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Title: Panzer Battles : A Study of the Employment of Armor in the Second World War by F. W. von Mellenthin ISBN: 0-345-32158-8 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 12 July, 1985 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.2 (30 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Absolutely terrific
Comment: This book is an invaluable work in understanding the complexities of warfare. Others have commented on a few possible inaccuracies. While I have not looked into these complaints, there can be no doubt that this book is doubly effective, first as one of the few comprehensive accounts of armored warfare in WWII told from the German Staff Officer's perspective, and second as an excellent guide in understanding the complexities and necessities of waging mechanized war on a large scale.
V. Mellenthin provides dozens of keen insights into the art and science of warfare. Though his comments concerning Rommel and the African Campaign are supposedly the centerpiece of Panzer Battles, I would argue that the most interesting and instructive parts of the book deal with the years 1942-1944 in the Soviet Union while he served with and under Gen. Balck, a less known but superb officer of the War.
Regardless of what theatre of the war in Europe you are interested in, you can't go wrong with this terrific book. So thick are the lessons and so fascinating is the narrative that I have come back to read this book again and again. Don't miss out on it.
Rating: 4
Summary: Sets the standard for the genre....
Comment: "Panzer Battles" is maybe THE indispensible tactical and strategic memior of the Second World War. The author, Maj. General F.W. von Mellenthin, does not have the fame of a Guderian or von Manstein, the colorful personal experiences of a von Luck, or the resources of a Patton (whose memoiors were written during, rather than after, the war); what he does have is a keen understanding of how modern warfare evolved during WWII and how its lessons can and should be applied -- not only in war itself, but (and I am reading a bit into this, but bear with me) in business and in life.
Some cautions. Firstly -- "Panzer Battles" is very technical and is not a "hot lead and cold steel" memior, nor does it have the colorful stories that von Luck's "Panzer Commander." Personal experiences are kept to an absolute minimum and von Mellenthin seldom pulls back to give us a 'God eye' view of the war (he explains that on direct order of Hitler, field commanders and even the General Staff officers assigned to them were kept totally in the dark about the war as a whole, and only permitted to know that information which related to their own theater of operations). His book is a study of tank warfare as he experienced it as a staff officer in North Africa, Soviet Russia, and the Western Front, and does not pretend to be a historical overview, but only a sober analysis of his own expereinces. Secondly, it is almost entirely devoid of sentiment, emotion, prejudice, or favoritism -- Mellenthin writes in a cool-blooded, analytic vein, as if describing chess matches in a newspaper. People looking for vivid discriptions of combat, or even the small personal experiences that make war memiors so interesting, will be disappointed and should look elsewhere.
Now -- the author, the book, its message, and its impact. "Panzer Battles" was written by a general staff officer who started the war as a captain and finished it as a major general. Along the way he served in Poland in 1939, France in 1940 and again in 1944, North Africa in 1941 - 1942, Russia in 1943 - 1944, commanded the 9th Panzer division in the battle of the Bulge and finished the war as chief of staff to the German army group trapped in the Ruhr, whose surrender more or less ended active fighting on the Western Front in 1945. He had intimate knowledge of generals like Model, Rommel, von Manstein, and Balck (who he considers the most underrated general of the war), access to many of their personal papers, and even met Hitler. The book follows his career from theater to theater, and recounts the many battles, but is most interesting when it discusses how the Germans achieved such amazing successes with am army that was usually outnumbered and outgunned, sometimes by odds of as much as 5 - 1. Mellenthin makes a convincing case that as late as 1944, the Germans could have avoided defeat on the Russian front had they been allowed to use the mobile tactics that they had invented and perfected, and whose worth they proved over and over
again during the war, rather than sticking by Hitler's inevitable 'hold or die' orders, which caused one disaster after another. He backs up this claim with numerous examples of small, mobile German forces destroying Soviet armies many times their size; and on the other hand points to such follies as the disasterous Battle of White Russia in July, 1944 (where Hitker issued yet another 'stand or die' order) as proof that "war is a science and one cannot disregard its principles with impunity."
In addition to his ridicule of Hitler, Mellenthin also offers some rather pointed insight on the mentality of the Russian soldier and his leaders. His language is such that some modern readers will be offended, but his viewpoint was shaped not merely by Nazism (for which he clearly had little enthusiasm) but by culture shock. Mellenthin descended from an ancient, petty-noble Prussian military family that viewed war as a gentleman's pursuit, to be fought by dashing professionals on a field of honor: the cold-blooded tactics of the Soviet Command, which employed penal battalions, human-wave assaults, and forcible conscription of children and old people (who were sometimes thrown into battle without weapons), shocked and appalled him (he makes passing mention of German crimes against the Soviet population, but doesn't delve deeply into the matter). Like most Germans of this period, Nazis or no, Mellenthin viewed the Slav as an Asian, rather than a European, and seemed to regard them as slightly less than human. His comments in this regard are an interesting reflection of the times, and must be taken in that context.
In closing, "Panzer Battles" can be taken as a simple military thesis, or broadened to show the value of felixibility, quick-thinking, and personal initiative in other aspects of the human condition. Either way, it is worth buying.
Rating: 5
Summary: My German WWII Tank Battles
Comment: This book has become (and will remain) one of the "classic" books of World War II. This book is one of the highy recommended readings in the U.S. Army's "Command and General Staff" course. Its author is: Generalmajor Friedrich Wilhelm von Mellenthin (von not "Vaughn"). This note is just to inform the researcher that "F.W." wrote another much-overlooked book: "German Generals of World War II: As I Saw Them" (where he discusses the personalites, strengths and weaknesses of the numerous German generals that he served with during WWII) and he co-authored "NATO Under Attack" (Duke Univ. Press, 1984) --which argued that NATO using blitzkrieg-like tank units and manouvers could twart the Warsaw Pack communist armies without the need of using defensive nuclear weaponry.
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