged in the Russian Civil War in conjunction with the Estonian War of Independence. In June, 1919 Guderian joined the Iron Brigade (later known as the Iron Division) as its second General Staff officer.
In the 1920s, Guderian was introduced to armored warfare tactics by Ernst Volckheim, a World War I tank commander and a prolific writer on the subject. He studied the leading European literature on armored warfare and, between 1922 and 1928, wrote five papers for Military Weekly, an armed forces journal. While the topics covered were mundane, Guderian related them to why Germany had lost World War I, a controversial subject at the time, and thus raised his profile in the military. There were some trial maneuvers conducted in the Soviet Union and Guderian academically evaluated the results. Britain was experimenting with armoured units under General Percy Hobart, and Guderian kept abreast of Hobart's writings. In 1924, he was appointed as an instructor and military historian at Stettin. As a lecturer he was polarizing; some of his pupils enjoyed his wit, but he alienated others with his biting sarcasm.
In 1927, Guderian was promoted to major and in October he was posted to the transport section of the Truppenamt, a clandestine form of the army's General Staff, which had been forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. By the autumn of 1928, he was a leading speaker on tanks; however, he did not set foot in one until the summer of 1929, when he briefly drove a Swedish Stridsvagn m/21-29. In October, 1928 he was transferred to the Motor Transport Instruction Staff to teach. In 1931, he was promoted to lieutenant-colonel and became chief of staff to the Inspectorate of Motorized Troops under Oswald Lutz. This placed Guderian at the center of Germany's development of mobile warfare and armored forces.
Panzer Division and mobile warfare
In the 1930s, Guderian played a significant role in the development of both the panzer division concept and a doctrine of mechanized offensive warfare that would later become known as blitzkrieg. Guderian's 3rd Motor Transport Battalion became the blueprint for the future German armored force. However, his role was less central than he claimed in his memoirs and that historians repeated in the postwar era.
Guderian and his immediate superior Lutz had a symbiotic relationship. Both men worked tirelessly with the shared aim of creating a panzer force. Guderian was the public face advocating mechanized warfare and Lutz worked behind the scenes. Guderian reached into the Nazi regime to promote the panzer force concept, attract support and secure resources. This included a demonstration of the concept to Hitler himself. Lutz persuaded, cajoled and compensated for Guderian's often arrogant and argumentative behavior towards his peers. The modern historian Pier Battistelli writes that it is difficult to determine exactly who developed each of the ideas behind the panzer force. Many other officers, such as Walther Nehring and Hermann Breith, were also involved. However, Guderian is widely accepted as having pioneered the communications system developed for the panzer units. The central tenets of blitzkrieg – independence, mass and surprise – were first published in doctrinal statements of mechanized warfare by Lutz.