Panzerschlachten

1956 English-language edition

Panzerschlachten (Panzer Battles) is the German language title of Major-General Friedrich von Mellenthin's autobiographical account of his service in the Panzer arm of the Wehrmacht Heer during World War II. The first English edition, as Panzer Battles: A Study of the Employment of Armor in the Second World War, was published in 1956 by University of Oklahoma Press. It largely covers North African battles while also covering some engagements on the Eastern Front.

Panzer Battles was part of the exculpatory memoirs genre that fed the post-war revisionist narrative, put forth by Wehrmacht generals. The book was instrumental in forming the misconceptions which warped the U.S. view of Eastern Front military operations up to the late 1990s, when Soviet archival sources became available to Western and Russian historians.

Criticism

The veracity of Panzer Battles and Mellenthin's other works has been called into question over the years. The historian Wolfram Wette lists Mellenthin in the group of German generals who authored apologetic, uncritical studies on World War II, alongside Ferdinand Heim, Kurt von Tippelskirch, Waldemar Erfurth and others.^[1]

Critics point out that Panzer Battles downplays Wehrmacht's failures while extolling the fighting qualities of the German soldier. The historians Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies have characterized Panzer Battles as part of the "exculpatory memoirs" genre that fed the post-war revisionist narrative, alongside books by Erich von Manstein, Heinz Guderian, Hans Rudel and Hans von Luck.^[2] Mellenthin blames Wehrmacht's defeat solely on the Soviet advantages in men and materiel, describing the Red Army as a "ruthless enemy, possessed of immense and seemingly inexhaustible resources"; the "endless waves of men and tanks" eventually "submerged" the supposedly superior Wehrmacht.^[3]

Several works by historians highlight the consistent depictions of "Russian" opponents in racial terms, as "primitive" "Asiatics".^[3][4] Panzer Battles devotes a section to the "Psychology of the Russian Soldier":^[4]

No one belonging to the cultural circles of the West is ever likely to fathom the character and soul of these Asiatics, born and bred on the other side of the European frontiers... The Russian is quite unpredictable. Perhaps the key to this attitude lies in the fact the Russian is not a conscious soldier, thinking on independent lines, but is a victim of moods which a Westerner cannot analyze.

Wehrmacht's adversaries on the Eastern Front are depicted in derogatory terms:^[3]

Russian soldiers' mental sluggishness makes them quite insensible to losses. The Russian soldier values his own life no more than that of his comrades... Life is not precious to him. He is immune to the most incredible hardships. The Russian soldier is essentially a primitive being. [...] He lacks any true religious or moral balance, and his moods alter between bestial cruelty and genuine kindness.

Panzer Battles was reprinted six times in the U.S. between 1956 and 1976 and continues to be popular among readers who romanticize the German war effort, according to Smelser and Davies.^[3] The book was instrumental in forming the misconceptions which warped the U.S. view of Eastern Front military operations up to the late 1990s, when Soviet archival sources became available to Western and Russian historians. The historian Robert Citino notes the influential nature of Mellenthin's works in shaping the perceptions of the Red Army in the West as "a faceless and mindless horde" whose idea of military art was to "smash everything in its path through numbers, brute force and sheer size". Citino includes Panzer Battles among the German officers' memoirs that are "at best unreliable and at worst deliberately misleading".^[5] Citino concludes that, contrary to Mellenthin's archetype of "Ivan the Primitive":^[6]

Thanks to modern research, the Red Army now occupies a different position in the history of World War II. Today it is known as a highly skilled and brilliantly led force that absorbed the best Wehrmacht had to offer in 1941, then turned the tables and eventually smashed it. From a primitive horde, it has now become the seedbed of modern military operations.

Known editions

• Mellenthin, Friedrich von (1971) [1956]. Panzer Battles: A Study of the Employment of Armor in the Second World War (First Ballantine Books ed.). New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-24440-0.
• Mellenthin, Friedrich von (2011) [1956]. Bitwy pancerne Wehrmachtu (First Armagedon ed.). Gdynia: Armagedon. ISBN 978-83-932961-0-1.

See also

• Panzer
• Wehrmacht
• Armored warfare

References

Citations

1. Wette 2006, p. 234.
2. Smelser & Davies 2008, p. 90.
3. Smelser & Davies 2008, p. 111.
4. Citino 2012, p. 205.
5. Citino 2012, pp. 204–205, 208.
6. Citino 2012, pp. 204–205.

Bibliography

• Citino, Robert M. (2012). The Wehrmacht Retreats: Fighting a Lost War, 1943. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-1826-2.
• Smelser, Ronald; Davies II, Edward J. (2008). The myth of the Eastern Front: the Nazi-Soviet war in American popular culture. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521833653.
• Wette, Wolfram (2007). The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674025776.