The Evolution of Operational Art. From Napoleon to the Present

(Tina Meador) #1

  1. Karl-Volker Neugebauer, ‘Operatives Denken zwischen dem Ersten und Zweiten
    Weltkrieg’, inOperatives Denken und Handeln, 97–122.

  2. Citino, ‘Military Planning’, 77ff.

  3. Thomas L. Jentz,Panzer-Truppen, vol. I (Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 1996), 11ff. The best
    general analysis is R. L. DiNardo,Germany’s Panzer Arm(Westport, CT: Praeger,
    1997).

  4. See generally Wilhelm Deist,The Wehrmacht and German Rearmament(London:
    Macmillan, 1981); and Michael Geyer, ‘Ru ̈stungsbeschleunigung und Inflation. Zur
    Inflationsdenkschrift des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht von November 1938’,
    Milita ̈rgeschichtliche Mitteilungen,30 (1981), 121–86. Beck’s position is presented in
    detail in Klaus-Ju ̈rgen Mu ̈ller,General Ludwig Beck. Studien und Dokumente zur
    politisch-milita ̈risch Vorstellungswelt und Ta ̈tigkeit des Generalstabchefs des deutschen
    Heeres(Boppard: Boldt, 1980).

  5. Citino,German Way of War, xiii–xiv.

  6. Klaus-Ju ̈rgen Mu ̈ller,Das Heer und Hitler. Armee und nationalsozialistisches Regime
    1933–1940(Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1969).

  7. George Raudzens, ‘Blitzkrieg Ambiguities: Doubtful Usage of a Famous Word’,War
    and Society, 7 (1988), 77–94.

  8. Karl-Heinz Frieser with John T. Greenwood,Blitzkrieg Legend: The 1940 Campaign in
    the West(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2005).

  9. The German mobile forces included six panzer, four motorized, and four light divi-
    sions, the last of which resembling in structure and intended mission a US Cold War
    armoured cavalry regiment. Recent operationally focused accounts include Steven J.
    Zaloga’s volume in the Osprey Campaign series,Poland 1919: The Birth of Blitzkrieg
    (Oxford: Osprey, 2002); and Reginald Hargreaves,Blitzkrieg Unleashed: The German
    Invasion of Poland, 1939(Barnsley: Pen & Sword Books, 2008).

  10. Still the best for detail is Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Fall Gelb: Der Kampf um den Deutschen
    Operationsplan zur Westoffensive 1940(Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1957).

  11. Heinz Guderian,Panzer Leader, trans. C. Fitzgibbon (New York: Dutton, 1952), 90–1.
    Cf. the notes in C. Burdick and H.-A. Jacobsen (eds.),The Halder War Diary,
    1939–1942(Novato, CA: Presidio, 1988), 92ff., 98ff.

  12. Cf. Bruno Chaix,En Mai 1940, fallait-il entrer en Belgique? De ́cisions strate ́giques et
    plans ope ́rationnels de la campagne de France,2nd edn. (Paris: Economica, 2005); and
    D. W. Alexander, ‘Repercussions of the Breda Variant’,French Historical Studies,
    8 (1974), 459–88.

  13. The contingent nature of the German success in the crucial initial stages is demon-
    strated by Robert Doughty,The Breaking Wave: Sedan and the Fall of France, 1940
    (Hamden, CT: Shoe String Press, 1990). Cf. Eric Denis, ‘1940, La Bataille de Stonne. La
    Resistance heroique de l’armee francaise’,L’Historie Militaire de France,Thematique,
    no. 2 (2008).

  14. Frieser,Blitzkrieg Legend, 291ff., is solid and scathing of the event and its conse-
    quences.

  15. Dennis E. Showalter,Patton and Rommel: Men of War in the Twentieth Century
    (New York: Berkeley Caliber, 2006), 262 passim.

  16. Geoffrey P. Megargee,War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front
    (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), is the best brief overview in English.
    David Stahel,Operation Barbarossa and German Military Defeat in the East(New York:
    Cambridge University Press, 2009), emphasizes the internal shortcomings of the
    mobile forces and their consequences for operational art. D. Glantz (ed.),The Initial


62 The Evolution of Operational Art
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