Hitler's Panzers (10 page)

Production delays bedeviled as well the 251’s smaller cousin. The SdKfz 250 developed out of a growing mid-1930s belief that reconnaissance was too vital an element of mobile war to be trusted to existing combinations of motorcycles and armored cars. At times it might be necessary to fight for information; at times it might be necessary to traverse rough ground to secure information. The solution was a half-sized half-track built on the chassis of the 1-ton artillery tractor. At 5.4 tons, with up to 14.5mm of armor, an open top, and a six-man crew, the 250 could move at almost 40 miles per hour, cover 300 miles on a single fueling, and, when necessary, put a few boots on the ground to search, destroy, and provide fire cover. It would not see service until 1940, but eventually it would prove almost as versatile a weapons platform as the 251. And its description completes the first tranche of Wehrmacht armor.

THE STORY OF the SdKfz 250 segues neatly into the institutional development of the armored force in the second half of the 1930s. On March 15, 1936, a Weapons Office memorandum allocated three missions to the armored force: supporting the infantry attack, providing antitank defense, and carrying out independent operations in cooperation with other motorized troops. But other ideas were also percolating through the military system. The cavalry in particular had been hemorrhaging men and talent. Five of its eighteen regiments had already been transformed into tank, motorized, or motorcycle units. The rest were shedding squadrons for the new antitank and reconnaissance battalions. The Wehrmacht had plans to retain horse cavalry on mobilization, but it would take the field assigned by squadrons to infantry divisions. Small wonder that increasing numbers of talented and/or ambitious junior officers were seeking their future in the mechanized units.

The cavalry had been the army’s social elite since the days of the Great Elector. Even in the Reichswehr years its officer corps included a high proportion of landed gentry: vons and von und zus. Its continuing influence had been highlighted by Maximilian von Weichs’s seamless move into command of the Wehrmacht’s first and only armored division. To respond to the march of progress was one thing; to fade ignominiously away was quite another.

Military considerations shaped the cavalry’s behavior as well. German strategy was, as noted above, still predicated on the defensive. In that context there seemed to be a valuable operational role for a modern force able to perform a screening function, initially engaging and channeling an enemy while the panzer divisions lurked in reserve as a final argument. And should, as expected, the national strategy eventually require a military offensive, then mechanized reconnaissance, screening, and pursuit would be even more necessary. The argument was sufficiently persuasive that in August 1937 the Army Command informed Lutz that instead of creating additional panzer divisions, it planned to create the first of three “light divisions” in the fall of 1937.

The short lives and undistinguished careers of these formations has somewhat obscured their intended character. Though used as such in the Polish campaign, they were not panzer divisions manqué. Nor, as is sometimes asserted, were they a direct response to the French army’s new light mechanized divisions. Their closest analogs are the armored cavalry regiments introduced in the US army’s order of battle during the Cold War era to provide mobility, firepower, and shock action at the operational-level cutting edge. The missions were strikingly similar: reconnaissance and screening, plugging gaps in the line, conducting delaying actions, quickly occupying vital sectors, and, finally, pursuit and overtaking of retreating enemy forces.

The light division’s norm was three “cavalry rifle battalions” and a “cavalry motorcycle battalion,” one or two reconnaissance battalions built around motorcycles and armored cars, and a three-company light tank battalion eventually to be equipped with the later, fast models of the Panzer II. Internal signs of the division’s mission were the transporter vehicles issued to the tank battalion to facilitate operational mobility and save wear on the tanks. The number of machine guns in the rifle battalions was about double that of standard infantry—a useful tactical force multiplier in either defense or attack. Externally, no one could mistake the light divisions’ retention of the cavalry’s yellow branch color as opposed to the pink of the panzer divisions. Nor could anyone mistake the creation of a separate corps command to supervise their training and development.

At the other end of the spectrum, the infantry was also brought under the mobile-warfare tent. It was increasingly clear that mechanization as such was having to compete with a broad spectrum of other rearmament initiatives, in the context of a regime that considered “prioritization” something of a swear word. The three authorized panzer divisions risked being submerged in a growing sea of foot- marching, horse-powered infantry—the exact kind of mass army the Reichswehr’s institutional mentality was conditioned to avoid.

On January 30, 1936, Beck recommended motorizing four infantry divisions. It was quick, it was cheap, and it was doable in the contexts of industrial production and manpower procurement. Beck described motorized divisions as necessary for rapid- approach marches and surprise movements, to provide mobile reserves for the high command, and as a counter to aerial interdiction of rail transport. Significant as well was the French army’s 1935 decision to motorize no fewer than seven of its first-line divisions. Armies resemble the fashion industry in their susceptibility to trends, and health aficionados in their quest for symmetry.

The Lutz/Guderian pressure persisted, and the heritage of fifteen years’ worth of theoretical consideration on the prospects of large-scale mobile war remained active. In May the General Staff described motorized divisions as having the same capacity as their standard counterparts, but with an added capacity for rapid movement and maneuver. Suitable as mobile reserves, presumably for defensive purposes, motorized divisions could also be concentrated in mobile armies, presumably for offensives at the operational level in combination with the light and panzer divisions.

Like the light divisions, the new motorized divisions received their own corps headquarters. They also kept their original branch color: white. Otherwise, they were not exactly given a lot of thought. Four standard infantry divisions simply turned in their horses for trucks, motorcycles, and a dozen armored cars. They did have one tactical advantage over their French counterparts. For mobility, the French division’s infantry depended heavily on a Groupement of trucks attached for each move. The German trucks were organic down to company/platoon level—a major difference in flexibility even if the trucks were essentially road-bound and highly vulnerable even to small-arms fire.

THE SOLDIERS WERE confident that once Germany’s young men changed their brown shirts and Hitler Youth uniforms for army Feldgrau, their socialization away from National Socialism would be relatively easy. The relevant virtues the Nazis preached—comradeship, self-sacrifice, courage, community—had been borrowed from the army’s ethos. The army knew well how to cultivate them from its own resources. The new Wehrmacht had new facilities. Barracks with showers and athletic fields, plenty of windows, and amåple space between bunks were a seven days’ wonder to fathers and uncles who had served under the Empire. Leave policies were generous, and applied without regard for rank. Food was well cooked and ample. In the field, officers and men not only ate from the same kitchens; they used the same latrines. Uniforms looked smart and actually fit the wearers—no small matters to young men on pass needing to make quick impressions.

As the army expanded, its conscripts were motivated, alert, and physically fit to degrees inconceivable in all but the best formations of the Kaiser’s day. The fact that military service had been restricted gave it a certain appeal of the transgressive, the forbidden, something generally attractive to adolescent males. Thanks to the eighteen months of compulsory labor service required of all seventeen-year-olds since 1935, the new recruits required a minimum of socializing into barracks life, and were more than casually acquainted with the elements of close-order drill.

The army was still the army, and NCOs had lost none of their historic set of tools, official and unofficial, to “motivate” recalcitrants and make them examples for the rest. Even more than in the Reichswehr, however, officers and noncommissioned officers were expected to bond with their men, leading by example on a daily basis. One anecdote may stand for many experiences. A squad of recruits was at rifle practice. The platoon commander asked who was the best shot among them and offered a challenge: “Beat my score and you can have an early furlough.” At the end of three rounds, the private won by a single point—by grace of a lieutenant who knew how to lose without making it obvious. When the wheels came off in a combat situation, such officers seldom had to order “Follow me!”

German army discipline by British or American standards allowed harshness as a norm, and as the war went on, it escalated to large-scale draconic brutality quite apart from any alleged “Nazification.” Military service, however, had for more than a century been a major rite of passage for males in Prussia/Germany. That aspect not merely survived under the Weimar Republic, it acquired something like mythic status—again, in good part because service was so limited. Contemporary conscripts in France, Belgium, and Poland, to say nothing of the Soviet Union, were likely to have a substantially different perspective. An easy rite of passage is a contradiction in terms, but under Prussian kings and German emperors, the army’s demands had generally been understood as not beyond the capacities of an ordinarily fit, ordinarily well- adjusted twenty-year-old. Exceptions were just that. And in the Weimar years, a near-standard response of older generations across the social and political spectrum to anything smacking of late-adolescent malaise or rebellion was along the lines that what the little punks needed was some shaping up in uniform.

That mentality arguably echoed another facet of late-Weimar public opinion involving a closed institution: a growing obsession with crime, and a corresponding attack on the prison system as a rest cure for criminals. The latter criticism grew more vitriolic, especially on the Right, as the depression imposed greater hardships on ordinary citizens. By the time the Nazis took power, demands for stricter treatment of prisoners, and especially rigorous policies toward “incorrigibles,” were firmly in place. The Nazis were pleased to oblige.

The recruits who began occupying the new barracks and filling the ranks of new units when conscription was formally reintroduced in 1936 thus found themselves in a comprehensive environment supporting compliance, cooperation, and participation. At this stage the more extreme ramifications of both army discipline and Nazi ideology were usually fringe manifestations, affecting the kinds of outsiders usually generated by male bonding groups. And the armored force benefited disproportionately from the new military order. Service in the panzers was a particular plus for those young men who may not have been part of a motorized society but who were nevertheless eager for the opportunity. Anticipating one’s draft notice gave some freedom to choose one’s branch of service. The prewar armored force never lacked for volunteers.

Most of the sixteen weeks of basic training was done in the traditional fashion: by units, with recruits arriving at the depot in time-honored fashion. Their initial processing, however, differed to a significant degree from both pre-1914 practice and the patterns in contemporary conscript armies. While not ignoring experience, aptitude, education, and even social class, the German sorting and screening system paid close attention to what later generations would call personality profiles. Determination, presence of mind, and situational awareness were the qualities most valued, not only with an eye toward prospective candidates for NCO stripes and officers’ commissions—both vital for a rapidly expanding army—but as the foundation of an effective soldier.

German initial training was much more than simple hut-two-three-four. It can be compared to a combination of the US army’s basic training and its Advanced Infantry Training, informed by the Marine Corps mantra of “every man a rifleman.” This reflected an understanding gleaned from the trenches of the Western Front: The infantry is the army. It takes the highest percentage of casualties. Its moral and physical demands are the greatest. A soldier who cannot meet them is less than an effective soldier no matter his level of technical proficiency.

When new soldiers were formally sworn in, it was often in the presence of a flag, or a weapon symbolizing branch of service; in the panzer regiments, a tank. From there they moved into a mix of specialized instruction and field training. The former was the easiest. Crewmen were chosen for particular positions according to abilities demonstrated early in training. By 1940, the standard tank crew was five men: commander, gunner, loader, driver, and radioman. There was some cross-training, but tankers were expected to emphasize development of specialized skills: the crew was a team, a community, with everyone sharing everyday tasks of repair and housekeeping.

The fact that relatively few recruits were familiar with motor vehicles of any kind was in some respects an advantage. They had no inappropriate civilian habits to unlearn when it came to driving. They developed impressive skill at maintenance; one of the unremarked qualities of the armored force was an ability to keep its vehicles running at company levels through most of the war. Gunnery training was excellent, and as muzzle velocities and ranges increased, was supported by some of the war’s best optical equipment. German tank marksmanship was formidable from 1939 to 1945, a fact affirmed by any enemy who faced it.

Technical proficiency was only one side of the coin. Training at all stages emphasized direct, small-unit cooperation among tanks, infantry, engineers, and antitank gunners.
Truppenführung
, the army’s basic doctrinal manual, was published in 1933-34 as
Heeresdienstvorschriften (Army Regulations) 300
. Its introduction described war as subjecting the soldier to “the most severe tests of his spiritual and physical endurance.” Combat involved an unlimited variety of situations, changing frequently and suddenly and impossible to predict or calculate in advance. It also involved the independent will of the enemy. Misunderstandings and mistakes were to be expected. Overcoming them depended more on character than intellect. And character in the context of combat meant, above all, will.