W.J.K. Davies

When, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Germans started secretly to rebuild their armed forces, various influences were instrumentai in shaping them. In particular three things — the cavalry tradition; the desire to create an impressive ‘showpiece’ army; the new theories of armoured warfare being purveyed by the British expert Liddel Hart and others — combined to Iead the Generai Staff to develop the concept of a lightning war of movement, the Blitzkrieg. This in turn emphasised a need for mobile, hard—hitting spearhead forces both to make an initial breakthrough and then to exploit it.… (meer)