Panzer Battles: A Study of the Employment of Armor in the Second World War

Armored warfare assumed vital importance in World War II, and during the first years of the war despite inferiority in numbers and equipment, the German Army was master. The secret of Germany's early successes and the reason for its eventual failure are disclosed in this analysis by a brilliant former general of the German Army. Major General von Mellenthin, who saw action in every theater of the European war from 1939 to 1945, follows the panzer armies through Poland, France, the Balkans, across the deserts of North Africa and the frozen wastes of Russia, to the final defeat on the Western front. It was the decisive victories of the German panzer divisions in North Africa that taught the Allies the importance of an integrated combat team consisting of tanks, infantry and artillery. Panzer Battles provides an especially vivid account of the legendary desert battles fought by Rommel. The continued timeliness of Mellenthin's work was brought home in the First Gulf War by General Norman Schwarzkopf, who kept the book on his desk throughout the conflict. Panzer Battles is a candid and forthright discussion of the War that reflects not only von Mellenthin's intimate knowledge of the workings of the German General Staff, but a thorough familiarity with the Allies' strategic aims. It is a work that has taken its place among those of Liddell Hart, J.F.C. Fuller and Chester Wilmot as essential reading for anyone interested in the military aspects of the war in Europe.

F.W. VON MELLENTHIN began his military career at the age of nineteen when he enlisted in the Seventh Cavalry Regiment of the German Army. He was ordered to the War Academy in 1935, was serving as intelligence officer to the 3rd Corps when the war began in 1939, and had been promoted to major general by 1945 when he was taken prisoner by American troops on the Western front