Guderian's Panzers

On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, the surprise invasion of the Soviet Union that opened the Eastern Front in World War II. With lightning speed and devastating success, the German army tore through Soviet territory and rolled over the Red Army, scoring some of the most dramatic victories in military history—until the blitzkrieg bogged down during the approach on Moscow. At the spearhead of the attack was General Heinz Guderian, one of the most celebrated and controversial commanders of the war, who commanded a tank group in the center of the German front that stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

Guderian’s Panzers reconstructs Barbarossa from the perspective of Guderian and his 2nd Panzer Group. The initial phases witnessed the German war machine at the height of its battlefield prowess. Guderian’s group of 250,000 men and 1,000 tanks broke through the Soviet frontier and scarcely let up in the weeks that followed as Guderian pushed his men to the limits of endurance and plunged hundreds of miles into the Soviet Union. By early July 1941, Guderian helped seal the Minsk pocket, inflicting more than 400,000 casualties. At Smolensk, Guderian’s panzer group joined the German onslaught that destroyed three Soviet armies and killed, wounded, or captured 750,000 men. In September, they participated in the Battle of Kiev, the largest battle of encirclement in history and perhaps Germany’s greatest victory of World War II.

But the tide was already beginning to turn. The Germans were battered, exhausted, and stretched thin. The weather was shifting, first to rain and mud, then to snow and bitter cold. And the Red Army was rebounding and resisting more and more tenaciously as the Germans approached Moscow, locking Guderian and his panzers into a war of attrition for which they were not prepared. In early December, the Soviets broke the back of the supposedly invincible German Army and won the battle for Moscow. Guderian was relieved on Christmas Day, 1941.

Military historian Craig Luther draws on new material, from letters to diaries, to tell the story of Guderian’s armored force during Operation Barbarossa and fleshes out the story with vivid firsthand accounts from the soldiers who slugged it out with the Red Army on the Eastern Front. The book traces the ups and downs of Guderian and his panzer group during six pivotal months of World War II and explains why and how the Germans, especially its panzers, achieved such impressive successes, only to be defeated on Moscow’s doorstep.