Despite their defeat in World War I, the German officer corps in the interwar period still saw the main means of victory in a future war in an offensive operation. Thus, he drew a different experience from the Great War than his French counterpart. Based on the experience of 1914-1918, including the infiltration tactics used by the Stosstruppen troops, but also noticing the intense development of aviation and armored weapons, part of the German officer corps (e.g. Gen. Heinz Guderian) developed theoretical assumptions of the so-called lightning war (German: Blitzkrieg), that is, striving to knock down the enemy with one decisive offensive operation carried out in the shortest possible time and with the maximum intensity of forces and resources. The German officer corps was also trained according to this offensive doctrine of war in the 1930s and during the world war. It is also worth adding that German officers of almost all levels in the course of World War II used the principle of the so-called command by task (Ger. Auftragstaktik), that is, they outlined to their subordinates the task to be achieved and the forces at their disposal, while the execution of the task was entirely up to them. Such a model of command, based on very well and uniformly trained officers, led to the fact that the German army was highly flexible in action and was able to react faster to various levels than its opponents (e.g. the French army during the campaign of 1940 or Soviet army of 1941). This system proved successful (especially at lower levels) throughout World War II. It is also worth adding that many outstanding commanders served in the German officer corps from the Second World War, including: Erich von Manstein, Heinz Guderian, Erwin Rommel and Walter Model.
Germany (first as the Weimar Republic, and later as the Third Reich), although it was one of the largest economies in interwar Europe, did not have a stunning degree of motorization in its society. The famous project of a people's car (German: Volkswagen) started shortly before the outbreak of World War II and in fact - for civilian purposes - began to function only after 1945. The German industry as a whole was also clearly inferior to its American competitor in terms of efficiency or the production techniques used. One should also remember about the necessity to import significant amounts of crude oil by the then Germany. All this, of course, influenced the degree of motorization of the Wehrmacht. On the one hand, it had fully mechanized and motorized armored and light divisions. Also, several types of support units in infantry divisions (especially artillery and communications) were fully or mostly motorized, but horse traction was still the main means of transport for supplies in the Wehrmacht. Moreover, despite attempts to unify the German car fleet and introduce successful trucks (eg Opel Blitz) and off-road vehicles (eg Schiwamwagen or Kübelwagen), the number of types of cars used in the Wehrmacht was significant. Of course, it influenced the pace of repairs, transport, etc. Contrary to popular beliefs, it is difficult to call the entire Wehrmacht during World War II a fully motorized or mechanized army. In this field, it clearly gave way to the British Army and the US Army.
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