Blitzkrieg Legend
- From: Louis Capdeboscq <louisec00@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 21:20:16 +0000 (UTC)
Dan Ford wrote:
> The maps, tables, and graphs are taken wholesale from the German
> edition, which can pose problems for the monophone reader: they're in
> German only.
Possibly because I'm not monophone, I think that the original maps are
way better than what can be expected from all but a handful of
English-language histories. They're as good as the ones in the US Green
Books but there are more of them and they are more intelligently
presented (i.e. there are specific maps for key moments).
Perhaps that if I found such maps in a thoroughly unintelligible
language (like Chinese) I would hold a different opinion, but German
shouldn't be too hard on a native English speaker, particularly with the
familiarity with basic German military terms evolved after studying WWII...
> So if the book has errors, such as numbers of French and British
> aircraft, I think we can be sure that they carry over to the
> English-language edition.
Well, since you're interested in air warfare, the only advice I can give
you is "don't take the figures for French aircraft for granted".
> The war in Europe, especially tank warfare, has never particularly
> interested me; that I remain fascinated by Frieser's book is
> testimony to the quality of his presentation. What really stands out
> is the aggressive and innovative leadership of low-level German
> soldiers, at least in the Panzer units. Here is a sergeant with eleven
> men who operates on the far side of a river, knocking out French
> pillboxes on his own initiative. Here is a lieutenant/platoon leader
> who leads his own platoon and another, which also managed to cross,
> and takes them deep into a gap between two French units.
This is directly lifted from Doughty's "Sedan: The Breaking Point",
though. And you may want to look up that particular work for more of the
same.
What Frieser supplies is the German point of view, specifically that of
German commanders fighting among themselves and how the infantry armies
were running after the armor while the panzer commanders were running
away from the following infantry armies. The end result was perfect
blitzkrieg, though, but what it shows is that if the initial
breakthrough had been a setback then that might have been the end of
independent panzer corps, at least for a while.
LC
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