Essay Database

The German military strategy of using of fast-moving tanks, with motorized infantry and artillery supported by dive-bombers, and concentrating on one part of the enemy sector, became known as Blitzkrieg (lightning war). The strategy was first put forward by Colonel John Fuller, the chief of staff of the British Tank Corps. Fuller was disappointed with the way tanks were used during WWI, and afterwards produced Plan 1919. This included a call for long-range mass tank attacks …

…be defeated by a determined foe that is willing to sacrifice territory for time in which to regroup and rearm, as was seen in the operation Barbarossa campaign of 1941. The Germans could have won a quick war in view of the success of the original Blitzkrieg. But Germany, Italy and Japan rapidly became economically and geographically overstretched. They could match neither American production of 70,000 tanks and 120,000 aircraft a year nor the inexhaustible population of Russia.