Blitzkrieg

The Hussars of the 12th Cavalry Brigade were attached to the 5th Cavalry Division, which was subordinated to the First Cavalry Corps. It formed part of the German Third Army that enacted the attack on France and Belgium in August 1914 as part of the pre-war Schlieffen Plan. He crossed the Meuse river at Dinant. It was involved in heavy action against the French VIII Cavalry Corps and fought in Belgium at Namur on 23–24 August and again at St. Quentin. The 5th Cavalry continued its drive into France after the Battle of the Frontiers, but was stopped at the First Battle of the Marne in September. In recognition for bravery in combat, Wolfram was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class (1914) on 21 September 1914. The modern combat environment damaged the effectiveness of cavalry, and thus Richthofen’s division was transferred to the Eastern Front, in Poland that November
On the Eastern Front, the Cavalry Division was mostly deployed in the south. Little combat took place, as the German army did not use cavalry as frequently. The division was kept mainly in reserve. Richthofen’s brigade served near Pinsk in 1916, and the division would spend late 1915 to January 1917 of defensive operations in the Pripet Marshes. Richthofen was made commander of the horse depot of the Brigade in the autumn, 1916 and was promoted to Squadron Commander, with 160 men under his command. This was never going to garner him the level of fame his cousins, Lothar and Manfred, were now achieving in the Luftstreitkräfte (Imperial Air Service). They personally encouraged him to join as an airman. He finally did so in June 1917.

El inminente desarrollo de la Blitzkrieg comenzó con la derrota alemana en la Primera Guerra Mundial. Poco después del conflicto, la Reichswehr creó comités de oficiales veteranos para evaluar 57 cuestiones de la guerra. Los informes de estos comités dieron forma a publicaciones de doctrinas y entrenamientos que serían estándares en la Segunda Guerra Mundial. La Reichswehr estaba influida por su análisis del pensamiento militar alemán de la preguerra, en particular de sus tácticas de infiltración y la guerra de maniobras que dominó el Frente Oriental.

La historia militar alemana estaba muy influida por Carl von Clausewitz, Alfred von Schlieffen y Helmuth von Moltke, que eran partidarios de la maniobra, la masa y la maniobra envolvente. Sus conceptos fueron aplicados con éxito en la Guerra franco-prusiana y en el intento del Plan Schlieffen. Durante la guerra, estos conceptos fueron modificados por la Reichswehr. Su jefe de Estado Mayor, Hans von Seeckt, se alejó de la doctrina argumentando que se centraba demasiado en el envolvimiento basado en la velocidad. La velocidad daba sorpresa, y ésta permitía su explotación si las decisiones se tomaban rápidamente y la movilidad daba flexibilidad y velocidad. Von Seeckt abogó por efectuar rupturas contra el centro del enemigo cuando era más rentable que los envolvimientos, o donde los envolvimientos no eran prácticos.
Bajo el mando de Von Seeckt, la actualización moderna del sistema doctrinal recibió el nombre de Bewegungskrieg, en alemán guerra de movimiento, y su sistema de tácticas denominado Auftragstaktik, en alemán Misión-tipo táctica, fue desarrollado dando lugar al conocido efecto Blitzkrieg. Además, rechazó la noción de masa que habían defendido Von Schlieffen y Von Moltke.

The Battle of Cannae was a major battle of the Second Punic War, which took place on August 2, 216 BC near the town of Cannae in Apulia in southeast Italy. The army of Carthage under Hannibal decisively defeated a numerically superior army of the Roman Republic under command of the consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro. It is regarded as one of the greatest tactical feats in military history and, in numbers killed, the second greatest defeat of Rome (second to the Battle of Arausio).
Having recovered from their previous losses at Trebia (218 BC) and Trasimene (217 BC), the Romans decided to engage Hannibal at Cannae, with roughly 86,000 Roman and Allied troops. The Romans massed their heavy infantry in a deeper formation than usual while Hannibal utilized the double-envelopment tactic. This was so successful that the Roman army was effectively destroyed as a fighting force. Following the Battle of Cannae, Capua and several other Italian city-states defected from the Roman Republic to Carthage.

By the spring of 1938 Hitler's ambitions for expanding 'Greater Germany' were well under way, starting with a covert plan to annexe Czechoslovakia, finalised as Fall Grim (Case Green) in May.This necessitated some hasty military planning and ne use of airborne troops was seen as a way of getting behind the strong Czech ::rder defences.To organise the airborne arm from the forces already available, the experienced Kurt Student was appointed with the rank of Generalmajor and inthe way the Luftwaffe had of designating their air combat commands, the Luftwaffe airborne forces became 7. Flieger-Division from 1 July 1938, and Student's command became effective from that date. However, he had to work fast because the division was required to be combat-ready by 15 September in time for Case Green to start. Student, enthusiastic and hard-working was up to the task, which was why he had been selected, but he also had the advantage of commanding Goring's respect and confidence which allowed him to plan, train, and organise in the way he thought best. This freedom of action was almost certainly helped by the fact that at the time nobody else of high rank knew anything about the subject!

Various other explanations have been demonstrated as being pivotal to total victory and the downfall of the Third Reich. These central articulations amongst historians include German idealism, both militarily and politically, Soviet economic performance, the Russian Winter, external Lend Lease aid, Stalin’s Communist Party playing its vital role of “leader, organiser and inspirer”, and the contrasting personalities of Hitler and Stalin.

«C’è nel fascismo un nichilismo realizzato» scrivono Gilles Deleuze e Félix Guattari, «giacché, diversamente dallo Stato totalitario che si sforza di bloccare tutte le possibili linee di fuga, il fascismo si costruisce una linea di fuga intensa, che trasforma in linea di distruzione e di abolizione pura. È strano come sin dall’inizio i nazisti annunciassero alla Germania quel che avrebbero portato: a un tempo nozze e morte, anche la loro propria morte, e la morte dei Tedeschi».
Per quanto eterogenee e difficili da ricostruire in modo univoco, le vicende del fascismo sembrano snodarsi seguendo l’ordine di alcune tappe: il fascismo è un complesso ideologico, rituale e politico che mette capo a un dispositivo militare lanciato verso la propria distruzione. L’ideologia razzista, i rituali, le prassi policratiche di governo, diventano la premessa per la costruzione di una macchina da guerra che ha il significato di un grande esperimento suicidario. Nata per proteggere e riterritorializzare a Est il popolo-nazione tedesco, la macchina si insubordina molto presto a qualsiasi compito che non sia quello della distruzione. Il fascismo voleva produrre l’“autentico” soggetto tedesco, seminare il mondo con maestose rovine capaci di testimoniare la vittoria sulla morte, ma il vortice della sua caduta ha prodotto soltanto la polvere di una catastrofe.

This paper discusses the selection of a method of fighting for US forces in future conflict. Currently the US military, and the US Army in particular, is adopting a method of war that embraces long range precision firepower (LRPF) over close, combined arms maneuver. This paper addresses these two methods of war and postulates the ramifications for the future. The author believes that the U. S. Military ~ particularly as addressed in the Army XXI and Army After Next Studies —is adopting the precision firepower approach to the detriment of a balanced, combined arms capability. The author believes that any future force concept for the US Army should not become a high-tech version of the 1940 French methodical battle.

Une analyse de l'ouvrage du colonel De Gaulle, "Vers l'armée de métier", publié en 1934, un livre prophétique sur l'utilisation massive des chars dans les conflits à venir. Traduit en allemand, il fut distribué à plusieurs milliers d'exemplaires aux officiers des blindés de la Wehrmacht.
Heinz Guderian, qui publia trois années plus tard "Achtung Panzer", tenait en estime les théories sur l'avenir de la guerre des blindés, développées par De Gaulle.  Le binôme panzer-stuka allait jouer d'ailleurs un rôle tactique déterminant dans l'effondrement militaire de la France, en mai 1940.
Les fragments traduits en roumain provient d'une édition publiée à Paris, en septembre 1944, quelques semaines après la libération de la "Ville-lumière".
Étude malheureusement publiée sans bibliographie et notes critiques, une erreur des éditeurs du volume

Este artigo pretende analisar o papel cumprido pelo aerotransporte na condução alemã da Segunda Guerra Mundial. O propósito é o de demonstrar como este componente foi um fator decisivo para a Alemanha na época.Para isto, parte-se de um estudo teórico para verificar o conceito de Blitzkrieg presente na literatura. Daí, analisa-se a relevância do componente aerotransportado, das Armas combinadas e da logística aérea nos níveis do planejamento de guerra. Em seguida, abordam-se os casos do Bolsão de Demyansk e da Batalha de Stalingrado como forma de aferir as possibilidades e limites do aerotransporte na Guerra do Leste. Por fim, avaliam-se as lições da Blitzkrieg para as operações e a doutrina militar da atualidade.

This thesis analyzes a number of military campaigns from the perspective of Close Air Support OPerations - i.e. the landing of 'direct' assistance to groun troops locked in combat. The three military campaigns selected for this purpose are: the Battle of France on 1944, the Six Day War of 1967, and the October War pf 1973.

Southern History is a peer reviewed academic year book published by the Southern History Society covering the historic counties of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Gloucester, Wiltshire, Dorset, Hampshire, Oxford, Buckingham, Berkshire, Surrey, Sussex and Kent. It contains articles and reviews.
Some of the articles in this issue were initially delivered as papers at the Southern History Society's 'Anglicanism and Dissent in Southern England, c. 1662-1829' conference on 13 April 2013. As several other contributions were received relating to similar themes, it was decided to restrict this volume to articles on urban politics and religion in the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth centuries.

Prospective authors are requested to email the editor (aspicer@brookes.ac.uk) for copies of Notes for Contributors. Outlines of proposed submissions are welcome and articles should be submitted in electronic form.

Britain’s wartime reconstruction plans are considered rightly to be a key milestone in the development of British planning. While some have received a good deal of academic attention others, such as Manchester’s 1945 Plan have been largely overlooked despite receiving high praise at the time as a ‘stupendous feat’. The research here is informed by Henri Lefebvre’s theories regarding the nature of urban space in which a historical perspective is seen as paramount for understanding issues of urban planning and redevelopment.  Archival sources form the principal basis for the empirical research. The paper argues for the importance of placing the Plan in the context of the 20th century modernist planning discourse. A comprehensive, rigorous analysis of the Plan’s production, reception and implementation is presented. The implications for the city generally and the Castlefield area are explored in detail. Through critical investigation the Plan is revealed to have been constituted in part by an influential collection of visual and textual representations of city space. These representations left complex and at times surprising positive and negative legacies. The Plan is seen to have stimulated a notable physical reconfiguration and inhibited the shift to a post industrial reimagining of the city.

Alan S. Milward was an economic historian who developed an implicit theory of historical change. His interpretation which was neither liberal nor Marxist posited that social, political, and economic change, for it to be sustainable, had to be a gradual process rather than one resulting from a sudden, cataclysmic revolutionary event occurring in one sector of the economy or society. Benign change depended much less on natural resource endowment or technological developments than on the ability of state institutions to respond to changing political demands from within each society. State bureaucracies were fundamental to formulating those political demands and advising politicians of ways to meet them. Since each society was different there was no single model of development to be adopted or which could be imposed successfully by one nation-state on others, either through force or through foreign aid programs. Nor could development be promoted simply by copying the model of a more suc...

Este artigo visa analisar o papel cumprido pelo aerotransporte na condução alemã da Segunda Guerra Mundial. O propósito é o de demonstrar como este componente foi um fator decisivo para a Alemanha na época. Para isto, parte-se do estudo de Mearsheimer para verificar o conceito de Blitzkrieg presente na literatura. Daí, analisa-se a relevância do componente aerotransportado, das Armas combinadas e da logística aérea nos níveis do planejamento de guerra. Em seguida, abordam-se os casos do Bolsão de Demyansk e da Batalha de Stalingrado como forma de aferir as possibilidades e limites do aerotransporte na Guerra do Leste. Por fim, avaliam-se as lições da Blitzkrieg para as operações e a doutrina militar da atualidade.

Korzenie oszałamiających sukcesów niemieckiego Wehrmachtu podczas pierwszych lat II w. św. sięgają lat 20. XX w., kiedy to ukształtowano Reichswehrę charakteryzującą się wysokim stopniem profesjonalizmu, elastyczności dowodzenia, szybkości działań oraz naciskiem na zapewnienie dobrego współdziałania różnych rodzajów broni. Cechy te, których rodowód można wywieść jeszcze z tradycji XIX-wiecznej armii pruskiej pozwoliły mimo drastycznych ograniczeń narzuconych traktatem wersalskim, w ramach armii pozbawionej czołgów i posiadającej jednie nieliczne oddziały samochodowe, stworzyć podwaliny późniejszej doktryny użycia niemieckich wojsk szybkich.

Abstract
The roots of the stunning success of the German Wehrmacht during first years of the Second World War date back to the 1920s, when the Reichswehr was formed, characterized by a high level of professionalism, command flexibility, speed of action and emphasis on ensuring good cooperation of various types of weapons. These features, whose origin can be derived from the traditions of the nineteenth-century Prussian army, despite drastic restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, in an army deprived of tanks and having only a few motorized units, laid the foundations for the later doctrine of the use of German armoured troops.