World War: Mr. Eimcmnsberger Wins

By last week the German Army had achieved a great new margin of superiority in tanks.

Lord Beaverbrook told Britain and the U.S.: “The Russians believe that the Germans at the start of the campaign against them had 30,000 tanks, and in the present offensive against Moscow 14,000 are being employed.” The Russians had 14,000 tanks left. Their total was probably under 10,000 on the whole front, probably no more than half that many on the Moscow front.

When a New York Times correspondent wrote of the Moscow battle, he did not refer to great tank skirmishes such as had taken place in the earlier battles. He wrote instead: “The Russians are destroying hundreds of tanks with guns, grenades and gasoline-filled bottles.”

Battlewagon Warfare. Germany and Russia began the war with approximately equal strength in tanks. How had Germany achieved the apparent 14-to-5 advantage in tank force before Moscow?

Partly, of course, by strategy—by drawing Russian strength aside, especially into the Ukraine. Partly by better dive-bombing. Partly by a highly developed anti-tank artillery technique. But mostly because of the difference between the German and Russian conceptions of the purpose of tanks.

The German tank technique is largely based on Der Kampfwagenkrieg (Battlewagon Warfare, 1935) by General Ludwig Ritter von Eimannsberger. The essence of the Eimannsberger thesis boils down to this: The tank is exclusively a weapon of large-scale strategic offensive, in no case of small-scale tactical attack, counterattack or defense. For defense against tanks, General von Eimannsberger devised a pattern of anti-tank guns in three rows—a six, twelve, six defense—covering a front about a mile and a half wide. Such a defense, he figured, would be able to knock out at least 54 tanks before being overcome itself.

To break through with tanks, he suggested using three successive waves, behind which would pour infantry attackers to maintain their breach. This system calls for tight concentration of tanks into vast breaching units—e.g., the four Panzer Armies which have made the big breaks in Russia.

Russia, on the other hand, apparently bases its tank warfare on the French conception: tanks should be used as roving pillboxes in support of infantry. Thus Russia had no great tank armies, but spread its large number of tanks all through its infantry armies, squandered them little by little in defensive actions and minor counterattacks.

Said Adolf Hitler in his secret Order of the Day opening the Battle of Moscow: “Thanks to your bravery, my comrades, we succeeded in barely three months in crushing this opponent’s tank brigades one after another. . . .”