Branch: Heer
Born: 17 June 1888 in Kulm, Rudolstadt, Germany.
Died: 14 May 1954 in Allgäu near Schwangau, Germany.
Ranks:
Generaloberst
General der Infanterie
Generalleutnant
Generalmajor
Oberst
Oberstleutnant
Major
Hauptmann
Oberleutnant
Leutnant
Fähnrich
Decorations:
Iron Cross 1914 2nd Class 17 September 1914
Iron Cross 1914 1st Class 8 November 1916
Cross of Honor 1934
Anschluss Medal 13 March 1938
Sudetenland Medal with Prague Castle Bar 1 October 1938
Iron Cross 1939 2nd Class 5 September 1939
Iron Cross 1939 1st Class 13 September 1939
Panzer Badge in Silver
Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves
Knight's Cross 27 October 1939
Oak Leaves 17 July 1941
Commands:
Other: Personnel
Articles:
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian was born on 17 June 1888 and became
a German general during World War II. He was a pioneer in
the development of armored warfare, and was the leading proponent
of tanks and mechanisation in the Wehrmacht (German Armed
Forces). Germany's panzer (armored) forces were raised and
organised under his direction as Chief of Mobile Forces. During
the war, he was a highly successful commander of panzer forces
in several campaigns, became Inspector-General of Armored
Troops, rose to the rank of Generaloberst, and was Chief of
the General Staff of the Heer in the last year of the war.
Early career
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian was born in Kulm, West Prussia (now
Chelmno, Poland). From 1901 to 1907 Heinz Wilhelm Guderian
attended various military schools. He entered the Army in
1907 as an ensign-cadet in the (Hanoverian) Jäger Battalion
No. 10, commanded at that point by his father, Friedrich Guderian.
After attending the war academy in Metz he was made a Leutnant
(full Lieutenant) in 1908. In 1911 Heinz Wilhelm Guderian
joined the 3rd Telegraphen-Battalion of the Prussian Army
Signal Corps. On October 1st 1913, he married Margarete Goerne
with whom he had two sons, Heinz Günter (born August
2nd 1914 to 2004) and Kurt (born 17th September 1918 to 1984).
Both sons became highly decorated Wehrmacht officers during
World War II Heinz Günter became a Panzer general in
the Bundeswehr after the war.
During World War I he served as a Signals and General Staff
officer. This allowed him to get an overall view of battlefield
conditions. He often disagreed with his superiors and was
transferred to the army intelligence department, where he
remained until the end of the war. This second assignment,
while removed from the battlefield, sharpened his strategic
skills. He disagreed with German surrender at the end of
World War I, believing German Empire should continue the
fight writing the most the Allies can do is to destroy
us
After the war Heinz Wilhelm Guderian joined the nationalist
paramilitary Freikorps as part of commanding staff of Eastern
Frontier Guard Service.
He would join the Iron Brigade (later known as Iron Division).
Eventually Heinz Wilhelm Guderian joined the Iron Division
as its second General Staff officer reassert military's
control over the formation. The plan had failed as Heinz
Wilhelm Guderian's personal anti-communism dominated over
the orders he received. Iron Division waged ruthless campaign
in Lithuania and pushed into Latviatraditional German anti-Slavic
attitudes however prevented co-operation with Russian and
Belarussian forces opposing Bolsheviks. During the division's
advance on Riga it committed numerous atrocities as part
of its ideological mission to cleanse and clean,
these events are omitted by Heinz Wilhelm Guderian in his
memoirs.
After the war, Heinz Wilhelm Guderian stayed in the reduced
100,000-man German Army (Reichswehr) as a company commander
in the 10th Jäger-Battalion. Later he joined the Truppenamt
(Troop Office), which was actually the Army's
General-Staff-in-waiting (an official General
Staff was forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles). In 1927
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian was promoted to major and transferred
to the Truppenamt group for Army transport and motorised
tactics in Berlin. This put him at the centre of German
development of armored forces. Heinz Wilhelm Guderian, who
was fluent in both English and French studied the works
of British manoeuver warfare theorists J. F. C. Fuller and,
debatably,
B. H. Liddell Hart also the writings, interestingly enough,
of the then-obscure Charles de Gaulle. He translated these
works into German.
In 1931, he was promoted to Oberstleutnant (Lieutenant-Colonel)
and became chief of staff to the Inspectorate of motorised
Troops under Generalleutnant (Major-General) Oswald Lutz.
In 1933 he was promoted to Oberst (Colonel).
During this period, he wrote many papers on mechanised
warfare, which were seen in the German Army as authoritative.
These papers were based on extensive wargaming without troops,
with paper tanks and finally with armored vehicles. Britain
at this time was experimenting with tanks under General
Hobart, and Heinz Wilhelm Guderian kept abreast of Hobart's
writings using, at his own expense, someone to translate
all the articles being published in Britain.
In October 1935 he was made commander of the newly created
2nd Panzer Division one of three. On 1 August 1936 he was
promoted to Generalmajor, and on 4 February 1938 he was promoted
to Generalleutnant and given command of the XVI Army Corps.
During this period 1936 to 1937, Heinz Wilhelm Guderian produced
his most important written work, his book Achtung - Panzer!
It was a highly persuasive compilation of Heinz Wilhelm Guderian's
own theories and the armored warfare and combined-arms warfare
ideas of other General Staff officers, expounding the use
of air power as well as tanks in future ground combat.
The German panzer forces were created largely on the lines
laid down by Heinz Wilhelm Guderian in Achtung - Panzer!
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian's theory
The British Army was the first to conceive and attempt armoured
warfare, and though British theorists were the first to propose
the concept of Blitzkrieg (lightning warfare),
the British did not fully develop it. During World War I,
the German army had developed the idea of breaking through
a static front by concentration of combined arms, which they
applied in their 1918 Spring Offensive. But they failed to
gain decisive results because the breakthrough elements were
on foot and could not sustain the impetus of the initial attack.
Motorised infantry was the key to sustaining a breakthrough,
and until the 1930s that was not possible. Soviet marshal
Mikhail Tukhachevsky pursued the idea, but his doctrine
was repudiated as contrary to Communist principles, and
Tukhachevsky was executed in 1937.
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian was the first who fully developed
and advocated the strategy of blitzkrieg and put it into
its final shape. He summarised the tactics of blitzkrieg
as the way to get the mobile and motorised armoured divisions
to work together and support each other in order to achieve
decisive success. In his book Panzer Leader he wrote:
In this year (1929) I became convinced that tanks working
on their own or in conjunction with infantry could never
achieve decisive importance. My historical studies the
exercises carried out in England and our own experience
with mock-ups had persuaded me that the tanks would never
be able to produce their full effect until weapons on whose
support they must inevitably rely were brought up to their
standard of speed and of cross-country performance. In such
formation of all arms, the tanks must play primary role,
the other weapons being subordinated to the requirements
of the armour. It would be wrong to include tanks in infantry
divisions: what was needed were armoured divisions which
would include all the supporting arms needed to fight with
full effect.
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian believed that certain developments
in technology needed to take place in conjunction with blitzkrieg
in order to support the entire theory, especially in communication
and special visual equipment with which the armored divisions
in general, and tanks specifically, should be equipped.
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian insisted in 1933, within the high
command, that every tank in the German armoured force must
be equipped with radio and visual equipment in order to
enable the tank commander to communicate and perform a decisive
role in blitzkrieg
World War II
In the Second World War, Heinz Wilhelm Guderian first served
as the commander of the XIX Corps in the invasion of Poland.
He personally led the German forces during the Battle of Wizna
and Battle of Kobryn testing his theory against the reality
of war for the first time. After the invasion he took property
in the Warthegau area of occupied Poland, evicting the Polish
estate owners. Heinz Wilhelm
Guderian told
Erich
von Manstein that he was given a list of Polish estates
which he studied for a few days before deciding which to claim
for his ownafter the war he changed the dates and circumstances
of situation in his memoirs to present taking over of the
estate as legitimate retirement gift.
In the Invasion of France, he personally led the attack
that traversed the Ardennes Forest, crossed the Meuse River
and broke through the French lines at Sedan. During the
French campaign, he led his panzer forces in rapid blitzkrieg-style
advances and earned the nickname Der schnelle Heinz
(Fast Heinz) among his troops.
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian's panzer group led the race
to the sea that split the Allied armies in two, depriving
the French armies and the BEF in Northern France and Belgium
of their fuel, food, spare parts and ammunition. Faced with
orders from nervous superiors to halt on one occasion, he
managed to continue his advance by stating he was performing
a 'reconnaissance in force'. Heinz Wilhelm Guderian's column
was famously denied the chance to destroy the Allied beachhead
at Dunkirk by an order coming from high command.
In 1941 he commanded Panzergruppe 2, also known as Panzergruppe
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian, in Operation Barbarossa, the German
invasion of the Soviet Union, receiving the 24th award of
the Oak Leaves to his Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on
17 July of that year. From 5 October 1941 he led the redesignated
Second Panzer Army. His armoured spearhead captured Smolensk
in a remarkably short time and was poised to launch the
final assault on Moscow when he was ordered to turn south
towards Kiev (see Lötzen decision).
He protested against
Adolf
Hitler's decision and as a result lost the Führer's
confidence.He was relieved
of his command on 25 December 1941 after Fieldmarshal
Günther
von Kluge, not noted for his ability to face up to
Adolf
Hitler,
claimed that Heinz Wilhelm Guderian had ordered a withdrawal
in contradiction of
Adolf
Hitler's stand fast order. Heinz Wilhelm
Guderian was transferred to the Oberkommando des Heeres
(OKH) reserve pool, his chances of being promoted to fieldmarshal,
which depended on
Adolf
Hitler's personal decision, possibly ruined forever.
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian would deny that he ordered any kind
of withdrawal.
Ironically this act of apparent insubordination is cited
by his admirers as further proof of his independence of
spirit when dealing with
Adolf
Hitler. Heinz Wilhelm Guderian's own view on the matter
was that he had been victimised by
Günther
von Kluge who was the commanding officer when German
troops came to a standstill at the Moscow front in late
autumn/winter 1941. At some point he so provoked
Günther
von Kluge with accusations related to his dismissal
that the field marshal challenged him to a duel, which
Adolf
Hitler forbade.
After his dismissal Heinz Wilhelm Guderian and his wife
retired to a 2,000 acres (8.1 km2) sequestered country estate
at Deipenhof in the Reichsgau Wartheland.
In September 1942, when
Erwin
Rommel was recuperating in Germany from health problems,
he suggested Heinz Wilhelm Guderian to OKW as the only one
who could replace him temporarily in Africa, the response
came in the same night: Heinz Wilhelm Guderian is
not accepted.
Only after the German defeat at Stalingrad was Heinz Wilhelm
Guderian given a new position. On 1 March 1943 he was appointed
Inspector-General of the Armoured Troops. Here his responsibilities
were to determine armoured strategy and to oversee tank
design and production and the training of Germany's panzer
forces. He reported to
Adolf
Hitler directly. In Panzer Leader, he conceded that
he was fully aware of the brutal occupation policies of
the German administration of Ukraine, claiming that this
was wholly the responsibility of civilians, about whom he
could do nothing.
According to Heinz Wilhelm Guderian,
Adolf
Hitler was easily persuaded to field too many new tank
designs, and this resulted in supply, logistical, and repair
problems for German forces in Russia. Heinz Wilhelm Guderian
preferred large numbers of Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs over
smaller numbers of heavier tanks like the Tiger, which had
limited range and could rarely go off-road without getting
stuck in the Russian mud.
On 21 July 1944, after the failure of the July 20 Plot
in which Heinz Wilhelm Guderian had no involvement, Heinz Wilhelm Guderian
was appointed chief of staff of the army (Chef des Generalstabs
des Heeres) as a successor to Kurt Zeitzler, who had departed
July 1 after a nervous breakdown. During his tenure as chief
of staff, he let it be known that any General Staff officer
who was not prepared to be a National Socialist officer
was not welcome on that body. He also served on the Court
of Military Honour, a drumhead court-martial that
expelled many of the officers involved in the July 20 Plot
from the Army before handing them over to the People's Court.
However, he had a long series of violent rows with
Adolf
Hitler over the way in which Germany should handle the
war on both fronts.
Adolf
Hitler finally dismissed Heinz Wilhelm Guderian on 28
March 1945 after a shouting-match over the failed counterattack
of General Theodor Busse's 9th Army to break through to
units encircled at Küstrin he stated to Heinz Wilhelm
Guderian that your physical health requires that you
immediately take six weeks convalescent leave, (Health
problems were commonly used as a facade in the Third
Reich to remove executives who for some reason could not
simply be sacked, but from episodes Heinz Wilhelm Guderian
describes in his memoirs it is evident that he actually
did suffer from congestive heart failure.) He was replaced
by General
Hans
Krebs.
Life after the war
Together with his Panzer staff, Heinz Wilhelm Guderian surrendered
to American troops on 10 May 1945 and remained in U.S. custody
as a prisoner of war until his release on 17 June 1948. Despite
Soviet and Polish government protests, he was not charged
with any war crimes during the Nuremberg Trials, as his actions
and behaviour were thought to be consistent with those of
a professional soldier.
After the war he was often invited to attend meetings of
British veterans' groups, where he analysed past battles
with his old foes. During the early 1950s he was active
in advising on the redevelopment of the West German army:
Bundeswehr (see Searle's Wehrmacht Generals).
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian died on 14 May 1954 at the age of
65, in Schwangau near Füssen (Southern Bavaria) and
is buried at the Friedhof Hildesheimer Strasse in Goslar.
In 2000, a documentary titled Heinz Wilhelm Guderian, directed
by Anton Vassil, was aired on French television. It featured
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian's son, Heinz Günther Heinz Wilhelm
Guderian, (who became a prominent General in the post-war
German Bundeswehr and NATO) along with other notables such
as Field Marshal Lord Carver (129th British Field Marshal),
expert historians Kenneth Macksey and Heinz Wilhelm. Using
rarely seen photographs from Heinz Wilhelm Guderian's private
collection, the documentary provides an inside view into
the life and career of Heinz Wilhelm Guderian and draws
a profile of Heinz Wilhelm Guderian's character and the
moral responsibility of the German general staff under
Adolf
Hitler.
The Enigma machine belonging to Heinz Guderian is on display
at the Intelligence Corps museum in Chicksands, Bedfordshire,
England.
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