Achtung panzer !

This book is not for everyone.

It is neither a biography nor the war memoirs of a famous soldier, and certainly not a book recounting the adventures of soldiers caught up in the heat of battle.

No, Achtung Panzer is anything but that! It is a military treatise, but not just any treatise: it is the one that played a major part in bringing France to its knees in a matter of days in 1940, and in enabling the German armies to secure numerous victories between 1939 and 1941. It is the work that secured the fame of a German general named Heinz Guderian.

Achtung Panzer theorises the innovative concept of the Blitzkrieg, the lightning war made possible by the tank-aircraft combination, which relies on the element of surprise, the speed of manoeuvre and the brutality of the assault. It is a manual illustrated with concrete examples and lessons drawn from the First World War and the interwar period.

Published on the eve of the Second World War, Heinz Guderian’s book sets out the advantages of using tanks and armoured vehicles in manoeuvre warfare, establishing a doctrine of use by synthesising the works of numerous thinkers, many of whom were foreign. In it, the author sets out what he considers to be the best way to break through enemy lines and overcome resistance.

But who knows that this book, often presented – rightly or wrongly – as a sort of tactical and doctrinal ‘bible’, was in fact the result of a commission imposed on Guderian by his superior, General Oswald Lutz? And who is aware of the true reasons for its publication and the context in which it was written? Few, if any, French-speaking readers, who had been waiting for a French version since the original was published in Stuttgart in 1937!

More than eighty years after its publication, it has finally been done!

Based on the original version, the translation is accompanied by an introduction recounting Heinz Guderian’s career and the general context in which he wrote this book. The volume is lavishly illustrated with photographs organised into sections, as well as maps.

Don’t miss this historical artefact, this witness to the past, available for the first time in French, which will enable you to understand in detail what the Blitzkrieg was all about!

Author: Heinz Guderian

Number of pages: 216 pages

Number of photographs: over 30

Dimensions: 15 x 23 cm