Free Hitler's Panzers by Dennis Showalter Page A

not be conjured from thin air and 100,000 men. The German auto industry had developed to serve specialized markets, and would take time to adjust to large-scale manufacturing of military vehicles. In 1939 there was still no system for converting the industry to war production. Steel and oil, the panzers’ bone and blood, were in short supply and high demand. Heinz Guderian’s brand of optimism on that issue was well enough; perhaps even desirable, in an officer with limited responsibilities. Beck and the General Staff had to plan for the army—and consider as well what to do if those plans did not survive the proverbial first contact with an enemy.
    Requiring consideration as well was the possibility of a preventive strike by Germany’s neighbors—perhaps a preemptive one, given Hitler’s increasingly assertive foreign policy. Infantry divisions were like municipal bonds. They were a safe military bet: easily raised, trained, and equipped; providing no original threats. And should the armored- force enthusiasts be proven correct, the separate tank formations could readily be combined into divisions and replaced in turn by new creations.
    In October 1934, the army issued a table of organization for an “experimental armored division.” Built around the Zossen and Ohrdruf tank regiments, the formation included a motorized brigade with a motorcycle battalion and a two-battalion “light rifle regiment”; an antitank battalion with 36 towed 37mm guns and eventually a battery of 20mm self-propelled antiaircraft cannon; a reconnaissance battalion of motorcycles and armored cars; and an artillery regiment with two battalions of 105mm howitzers, one truck-drawn and the other self-propelled. The 3rd Cavalry Division provided troops and cadres for what, on October 15, 1935, officially became the 1st Panzer Division. It took the field for the first time in August, and encompassed 13,000 men, more than 4,000 wheeled vehicles, and almost 500 tracked ones, at the Lüneberg maneuver grounds near Münster in Westphalia.
    Lutz took personal charge of an exercise that still depended heavily on simulation and imagination. Tanks were in short supply relative to theoretical strengths and types. Radio allocations were incomplete. The division commander, Maximilian von Weichs, had been directly reassigned from the 3rd Cavalry Division, and retained a horseman’s perspective. Many of the junior officers and enlisted men also came from freshly converted cavalry regiments. Training beyond crew levels was still a work in progress. But the former troopers were keen. When Army Commander in Chief Werner von Fritsch demanded the division execute a 90-degree turn to meet a theoretical flank attack, the movement was completed in just under 90 minutes, with a minimum of loose ends.
    Fritsch was suitably impressed, and Lutz’s report was appropriately enthusiastic. The tanks covered an average of 600 kilometers, with only 27 breakdowns—a good sign of fundamentally sound design and manufacture. Tanks must be used in masses and organized in large formations. Single battalions or regiments could only succeed against limited objectives. Should armor be designated specifically for infantry support—a policy Lutz criticized—it must be organized in brigade strength. In that context, Lutz recommended a tank brigade of three two-battalion regiments as optional. This would give the division a total of more than 500 tanks—an excessive number by later standards, but arguably defensible when most of the available vehicles in the near future would be armed with nothing more lethal than rifle-caliber machine guns.
    Lutz’s concept of using tanks in masses reflected more than Reichswehr-era theory. He and Guderian had visited the Soviet Union in 1932, and had kept abreast of intelligence reports on Soviet tank and vehicle production. Guderian considered the Red Army to be leading the world in mechanization. His criticism of the relatively inflexible Soviet