Guderian Panzers
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achieved up to that time, and indeed the directions in which they might develop. After the war the progress of armour in foreign countries was for years on end concealed from us altogether, or at best we gained only fragmentary glimpses. Our peacetime manoeuvres were innocent of tanks or anti-tank weapons. When, finally, canvas mock-ups appeared at exercises, they had to be pushed or carried by troops against the infantry and artillery. They looked frankly comical, which was not the way to convey the image of a kind of deadly enemy, or persuade the other arms to do anything about altering their tactics, which reverted increasingly to those of 1914. We had experienced periods of reaction even after wars we had won, like the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1, whose lessons were incorporated only in the Drill Regulations of 1888. But never had regression been more marked than after 1918. In awareness of these dangers the Germans furnished their dummy tanks with motors. Since, however, the Peace Treaty allowed the army literally 'one' tracked vehicle, we could simulate a tank attack with any appearance of reality only on particularly favourable and obstacle-free terrain; in other words mostly on drill squares. The self-propelled mockups worked to the extent that they at last persuaded officers and men to devote a little thought to anti-tank defence, with the result that we introduced wooden guns which were supposed to represent anti-tank guns. How unpretentious we had become! I remember how proud we were when we made the tin turrets of our 'tanks' traversible, and were able to simulate machine-gun fire by a little blank firing machine. What joy we took in our first smoke generator! But our greatest secrets were our forbidden Riibezahl Tractors [called after the mythical giant of the Riesengebirge in Silesia] which were based on the clanking commercial tractor. With this machine we essayed our tank company tactics under conditions of the greatest secrecy at Grafenwohr. In those years only a few officers devoted themselves to a detailed and genuinely professional study of the development of armour in its tactical and technical aspects. They were limited almost exclusively to the motor transport branch [Kraftfahrtruppe], and what a tiny circle they were! But how we prize the memory of that time when we wore the rose-red piping of that branch of service! How we recall all the work we put in, how we strove after knowledge, our search to identify the likely development of this new weapon, the weapon of the future! In those years was laid the foundation of the discipline, comradeship and soldierly and technical proficiency on which alone the German mechanized and tank forces could have arisen when, finally, we were free of the restrictions on our armament. We who wore the rose-red piping have every right to be proud of such a groundwork: we recall with gratitude the men who in those years of trial carried forward the tank arm and its development, and prepared so effectively for its present rise.
POST-WAR developments abroad While Germany laboured under the dictates of that infamous Treaty of peace, our former enemies retained their full freedom of action. 'The weapons which brought us victory are in a state of constant activity. Tanks and aircraft show almost daily advances.' (General Debeney, in Revue des deux Mondes, 15 September 1934.) Here we will sketch in the technical and tactical developments affecting the various kinds of armoured vehicles, together with the weapons and resources of anti-tank defence. On this basis we can begin to discuss the future development of the devices in question, see how they shape up against one another, and evaluate their roles in the context of the army as a whole. We will break down the treatment as follows: the technical development of the main types of armoured vehicles;