How did the germans come up with the blitzkreig?

Funny thing, there really was no such thing as blitzkrieg as a doctrine. What the German army did they called bewegungskrieg - "maneuver warfare". In essence, it pulls a lot from Clausewitz's "schwerpunkt" (~pivot point) and the "cauldron battle" idea, combined from the tactics of trench infiltration of WWI.

During the Franco-Prussian war, Prussia utterly defeated France by, essentially, outpacing, surrounding and containing the French forces in a few 'kettles'. These could then be 'reduced', while the actual objectives (Paris) were left essentially undefended. They tried the same in WWI, but found the armies were so large there wasn't really an "army" or "around", there was just the frontline, that turned into one big fortification. The trench warfare that followed caused so much destruction for so little gain that, post war, every strategist's first goal was to figure out how to never let that happen again. And the answer everyone settled on was basically 'mechanize'. See, the fundamental problem of trench warfare is not taking a trench, it's that you need to take the trench, and the one behind it, and the one behind it... all the way to the end, and break out. If you don't, the enemy will just keep adding trenches until you bleed yourself into defeat. But if you do, the trenches, all of them, become useless.

The British name that pops up here is Basil Liddell Hart, who conceived a two-component tank force, an "infantry' tank to break the line, and a "cavalry" tank to exploit. The German name is Heinz Guderian, and the approach was to find a weakpoint, use an armored combined arms force to punch through, and then swing around behind the enemy, trap them, and destroy them. The Soviet name is Mikhail Tukhachevsky, and the name is "deep operation", with the idea that you don't strictly need a weakpoint, just enough artillery, and that you don't really need to slow down to surround the enemy, just keep going and hit the logistics hubs - the mere threat of encirclement will force them to retreat in disarray.

3 comments

They took the idea from a British pioneer of the tactic.
Heinz Guderian, the big guy behind the Blitzkrieg in Germany, religiously studied the book that Percy Hobart conveyed his tank integrated warfare understanding in.
They did work off of Hobart's tactics, but the inspiration and core philosophy of tank integrated warfare was all Hobart.
The Fat Electrician has a great video talking about Hobart.
Funny thing, there really was no such thing as blitzkrieg as a doctrine. What the German army did they called bewegungskrieg - "maneuver warfare". In essence, it pulls a lot from Clausewitz's "schwerpunkt" (~pivot point) and the "cauldron battle" idea, combined from the tactics of trench infiltration of WWI.
During the Franco-Prussian war, Prussia utterly defeated France by, essentially, outpacing, surrounding and containing the French forces in a few 'kettles'. These could then be 'reduced', while the actual objectives (Paris) were left essentially undefended. They tried the same in WWI, but found the armies were so large there wasn't really an "army" or "around", there was just the frontline, that turned into one big fortification. The trench warfare that followed caused so much destruction for so little gain that, post war, every strategist's first goal was to figure out how to never let that happen again. And the answer everyone settled on was basically 'mechanize'. See, the fundamental problem of trench warfare is not taking a trench, it's that you need to take the trench, and the one behind it, and the one behind it... all the way to the end, and break out. If you don't, the enemy will just keep adding trenches until you bleed yourself into defeat. But if you do, the trenches, all of them, become useless.
The British name that pops up here is Basil Liddell Hart, who conceived a two-component tank force, an "infantry' tank to break the line, and a "cavalry" tank to exploit. The German name is Heinz Guderian, and the approach was to find a weakpoint, use an armored combined arms force to punch through, and then swing around behind the enemy, trap them, and destroy them. The Soviet name is Mikhail Tukhachevsky, and the name is "deep operation", with the idea that you don't strictly need a weakpoint, just enough artillery, and that you don't really need to slow down to surround the enemy, just keep going and hit the logistics hubs - the mere threat of encirclement will force them to retreat in disarray.
Meth