page_title: Heinz Guderian
section_title: Invasion of the Soviet Union
hierarchical_section_title: Heinz Guderian / Second World War / Invasion of the Soviet Union
context_page_description: Heinz Wilhelm Guderian was a German general during World War II who, after the war, became a successful memoirist. An early pioneer and advocate of the "blitzkrieg" approach, he played a central role in the development of the panzer division concept. In 1936, he became the Inspector of Motorized Troops.
  At the beginning of the Second World War, Guderian led an armoured corps in the Invasion of Poland. During the Invasion of France, he commanded the armoured units that attacked through the Ardennes forest and overwhelmed the Allied defenses at the Battle of Sedan. He led the 2nd Panzer Army during Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The campaign ended in failure after the German offensive Operation Typhoon failed to capture Moscow, after which Guderian was dismissed.
  In early 1943, Adolf Hitler appointed Guderian to the newly created position of Inspector General of Armoured Troops. In this role, he had broad responsibility to rebuild and train new panzer forces but saw limited success due to Germany's worsening war economy.
context_section_description: In Guderian's 1937 book Achtung — Panzer! he wrote that "the time has passed when the Russians had no instinct for technology" and that Germany would have to reckon "with the Eastern Question in a form more serious than ever before in history". However, during the planning for Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, he had become optimistic about the supposed superiority of German arms. By May 1941 Guderian had accepted Hitler's official position that Operation Barbarossa was a preemptive strike. He had accepted some core elements of National Socialism: the Lebensraum concept of territorial expansion and the destruction of the supposed Judeo-Bolshevik threat.
  Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group began its offensive on 22 June by crossing the Bug River and advancing towards the Dnieper. The combined forces of 2nd and 3rd Panzer Groups closed the Minsk pocket, taking 300,000 prisoners before attacking towards Smolensk. Guderian was awarded a Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves on 17 July 1941. Following the conclusion of the Battle of Smolensk, which ended with the encirclement and destruction of the Soviet 16th, 19th and 20th Armies, General Franz Halder, Chief-of-staff of the OKH, argued in favor of the all-out drive toward Moscow. Halder had Guderian fly in to Führer's Headquarters to argue the Army's case for continuing the assault against Moscow. Guderian, who had just recently been vehemently opposed to Hitler's plan for the drive to the south, unexpectedly sided with the dictator. This abrupt change of heart angered both Halder and Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, commander of Army Group Centre, and turned Guderian into somewhat of a pariah amid Army leaders.
  By 15 September, German forces including the 1st and 2nd Panzer Groups had completed the largest encirclement in history, the Battle of Kiev. Owing to the 2nd Panzer Group's southward turn during the battle, the Wehrmacht destroyed the entire Southwestern Front east of Kiev, inflicting over 600,000 losses on the Red Army by 26 September. However, the campaign had been costly; the German forces had just half the tanks they had three months earlier. They were bogged down in a war of attrition for which the Wehrmacht was not prepared. Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group was in the worst shape; it had just 21 per cent of its tanks in working order. In mid-September, he was ordered to make a drive for Moscow. On 30 September the Battle of Moscow began. On 4 October, the 4th Panzer Division, part of the 2nd Panzer Group suffered a severe setback at Mtsensk, near Oryol. Guderian demanded an inquiry into the realities of tank warfare on the Eastern Front, eventually suggesting in November to senior German tank designers and manufacturers that the quickest solution was to produce a direct copy of the Soviet T-34 tank.
  By November, the attack by the 2nd Panzer Group on Tula and Kashira, 125 km (78 mi) south of Moscow, achieved limited success, while Guderian vacillated between despair and optimism, depending on the situation at the front. Facing pressure from the German High Command, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge finally committed the weaker south flank of his 4th Army to the attack on 1 December. In the aftermath of the battle, Guderian blamed slow commitment of 4th Army to the attack for the German failure to reach Moscow. This assessment grossly overestimated the capabilities of Kluge's remaining forces. It also failed to appreciate the reality that Moscow was a metropolis that German forces lacked the numbers to either encircle or to capture in a frontal assault. In the aftermath of the German failure, Guderian refused to pass on Hitler's 'stand fast' order and fell out with Kluge, the new commander of the Army Group Centre. Guderian was relieved of command on 25 December.
  The German formations on the Eastern Front ubiquitously implemented the criminal Commissar Order and the Barbarossa Decree. For all divisions within Guderian's panzer group where files are preserved, there is evidence of illegal reprisals against the civilian population. In his memoirs, Guderian de
caption: Guderian during Operation Barbarossa, July 1941
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