Free Hitler's Panzers by Dennis Showalter Page B

concept of three distinct missions—close infantry support, breakthrough, and deep penetration—was acknowledged in Lutz’s assertion that the combination of a tank brigade and a motorized brigade, the two complementing each other, enabled the division to perform a broad and changing spectrum of tasks.
    No less relevant for the panzer arm’s development was the assertion that, especially in combat, radio was by far the best means of rapid, secure communication among motorized formations. Commanders therefore needed armored command and signal vehicles, because they must be at the head of their units. That final statement was not merely a challenge to, but a denial of, the Great War model of command exercised from rear-echelon communications centers. It was no less a significant modification of Helmuth von Moltke the Elder’s familiar aphorism that “no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” Future commanders of mobile, mechanized forces would be in a position to make, remake, and implement plans reflecting changing situations.
    Lutz’s report confirmed the Army High Command’s earlier decision to create two more panzer divisions. It stressed the importance of creating divisional headquarters as soon as possible in order to provide guidance as men were assembled and equipment delivered. Command of the 2nd went, predictably, to Guderian. The 3rd’s commanding officer was Ernst Fessman, a cavalryman by branch but with experience commanding both a motor battalion in the Reichswehr and the first tank brigade in 1934-35. As for the deployment of the new formations, Guderian recommended, presumably with Lutz’s concurrence, that one panzer division be stationed in Berlin and one in Weimar. These would be responsible for defending Germany’s east. The third division should be deployed in the region of Würzburg-Bamberg to provide defensive strength against the French. The three projected independent brigades should also probably be located with a view to their operational employment in western Germany.
    This in-house memorandum goes against both the long-standing theoretical approach of concentrating armored forces in mass and the long-standing myth of the panzer arm as the mailed fist of Nazi aggression. At this stage Germany was still seriously vulnerable, and the very success of Lutz’s 1935 exercise highlighted that vulnerability. How best to counter attacks spearheaded by similar large armored formations? The standard recommendation was “offensive defense”: strategic/operational delaying actions conducted at the tactical level by mobile ripostes, in particular outflanking movements, once the infantry had taken some of the edge off enemy armor.
    German divisions had a total of 72 antitank guns, half assigned to regiments, half pooled in a divisional battalion, all motorized—a flexible and formidable force in an essentially horse-powered formation. The gun itself, a Rheinmetall-designed 37mm piece, had been under development since 1925, and in small-scale production since 1928. With its original spoke wheels replaced in 1924 by pneumatic tires, it was a handy and mobile weapon, highly effective against the kinds of tanks currently in foreign service and well suited to the tactics of shield and sword in a combined-arms context.
    “Offensive defense” reflected—perhaps viscerally—the postulate that Germany’s major probable enemies would be slow-moving (the French) or slow-thinking (the Poles). In slightly modified form it would emerge again in the aftermath of Stalingrad. It was nevertheless a dead-end option—not least because the style and nature of Hitler’s foreign policy was making it increasingly obvious at the army’s higher levels that any trouble Germany got into would require self-extraction. The international community was hardly likely to be forthcoming and benevolent toward a systematically antagonistic Reich.
    At the same time new types and families of armored fighting vehicles were