Achtung Panzer! by Guderian Heinz

Author:Guderian, Heinz
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780225807
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2012-12-20T05:00:00+00:00

3. THE END OF THE WAR. THE WAR IN THE AIR. TANK WARFARE. CHEMICAL WARFARE. U-BOAT WARFARE.

French successes on 18 August 1918 and British on 2 September were both scored through a heavy commitment of tanks, and they led to the withdrawal of the German front to the Hindenburg Line, from where the German offensive had embarked with such high hopes in the spring. On 12 September the Allies took the Saint-Mihiel salient between the Meuse and the Moselle, assisted by 232 French tanks which attacked from the south, exploiting the most favourable ground. However the French tanks came to a halt in the afternoon and were immobilized for the next twenty-four hours, simply because the American military police would not allow their convoys of fuel to pass through.

On 15 September the German high command wrote to the Kaiser: ‘No doubt can remain that the enemy will continue their offensive through the autumn. They have the necessary means, thanks to the stream of American forces and the mass employment of tanks. On our side we will keep up the fight, not to hold ground as such, but with the object of letting the enemy wear themselves out while we maintain the battleworthiness of our own army.’ (Schwertfeger, Das Weltkriegsende, 100.) This strategy fitted the circumstances of the time, though it does not seem to have been followed through with sufficient vigour. In any event our continuing combat losses and the decline in our strength led to the disbandment of further divisions, the reduction in the establishment of the battalion from four companies to three, and in some cases the diminution of the battalions in the regiment from three to two.

On 15 September 1918 the Austrians published a peace note which brought home just how serious the situation was. On the same day the Bulgarian front collapsed in Macedonia, and the Turkish front in Palestine followed suit on 18 September. On 25 September the Bulgarians sued for peace. 28 September brought a conference between Field Marshal Hindenburg and General Ludendorff, in which they decided that the war must be brought to an end through a request for an immediate armistice. The Kaiser gave his assent the next day, and a further consequence was the re-casting of the government on the parliamentary model.

On 30 September General Ludendorff declared at a conference that ‘The conduct of the war on the Western Front has been reduced to a game of chance, due chiefly to the effect of the tanks; the high command no longer has a firm basis for its calculations.’ (Schwertfeger, 128.)

Berlin was the scene of the fateful gathering of the party leaders on 2 October, when a representative of the high command reported on the situation at the front. He urged the necessity of an armistice, citing the ‘action of the tanks, which we are unable to counter, and the state of our replacements’. (Schwertfeger, 134.) On 3 October the German Government addressed a request for an armistice to the President of the United States.

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