What is Blitz Kreig?

Answer 1

Blitzkrieg (German, literally lightning war or flash war) is a popular name for an offensive operational-level military doctrine which involves an initial bombardment followed by employment of mobile forces attacking with speed and surprise to prevent an enemy from implementing a coherent defense. The founding principles of these types of operations were developed in the 19th Century by various nations, and adapted in the years after World War I, largely by the Wehrmacht, to incorporate modern weapons and vehicles as a method to help prevent trench warfare and linear warfare in future conflicts. The first practical implementations of these concepts coupled with modern technology were instituted by the German Wehrmacht in the opening battles of World War II. While operations in Poland were rather conventional, subsequent battles — particularly the invasions of France, The Netherlands and initial operations in the Soviet Union — were effective owing to surprise penetrations, general enemy unpreparedness and an inability to react swiftly enough to German offensive operations. That the German Army quickly defeated numerically and technically superior enemies in France led many analysts to believe that a new system of warfare had been invented.

The generally accepted definition of blitzkrieg operations include the use of maneuver rather than attrition to defeat an opponent, and describe operations using combined arms concentration of mobile assets at a focal point, armour closely supported by mobile infantry, artillery and close air support assets. These tactics required the development of specialized support vehicles, new methods of communication, new tactics, and an effective decentralized command structure. Broadly speaking, blitzkrieg operations required the development of mechanized infantry, self-propelled artillery and engineering assets that could maintain the rate of advance of the tanks. German forces avoided direct combat in favor of interrupting an enemy's communications, decision-making, logistics and of reducing morale. In combat, blitzkrieg left little choice for the slower defending forces but to clump into defensive pockets that were encircled and then destroyed by following German infantry.

Blitzkrieg sought decisive actions at all times. To this end, the theory of a schwerpunkt (focal point) developed; it was the point of maximum effort. Panzer and Luftwaffe forces were used only at this point of maximum effort whenever possible. By local success at the schwerpunkt, a small force achieved a breakthrough and gained advantages by fighting in the enemy's rear. It is summarized by Guderian as "Nicht kleckern, klotzen!" ("Don't tickle, smash!")

To achieve a breakout, infantry or, less commonly, armored forces themselves (otherwise preserved for maneuver beyond) would attack the enemy's defensive line, supported by artillery fire and aerial bombardment in order to create a breach in the enemy's line which would pass the mobile forces in their entirety. The breaching force attacked to the flanks to increase security through distance. This point of breakout has been labeled a "hinge", for from it motorized forces maneuvered forward and developed "leverage" against the defensive line's forces.

In this, the opening phase of an operation, air forces sought to gain superiority over enemy air forces by attacking aircraft on the ground, bombing their airfields, and seeking to destroy them in air to air combat.(See below).

A final element was the use of airborne forces beyond the enemy lines in order to disrupt enemy activities and take important positions (such as Eben Emael).

Having achieved a breakthrough into the enemy's rear areas, German forces attempted to paralyze the enemy's decision making and implementation process. Moving faster than enemy forces, mobile forces exploited weaknesses and acted before opposing forces could formulate a response. Guderian wrote that "Success must be exploited without respite and with every ounce of strength, even by night. The defeated enemy must be given no peace."

Central to this is the decision cycle. Every decision made by German or opposing forces required time to gather information, make a decision, disseminate orders to subordinates, and then implement this decision through action. Through superior mobility and faster decision-making cycles, mobile forces could take action on a situation sooner than the forces opposing them.

Directive control was a fast and flexible method of command. Rather than receiving an explicit order, a commander would be told of his superior's intent and the role which his unit was to fill in this concept. The exact method of execution was then a matter for the low-level commander to determine as best fit the situation. Staff burden was reduced at the top and spread among commands more knowledgeable about their own situation. In addition, the encouragement of initiative at all levels aided implementation. As a result, significant decisions could be effected quickly and either verbally or with written orders a few pages in length.

An operation's final phase, the Kesselschlacht (cauldron battle), was a concentric attack on an encircled force. It was here that most losses were inflicted upon the enemy, primarily through the capture of prisoners and weapons

Despite the term blitzkrieg being coined during the Invasion of Poland of 1939, historians generally hold that German operations during it were more consistent with more traditional methods. The Wehrmacht's strategy was more inline with Vernichtungsgedanken, or a focus on envelopment to create pockets in broad-front annihilation. Panzer forces were deployed among the three German concentrations without strong emphasis on independent use, being used to create or destroy close pockets of Polish forces and seize operational-depth terrain in support of the largely un-motorized infantry which followed. The Luftwaffe gained air superiority by a combination of superior technology and numbers. Common claims that the Polish Air Force was destroyed early in the campaign while it was on the ground are not true. Polish aircraft were moved to hidden airstrips approximately 48 hours before the outbreak of the hostilities.

The understanding of operations in Poland has shifted considerably since the Second World War. Many early postwar histories incorrectly attribute German victory to "enormous development in military technique which occurred between 1918 and 1940", incorrectly citing that "Germany, who translated (British inter-war) theories into action...called the result Blitzkrieg." More recent histories identify German operations in Poland as relatively cautious and traditional. Matthew Cooper wrote that

"...(t)hroughout (the Polish Campaign), the employment of the mechanized units revealed the idea that they were intended solely to ease the advance and to support the activities of the infantry....Thus, any strategic exploitation of the armored idea was still-born. The paralysis of command and the breakdown of morale were not made the ultimate aim of the ... German ground and air forces, and were only incidental by-products of the traditional maneuvers of rapid encirclement and of the supporting activities of the flying artillery of the Luftwaffe, both of which had has their purpose the physical destruction of the enemy troops. Such was the Vernichtungsgedanke of the Polish campaign."
He went on to say that the use of tanks "left much to be desired...Fear of enemy action against the flanks of the advance, fear which was to prove so disastrous to German prospects in the west in 1940 and in the Soviet Union in 1941, was present from the beginning of the war."John Ellis further asserted that "...there is considerable justice in Matthew Cooper's assertion that the panzer divisions were not given the kind of strategic mission that was to characterize authentic armored blitzkrieg, and were almost always closely subordinated to the various mass infantry armies."

In fact, "Whilst Western accounts of the September campaign have stressed the shock value of the panzers and Stuka attacks, they have tended to underestimate the punishing effect of German artillery on Polish units. Mobile and available in significant quantity, artillery shattered as many units as any other branch of the Wehrmacht.",

The invasion of France consisted of two phases, Operation Yellow (Fall Gelb) and Operation Red. Yellow opened with a feint conducted against the Netherlands and Belgium by two armoured corps and paratroopers. Three days later, the main effort of Panzer Group von Kleist attacked through the Ardennes and achieved a breakthrough with air support. The group raced to the coast of the English Channel, dislodging the British Expeditionary Force, Belgian Army, and some divisions of the French Army. The motorized units initially advanced far beyond the following divisions. When the German motorized forces were met with a counterattack at the Battle of Arras (1940), British tanks with heavy armour (Matilda I & IIs) created a brief panic in the German High Command. The motorized forces were halted outside the port city of Dunkirk which was being used to evacuate the Allied forces. Hermann Göring had promised his Luftwaffe would complete the job but aerial operations did not prevent the evacuation of the majority of Allied troops (which the British named Operation Dynamo); some 330,000 French and British. Operation Red then began with XV Panzer Corps attacking towards Brest and XIV Panzer Corps attacking south, east of Paris, towards Lyon, and XIX Panzer Corps completing the encirclement of the Maginot Line. The defending forces were hard pressed to organize any sort of counter-attack. The French forces were continually ordered to form new lines along rivers, often arriving to find the German forces had already passed them.

Use of armored forces was crucial for both sides on the Eastern Front. Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, involved a number of breakthroughs and encirclements by motorized forces. Its stated goal was "to destroy the Russian forces deployed in the West and to prevent their escape into the wide-open spaces of Russia." This was generally achieved by four panzer armies which encircled surprised and disorganized Soviet forces, followed by marching infantry which completed the encirclement and defeated the trapped forces. The first year of the Eastern Front offensive can generally be considered to have had the last successful major blitzkrieg operations.

After Germany's failure to destroy the Soviets before the winter of 1941, the limits of German tactical superiority became apparent. Although the German invasion successfully conquered large areas of Soviet territory, the overall strategic effects were more limited. The Red Army was able to regroup far to the rear of the main battle line, and eventually defeat the German forces for the first time in the Battle of Moscow.

In the summer of 1942, when Germany launched another offensive in the southern USSR against Stalingrad and the Caucasus, the Soviets again lost tremendous amounts of territory, only to counter-attack once more during winter. German gains were ultimately limited by Hitler diverting forces from the attack on Stalingrad itself and seeking to pursue a drive to the Caucasus oilfields simultaneously as opposed to subsequently as the original plan had envisaged.

Although effective in quick campaigns against Poland and France, blitzkrieg could not be sustained by Germany in later years. Blitzkrieg strategy has the inherent danger of the attacking force overextending its supply lines, and the strategy as a whole can be defeated by a determined foe who is willing to sacrifice territory for time in which to regroup and rearm, as the Soviets did on the Eastern Front. Tank and vehicle production was a constant problem for Germany; indeed, late in the war many panzer "divisions" had no more than a few dozen tanks. As the end of the war approached, Germany also experienced critical shortages in fuel and ammunition stocks as a result of Anglo-American strategic bombing. Although production of Luftwaffe fighter aircraft continued, they would be unable to fly for lack of fuel. What fuel there was went to panzer divisions, and even then they were not able to operate normally. Of those Tiger tanks lost against the United States Army, nearly half of them were abandoned for lack of fuel.

Blitzkrieg's widest influence was within the Western Allied leadership of the war, some of whom drew inspiration from the Wehrmacht's approach. United States General George S. Patton emphasized fast pursuit, the use of an armored spearhead to effect a breakthrough, then cut off and disrupt enemy forces prior to their flight. In his comments of the time, he credited Guderian and Rommel's work, notably Infantry Attacks, for this insight. He also put into practice the idea attributed to cavalry leader Nathan Bedford Forrest, "Get there fastest with the mostest." (Get there fastest, with the most forces).

Blitzkrieg also has had some influence on subsequent militaries and doctrines. The Israel Defense Forces may have been influenced by blitzkrieg in creating a military of flexible armored spearheads and close air support.The 1990's United States theorists of "Shock and awe" claim blitzkrieg as a subset of strategies which they term "rapid dominance".

Beginning in the 1970s, the interpretation of Blitzkrieg, particularly with respect to the Second World War, has undergone a shift in the historical community. John Ellis described the shift:

Our perception of land operations in the Second World War has...been distorted by an excessive emphasis upon the hardware employed. The main focus of attention has been the tank and the formations that employed it, most notably the (German) panzer divisions. Despite the fact that only 40 of the 520 German divisions that saw combat were panzer divisions (there were also an extra 24 motorised/panzergrenadier divisions), the history of German operations has consistently almost exclusively been written largely in terms of blitzkrieg and has concentrated almost exclusively upon the exploits of the mechanized formations. Even more misleadingly, this presentation of ground combat as a largely armored confrontation has been extended to cover Allied operations, so that in the popular imagination the exploits of the British and Commonwealth Armies, with only 11 armored divisions out of 73 (that saw combat), and of the Americans in Europe, with only 16 out of 59, are typified by tanks sweeping around the Western Desert or trying to keep up with Patton in the race through Sicily and across northern France. Of course, these armored forces did play a somewhat more important role in operations than the simple proportions might indicate, but it still has to be stressed that they in no way dominated the battlefield or precipitated the evolution of completely new modes of warfare.

Ellis, as well as Zaloga in his study of the Polish Campaign in 1939, points to the effective use of other arms such as artillery and aerial firepower as equally important to the success of German (and later, Allied) operations. Panzer operations in Russia failed to provide decisive results; Leningrad never fell despite an entire Panzer Group being assigned to take it, nor did Moscow. In 1942 panzer formations overstretched at Stalingrad and in the Caucasus, and what successes did take place - such as Manstein at Kharkov or Krivoi Rog - were of local significance only.

Answer 2

Blitzkrieg literally lightning war or flash war is a popular name for an offensive operational-level military doctrine which involves an initial bombardment followed by employment of mobile forces attacking with speed and surprise to prevent an enemy from implementing a coherent defense. The founding principles of these types of operations were developed in the 19th Century by various nations, and adapted in the years after World War I, largely by the Wehrmacht, to incorporate modern weapons and vehicles as a method to help prevent trench warfare and linear warfare in future conflicts. The first practical implementations of these concepts coupled with modern technology were instituted by the German Wehrmacht in the opening battles of World War II. While operations in Poland were rather conventional, subsequent battles — particularly the invasions of France, The Netherlands and initial operations in the Soviet Union — were effective owing to surprise penetrations, general enemy unpreparedness and an inability to react swiftly enough to German offensive operations. That the German Army quickly defeated numerically and technically superior enemies in France led many analysts to believe that a new system of warfare had been invented.

The generally accepted definition of blitzkrieg operations include the use of maneuver rather than attrition to defeat an opponent, and describe operations using combined arms concentration of mobile assets at a focal point, armour closely supported by mobile infantry, artillery and close air support assets. These tactics required the development of specialized support vehicles, new methods of communication, new tactics, and an effective decentralized command structure. Broadly speaking, blitzkrieg operations required the development of mechanized infantry, self-propelled artillery and engineering assets that could maintain the rate of advance of the tanks. German forces avoided direct combat in favor of interrupting an enemy's communications, decision-making, logistics and of reducing morale. In combat, blitzkrieg left little choice for the slower defending forces but to clump into defensive pockets that were encircled and then destroyed by following German infantry.

Answer 3

Lighting warfare-as practiced by Nazi Germany
Basically it's the doctrine of fast moving armored columns rolling over enemy positions. That worked well until those armored columns got stuck in Russian mud and winter set in.

Answer 4

It is the method adopted by Adolf Hitler during the second world war to fight his enemies. It literally means "lightning attacks". Hitler's army would first bombard a place then the land forces would move in... The attack was conducted with great speed and effectiveness so that they won often. you may also refer...

Answer 5

It means "Lightning War." It was employed by the Germans using their superior armor divisions to over-run and surprise the enemy during WWII. Basically, they would roll armor into an area before their enemy had time to respond.

Answer 6

lighting warfare