Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Tanks and mechanised infantry of the 24th Panzer Division advancing through Ukraine, June 1942, typifying fast-moving combined arms forces of classic blitzkrieg. Blitzkrieg [a] is a word used to describe a combined arms surprise attack, using a rapid, overwhelming force concentration that may consist of armored and motorized or mechanized infantry formations, together with artillery, air ...
Mechanization was the key to this German tactic first revealed in the September Campaign and nicknamed blitzkrieg (lightning war) by contemporary journalists, who found the name fitting because of the unprecedented speed and mobility that were its underlying characteristics.
Together, the new methods were nicknamed "Blitzkrieg" (lightning war). While historian Basil Liddell Hart claimed "Poland was a full demonstration of the Blitzkrieg theory", [51] some other historians disagree. [52] Aircraft played a major role in the campaign.
Literally meaning "Lightning War", Blitzkrieg is the tactic of speed and the avoidance of unnecessary conflict, which were the keys to the rapid German advance. The foreword is by general Walter Nehring , formerly Heinz Guderian 's chief of staff.
The German "concept of annihilation" (Vernichtungsgedanke) that later evolved into the Blitzkrieg ("lightning war") provided for rapid advance of Panzer (armoured) divisions, dive bombing (to break up troop concentrations and destroy airports, railways and stations, roads, and bridges, which resulted in the killing of large numbers of refugees ...
Blitzkrieg – "lightning war"; not a widely used German military term, this word became popular in the Allied press and initially referred to fast-moving battle tactics developed principally by German military theorists, most notably Erwin Rommel, Heinz Guderian, and Erich von Manstein, using massed tanks and ground-attack bombers to speedily ...
The strategy, operational methods and tactics of the German Army and Luftwaffe have often been labelled "Blitzkrieg" (Lightning War). The concept is controversial and is connected to the problem of the nature and origin of " Blitzkrieg " operations, of which the 1940 campaign is often described as a classic example.
The Blitzkrieg (Lightning War) tactics took the Western powers by surprise. By the time of the resignation of the French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud on 16 June, it was obvious that Germany victory in the Battle of France was inevitable. In the Channel Islands, civilians worried about the consequences of remaining on the islands but, to avoid ...