“Guderian’s (and Rommel’s) tactics of fast, light armored vehicle Blitzkreig had turned into giant, lumbering behemoths overwhelmed by lighter, faster vehicles - doing Blitzkreig.”
Very sage observation. I see you as a “big picture” guy. Very annoying to those of us who wander through thousands of words, to see you distill it into a single sentence.
“...“big picture” guy...”
Well, you’d think that the guys who wrote the books, developed the doctrines and tactics, would... HEED their own advice.
I’ve often wondered what Guderian, Manteuffel, Kesselring, Rommel, Manstein, and other pretty damned competent Wermacht commanders thought when they were ordered by the Mad Bavarian Corporal to do something completely out of sync with their years of experience.
Paulus at Stalingrad is a perfect example... “You are to hold to the last man! Because the city is named after Stalin, and I want you to take it!”
So the Sixth Army gets cut off, surrounded, and systematically annihilated. Brilliant, right? Out on the flanks, the Rumanians completely folded and were broken, which caused the Germans already locked in the city to get completely enveloped.
So, instead of trying to break out and meet up with Manstein’s rescue mission, against all common sense, Paulus refuses to break off, obeys Hitler, stays there, and watches his entire army die or become POWs (and THEN die).
Mind boggling.