Blitzkrieg | 25 Question History Multiple Choice Quiz

Answer: firepower

In his memoirs, "Panzer Leader", Guderian approvingly quotes an article in the journal of the National Union of German Officers, 15th October 1937, in which the author goes into great detail about the tank's principle characteristics of armour, movement and firepower, calling the last-named the most important of these characteristics. Guderian says that the article gives "a good picture of our efforts" (i.e. those of the tank's protagonists in the pre-WWII German army).

Len Deighton, in his book "Blitzkrieg", gives Guderian's tank characteristics in order of importance as mobility, firepower, armour protection and communication. However, this is second-hand, whereas the quote from "Panzer leader" is from the horse's mouth.

Incidentally, that is indeed Len Deighton the famous novelist. He broke his own mould twice, once with this book (a very stimulating read, enlightening on many obscure and little-known aspects of Blitzkrieg), and again with "Fighter - the true story of the Battle of Britain". Both are equally enlightening and thought-provoking; "Blitzkrieg" is certainly controversial in some respects).

Answer: Furthest single day's advance

On 17th June 1940 the division advanced from the Laigle district south of the Seine to the outskirts of Cherbourg, a distance of 150 miles. French resistance was by that stage close to collapsing, with Petain's armistice request of this date widely known by French forces (but not believed by all of them); some of them thought that the armistice had already been signed. (It was to be signed on the 22nd June.)

Rommel's 7th Panzer Division was nicknamed the "Ghost Division" because it moved so fast that often no-one knew where it was. I suspect this included German Army High Command as well as the French!

The wrong answer "Greatest length of time that a divisional commander has been out of communication with his staff" is quite a realistic red herring, as it was a criticism of Rommel, by some of his own Afrika-Korps staff as well as by outsiders, that he was so keen to get into the front line of battle that his staff were left leaderless for too long. It should be emphasised that his desire to do this was the complete opposite of a weak general's repudiation of the responsibilities of leadership in highly critical periods by reverting to the status of a junior officer and siting individual guns or taking command of platoons. Rommel's desire was to find out for himself what was going on; he often discovered very useful information this way, on which he could act immediately and decisively when he got back to his headquarters.

Answer: "Hedgehogs": strongpoints along the Somme to break up the German advance

Interestingly, according to John Keegan's "The Second World War", Weygand's plan was similar to the hedgehog defence stipulated by NATO in the 1970s for its defence of Germany against a Warsaw Pact assault. It was also similar to the British dispositions just prior to the German Kaiserschlacht offesive of March 1918, and suffered from similar defects: mobile German forces in both 1918 and 1940 simply bypassed these centres of resistance, leaving them to be reduced by the following regular infantry.

The French in June 1940, of course, had no mobile forces left with which to counter the panzer divisions.

Answer: Liddell Hart, Fuller, de Gaulle, Guderian

Liddell Hart's "Paris, or the Future of War" was published in 1925, Fuller's "On Future Warfare" in 1928, de Gaulle's "Vers l'armèe de métier" in 1934 and Guderian's "Achtung - Panzer!" in 1937. Despite the late date of Guderian's book relative to the others, it is doubtful whether the other writers very much influenced its thought. Specifically, Guderian wasn't too impressed by de Gaulle, and refers only once to Liddell Hart.

Answer: Division Cuirassée de Réserve (DCR)

The DCRs were formed after the shock of the Polish campaign. The 4th DCR was commanded by de Gaulle and was still forming when the German attack broke. The Armored Division was built around 2 armored brigades:
- one heavy armored half-brigade with 2 heavy tank battalions
- one light armored half-brigade with 2 light tank battalions.

To follow the tank battalions in their attack, the DCR had a Mechanized Chasseurs Battalion which was the only infantry unit of the division. For reconnaissance and security, the DCR had a motocycle company and was also supposed to have an AMR (automitrailleuse - armoured car), platoon "which never existed". In addition to these Armored Half-Brigades, the DCR possessed an Artillery Regiment with two groups of 12 105mm howitzers. To this Artillery Regiment were attached an AT battery of 8 47mm AT guns and an AA battery of 6 AA 25mm guns to provide defence against planes and tanks to the Artillery Groups. (Most of this information from http://enpointe.chez.tiscali.fr/dcr.html)

3 DLMs were formed in 1934, with a fourth forming in 1940. They were part of the cavalry's attempts at mechanisation, and consisted of a reconnaissance regiment with 2 armored car and 2 motorcycle squadrons, a tank brigade of 2 regiments equipped with Somuas and H-35s, a motor rifle brigade of 3 battalions (each with a light tank company of 20 AMRs, a motorcycle company, 2 truck born infantry companies and a heavy weapons company), a motorized artillery regiment and an engineer battalion (this information from the website http://www.wwiivehicles.com/html/france/, and from Guderian's "Achtung - Panzer!").

From early 1939 to February 1940 the five obsolete Divisions de Cavalerie (DCs), containing an unsatisfactory mix of horse and mechanised units, were reformed into DLCs to give them increased anti-tank and anti-aircraft capability. They were to be restricted to reconnaissance, security and - when reinforced - screening in mountainous and wooded country. The DLCs consisted of one cavalry brigade and one light mechanised brigade, along with a reduced artillery regiment and an engineer company of three platoons, one mounted, one on motorcycles and one in half-tracks. The specialist bridging company was eliminated, leaving the division with only the bridges held by the regimental HQ support squadrons. Yup, you read that right. (Most of this from http://france1940.free.fr/en_index.html#Army)

This typifies the profusion of division types in the French army, partly due to the vested interests of cavalry officers wanting to keep their horses, or wanting to mechanise to keep their status as cavalry. Compare the Germans' relative simplicity of organisation.

Answer: Command, control and communication centres (C3)

Fuller's plan was a fairly full statement of Blitzkrieg as the Germans practised it in 1940: a combined arms force including aircraft, penetrating the enemy line (in the case of Plan 1919, in two places) and moving rapidly to dislocate enemy forces by targeting their command centres. By that stage in WWI he had reckoned on having sufficient numbers of long-range medium tanks and armoured ground-attack aircraft; the main problem was communication between ground units and between ground units and their air support. (For a detailed examination of the plan see http://worldatwar.net/chandelle/v2/v2n1/1919.html)

Answer: False

If they were really totally unprepared to use 88s as anti-tank guns, they wouldn't have been able to. They must at least have had the correct ammunition to hand, because anti-aircraft ammunition, not being armour-piercing, is useless against tanks. This in turn must have betokened at least a degree of anticipation that the guns would be used against tanks, and preparation for such an eventuality.

88s were in fact tested against tanks in the Spanish Civil War, and in that conflict were also widely used against ground targets like bunkers - and even, using time fuses, against enemy troops. According to Deighton's "Blitzkrieg", the VIII Panzerkorps used 88s against Polish fortifications at Nikolai in 1939 and found them effective. They were reclassified from "anti-aircraft guns" to "dual purpose guns", either before or just after that campaign (Deighton doesn't make it quite clear which, although I'd suspect it was before, given the experience in the Spanish Civil War), and were issued with anti-aircraft, high explosive and solid shot armour-piercing ammunition. Other anti-aircraft guns like the 10.5cm were also used this way.

Answer: Britain

It was the 1st Tank Brigade, formed in 1934 under the command of Brigadier Percy Hobart, and consisting of three medium and one light tank battalions, one armoured reconnaissance detachment of three companies, four batteries of light artillery and two anti-aircraft batteries, one company each of signals, engineer and medical, and a supply train (from Guderian, "Achtung - Panzer!").

Answer: They were a limited replay of the Schlieffen Plan without the thrust through Alsace

According to Hitler's Directive #6, he envisaged an offensive across the Low Countries to defeat the Allied forces there and to provide protection for the Ruhr and air bases for the war against England. In the absence of any other idea, the Army High Command basically reused the right hook part of the Schlieffen plan to fulfil the Directive (codenamed "Fall Gelb", or "Case Yellow"), but without any of that plan's boldness of aim, and with the complete sacrifice of surprise.

Answer: ...giving orders specifying the goal but leaving the means of achieving it to the subordinate

"Auftragstaktik", still the practice of the German army today, was a vital ingredient in Blitzkrieg. It recognises that the junior officer on the scene will have better knowledge of the situation and be able to react better to it than a senior commander further removed from the battlefield, unable to react in "real time". It therefore adapts practice to both levels by telling the subordinate what he should do (utilising the superior contextual knowledge of higher commanders), and leaving it to him to decide how he should do it. This obviously fosters a sense of initiative in the junior ranks, which was a vital ingredient in the fast-changing context of Blitzkrieg. It should be added that the superior would give his subordinate all the necessary means of achieving the goal. Also, as part of this fostering of initiative, junior ranks were trained to fulfil the responsibilities of two or three ranks above theirs.

In this context, Deighton's "Blitzkrieg" comments that German units retained their cohesion when their officers were killed, while other armies' units, especially the British, disintegrated and/or surrendered. Individual German soldiers were more able to improvise than their British counterparts.

See also Colonel Dupuy's theory quantifying his assertion that, on the whole, two German soldiers in WWII were worth three of their enemies, whether British or American (I'm not sure whether he includes Russian in his calculations); this quantification arose from his consideration of the fact that, on purely numerical grounds, the Germans should have lost several actions in which they in fact "drew" with their opponents, and likewise won several that they should have drawn.)

"Auftragstaktik" can be traced back as far as Scharnhorst's and Gneisenau's reformation of the Prussian army after their disastrous defeat by Napoleon at Jena/Auerstädt, and certainly to the practice of Helmuth von Moltke in the 1860s.

Answer: Signals

His work on signals made him interested in the development of two-way radio, the lubricant of Blitzkrieg; he ensured that company commanders (commanding 16 tanks) were equipped with two-way radio, while platoon commanders (commanding 5 tanks) had receivers (movement within platoons was visually co-ordinated). This enabled them to co-ordinate movement and fire rapidly - which, of course, relates to Auftragstaktik as outlined in the previous question.

It should be pointed out that this information comes from Deighton's "Blitzkrieg", but according to Kenneth Macksey in his 1975 "Guderian: Panzer general", all German tanks had at least receivers. I'm inclined to trust Deighton's information more because of his greater level of detail.

As far as I can make out from the website http://france1940.free.fr/armee/radios.html, French tanks were equipped with two-way radios down to company level, but these were Morse machines, not voice ones. French tanks (presumably below company level) were generally manoevred by hand signals or flags. Given that the primary task of the French tank arm was infantry support, this wouldn't have been as much of a problem for them as it would have been for German tanks.

Answer: One-man turrets

Regarding one-man turrets, this overworked the tank commander, who was also the gunner, whereas in German tanks these functions were divided between two people.

The German tanks' large turret rings proved useful in another way. Later in the war, when increased armour thickness meant the necessity for larger calibre tank guns, German tanks could be easily upgunned.

Answer: Maurice Gamelin

Yes, he of the bad repute. On that date he issued his instructions for the pincer movement, in Instruction No.12. On the same day, he was fired and replaced by Maxime Weygand, who cancelled the plan, embarked on a whirlwind series of conferences, and then came up with his own plan - which was virtually identical to Gamelin's.

Gamelin was right, of course. This was exactly the way to deal with Blitzkrieg German style, which involved an armoured spearhead dangerously outrunning the following infantry. However, the successful execution of this plan assumed several conditions, none of which were present. These included efficient interallied communications at all levels, quick Allied reaction to events, and Allied control of the air.

But it shows that Hitler and the General Staff were not entirely wrong in their concerns on this very topic, which led to the halt order to Guderian on 17th May 1940. They just hadn't appreciated the effect of their movements on the Allies, and the extent of the latter's consequent disorganisation and disintegration.

Answer: False

It sounds easy - you make an unsatisfactory plan, your opponent captures it, and you are forced to make a new one. Unfortunately, it just ain't true. The German General Staff conference of January 25th did no more than tinker with the plan. The real crisis came on February 17th, when Manstein visited Hitler and both their dissatisfaction with the current plan and the similarity of their ideas for a replacement became obvious.

Answer: Mikhail Tukhachevsky

He was executed on 12th February 1937, during Stalin's purges. These decapitated the Red Army and spelled the end of the military reforms for which Tukhachevsky had been working. Armoured formations were broken up and parcelled out amongst the infantry, a la the French model. If those purges hadn't happened, Barbarossa might have been a very different story.

Answer: Stukas

"Our Stukas did that?" "No, our tanks". The "senior commander" was Guderian; the incident is recounted in his memoirs, "Panzer leader".

The army used Stukas as long-range artillery. This was vital, of course, given the contemporary state of development of mobile artillery. Self-propelled guns, which could come into action within a minute or so of stopping, were still in their infancy. According to Deighton's "Blitzkrieg", half-track towed artillery could fire within half an hour, and horse-drawn artillery took two hours between unlimbering and opening fire - both of which were useless for a moving formation. (I'm not 100% convinced of this figure, however, given the existence for centuries of horse artillery, which came into action within minutes. Surely any guns towed by horses would have been able to manage better than two hours?) The Luftwaffe also helped protect the long, vulnerable flanks of the armoured columns as they outstripped the following infantry.

Answer: three

This left seven armoured divisions, divided into three corps, at the crucial point on the Meuse. The crucial point, or Schwerpunkt, was correctly identified by the Germans as the area opposite the Ardennes forest, defended by Corap's weak 9th Army, placed there because the Ardennes were thought to be impregnable. The German advance through that forest caused such a tailback into Germany that any Allied air attack, assuming it could have got through the German air and anti-aircraft defences, would have had a field day with the immobile columns. Allied air reconnaissance had noticed these tailbacks, extending more than 100 miles, but failed to act on them.

Panzergruppe Kleist consisted of Guderian's and Reinhart's panzerkorps totalling five Panzer divisions. They made the main breakthrough at Sedan and Monthermé. Hoth's panzerkorps of two Panzer divisions, including Rommel's 7th, crossed further down the river at Dinant and Houx.

Answer: planes

Several sources give different numbers, but the basic thrust is the same: the Germans only outnumbered the Allies in the air. The best figures I can find are as follows:

PLANES
- Allied: 1,700 (not counting British planes based in Britain but used in France during the campaign)
-German: 3,200

TANKS
- Allied: 3,310, not counting the 340 British tanks awaiting transport to France on May 10th 1940.
- German: 2,690, of which only the 627 Pzkw IIIs and IVs were able to compete with most of the Allied tanks on anything like equal terms. The other 2,063 were the Pzkw I and II training tanks and the Czech 35(t) and 38(t) light tanks.

GUNS
- French: 11,000 (including many old but still serviceable WWI 75s). This number doesn't include the British, Dutch or Belgian artillery, for which I could find no numbers.
- German: 7,000 (including mostly newer guns like the 88 and the 105mm)

MEN
- Allied: 2,862,000 grouped into 104 divisions
- German: 2,350,000 grouped into 94 divisions.

The German preponderance in planes was furthered by their air strikes on French, Belgian and Dutch airfields on the morning of May 10th. Thereafter they had air supremacy, which they used among other things to massacre most of the aerial attacks that the Allies managed to launch, like the ill-fated Fairey Battle attacks on the Meuse bridges on the 12th May. (One of the downed Battle pilots who survived was berated by his German captor for being so daft as to wait for the Germans to put in anti-aircraft defences around the captured bridges before trying to bomb them!)

The French thought they were being swamped by hordes of German tanks. So they were - but only where it mattered, a geographical point only the Germans had correctly identified. The French preponderance in tanks was more than negated through their being used mostly in small units to support the infantry. The Germans' local numerical superiority was enhanced by their speed of movement, a factor which always has the effect of increasing a force's numerical strength - viz. the Mongols. This is because a faster-moving force can move to more places in a given amount of time than a slower-moving one.

Answer: He asked to undertake a reconnaissance in force

When Guderian's superior Kliest delivered the halt order, to enable the infantry to catch up, on 19th May, Guderian resigned. Colonel-General List, commanding the 12th Army, of which Panzergruppe Kleist was the cutting edge, then revealed that the order came from Army High Command, and that it must be obeyed; furthermore, Guderian was not to resign. Guderian then won permission to reconnoitre in force, but his corps headquarters was to stay put. It did; but Guderian laid wire communications to his advance headquarters, so that Army High Command couldn't catch wind of what he was up to by monitoring his signals, and went full ahead with all his forces.

Hitler got the jitters for exactly the right reason. He realised the weakness of the German armed forces, which was that the armoured spearheads rapidly outstripped the marching infantry divisions. Guderian, equally rightly, read the mind of the French opposition and knew that they wouldn't be able to take advantage of this because their formations were unsuitable and their thought processes, command structures and communications were too slow.

This problem proved much more acute for the Germans in the huge expanses of Russia, of course. But the Russians, even after 1943, weren't flexible enough in their thinking (partly hobbled by Stalin's insistence that all orders were to be carried out exactly as written) to take advantage of this. They beat Blitzkrieg their own way at Kursk, with such thick defensive belts of anti-tank guns that the German attack ground to a halt.

Answer: Manstein and Hitler independently

You'll find the honours split between either Hitler or Manstein in several sources, but the fullest account gives them both equal weight. Hitler was dissatisfied with the German General Staff plan for action against Belgium, Luxembourg and France in 1939. He could pin down the source of his dissatisfaction as being the limited and cautious nature of the plan, which would give away any element of surprise. He had an intuition about an alternative, bold thrust further south, as his adjutant Schmundt reveals when he relates that when Hitler heard of Manstein's plan he was elated to find that it echoed his own ideas. However, not being a staff officer or a general, Hitler couldn't put planning flesh on the bones. Erich von Manstein, Chief of Staff of Gert von Rundstedt's Army Group A, could - and having independently come up with a similar plan, did.

What he proposed was essentially a reverse of Alfred von Schlieffen's plan, which had failed at the beginning of WWI. The Schlieffen plan anticipated a French attack to recover their "lost provinces" of Alsace and Lorraine (a correct prediction, borne out by the French Plan XVII, which called for exactly this), and envisaged a weak left wing to lure them on. The more successful the French were in this area, the worse it would be for them, because they would be drawn further away from the main German effort, which was their strong right wing attack through neutral Belgium and around Paris. In 1940 Manstein anticipated that the Allies would count on the Germans repeating the Schlieffen plan. Like Schlieffen, he used this expectation, luring the Allies ever further into Belgium (and eventually Holland). The further they were lured north, the further away they would be from the real German effort further south, through the Ardennes and across the Meuse, and the more securely they would be trapped by that "Sichelschnitt" ("Sickle/scythe cut") thrust.

The story of the General Staff adoption of the Sichelschnitt plan is fairly clear. Manstein tried several times, through his entirely sympathetic superior Rundstedt, to get the General Staff to consider the plan, without success. What happened next depends on the version you read. He was either "sent to Coventry" to command an infantry corps in East Prussia, or he was simply part of a round of promotion that had been planned since the preceding fall. (The fact that Reinhart, an officer junior to Manstein, was promoted over his head to command one of the panzerkorps in the attack - a command which Manstein should have received, by reason of seniority and because he should have been given a leading part to play in the plan for which he was largely responsible - suggests that he was indeed kicked upstairs to get him out of the way.)

In any case, after the General Staff conference on 25th January, the inadequacies of the existing plan became more apparent, and Manstein's ideas were tried out in war games on February 7th at Koblenz and February 14th at Mainz (recalled in detail by Guderian in "Achtung - Panzer!") with intense Allied air opposition built into them. The results were impressive, but it was recognised that more strength needed to be added to the southern thrust through the Ardennes to make it decisive. In fact, for several weeks Colonel Heusinger of the Army High Command had been coming to the same conclusions. There was thus a clear swing towards Hitler's idea and Manstein's plan in the General Staff during the latter part of January and the first half of February 1940. Then, on his way to his new command, Manstein (as was the custom with new commanders) went to present himself to Hitler on February 17th. (Guderian gets the chronology wrong here. He puts Manstein's visit on February 7th, and has it lead to the war games.) For some reason, possibly because Schmundt had a word in his ear, Hitler had an unusually lengthy conversation with Manstein in which the latter outlined his plan. From that moment, the die was cast. The very next day the Director of Operations of the General Staff, Franz Halder, "happened" to come up with a new plan which was virtually a copy of Manstein's. Hitler, meanwhile, had outlined his own ideas, which now incorporated Manstein's details. Within a week of this, the General Staff had put the whole plan together; Brauchitsch, the Chief of General Staff, signed it off on February 24th 1940. The rest, as they say, is history.

Neither Hitler nor Halder acknowledged Manstein's contribution in their plans, but after the campaign he was nevertheless awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross for his contribution to its success.

Answer: 29

This according to Deighton's "Blitzkrieg".

The specific postponements I've managed to track after Hitler's Directive #6 of 27th September 1939, ordering an attack on the West on November 12th that year, are:

(October 19th - Army High Command issues Fall Gelb to implement the Directive)

- November 7th 1939: postponed due to bad weather.
- Fall Gelb is postponed another 14 times until January 16th 1940

(November 20th 1939: Hitler issues a second directive for the attack on the West)
(January 10th 1940: Hitler declares that the attack will proceed on January 17th)
(On January 10th, the Belgians capture the German plans for the operation)

- January 13th 1940: Poor weather forces Hitler to postpone the operation until January 20th
- January 16th 1940: Hitler decides to postpone the attack until the spring

(27th April: Hitler announced that the attack will commence "in the first week of May)

- Attack postponed from 5th to 6th May because of bad weather
- Attack postponed to 8th May because of bad weather
- 7th May: attack postponed to 10th May (bad weather?)
(These last three postponements from John Keegan,s "The Second World War")

Answer: Strategic bombing

Wever pushed for the development of the Junkers 89, a long-range four-engined bomber, superior in performance to the Dornier 19 which was the mainstay of the Luftwaffe's bomber force during the Battle of Britain. It was known as the "Ural bomber" because it was designed to attack Russia; however, it was cancelled by Wever's successor Albert Kesselring. After Wever's death the Stuka dive-bomber, whose creation and development was enthusiastically pushed by Ernst Udet, entered service. The contrast between the two aircraft and their intended uses needs no comment.

The Luftwaffe's post-Wever direction was just what Blitzkrieg needed, but its strategic shortcomings in the Battle of Britain are well known. I can't comment on whether Germany in the 1930s had the capacity to develop both simultaneously, but there's no inherent reason why there has to be a choice between the strategic and the tactical. The RAF and the USAAF developed both capacities during WWII, as typified in the case of the RAF by its Lancaster bomber and Typhoon ground attack aircraft and by the USAAF by its B-17 and B-29 on the one hand and its range of heavy fighters with bombing capability, like the P-47 Thunderbolt and P-38 Lightning. Each of these were among the best of their kind.

Answer: True

This comes from Major-General F.W. von Mellenthin's book "Panzer Battles". He was Chief of Staff (Ia) of the 197th Infantry Division, which formed part of the 1st Army at the time of the attack. He comments that the infantry attacked under cover of an artillery and air bombardment; further, that the forts were often not shell- or bomb-proof, that they were not sited for all-round defence and were consequently easy to attack from the blind side using flamethrowers or grenades, and that the Line as a whole lacked depth. He summarises by saying that it had "only a moderate local value". This is quite apart from any consideration about the French garrison being thoroughly demoralised by then because their main front on the Somme had been broken.

Given this, one has to ask whether a widely-known received version of the events of May 1940, which I learned at school, has any validity. This states that the Germans were lucky in that the French didn't finish the Maginot Line, and that they went for the only place the unfinished line left open to them: the "impassable" Ardennes. Actually, no detailed account of the events I've read refers to the Maginot Line figuring in the Germans' calculations to any degree whatsoever. The original General Staff plan of October 19th 1939 seems to have reused the Schlieffen Plan because (apart from the initial lack of imagination) the route through Belgium across the relatively flat, cavalry- and tank-friendly country had for centuries been the traditional invasion route between Germany and France. As far as I've read, Manstein and Hitler discussed the southern thrust on its own merits and in opposition to the northern one, not in terms of avoiding the Line. If they had been determined to go through the Line, I think it's quite arguable that they could and would have done it - ref. the airborne assault on Eben-Emael. I've also read a reference, which I can't flesh out any more, that the Ardennes had in fact been used as a thoroughfare for cavalry for centuries.

It's interesting to compare the number of men each side allocated to the Maginot Line. According to Purnell's 8-volume history of the war, the French 2nd Army Group under Pretelat garrisoned it with 44 divisions (including one British division), although the Orbis 8-volume history gives the figure as 20 divisions; Leeb's Army Group C attacked it with 19 divisions. Granted that these are the numbers as at 10th May, and that the Line's garrison may have been reduced substantially by 14th June, Mellenthin's account is still a poignant comment on the state of French training, given that the military rule of thumb is that an attacker has to have a 3-1 superiority in numbers over a defender, especially an entrenched or fortified one. I have read an account that the Maginot Line defenders resisted valiantly when the Line was brought under attack.

Incidentally, I wanted one of these 25 questions to be: Why did the Maginot Line stop at Belgium? This wasn't possible, because I couldn't find a definitive answer. For your delectation, these are the ones which I've come across, each stated in their respective source as the real reason:

- The French ran out of money.
- Politically the French couldn't cut their Belgian allies out of their defence system; it would have implied that they were abandoning the Belgians.
- The French couldn't disturb the heavily industrialised zone around the Belgian/French border, and they couldn't abandon it by constructing the Line to the south of it.
- The French didn't see the need to continue it because the Ardennes were "impassable". Any advances on this lot?

Answer: Cambrai, November 1917

This from Charles Messenger's "The art of Blitzkrieg". Messenger and Deighton take diametrically opposed viewpoints about what constitutes Blitzkrieg. Deighton makes two main thought-provoking assertions. The first is that the tank in WWI was a failure. The last week of the war was fought without tanks, because the hundreds that the Allies possessed at the beginning of summer 1918 had all been destroyed or had broken down. His more controversial assertion is that the only true Blitzkrieg in history was the German assault on France and the Low Countries from May 10th 1940 to Dunkirk. Every other attack carried out in WWII, including the second phase attack on France proper, commencing on June 5th 1940, and the attack on Poland, were executed using the Kesselschlacht ("cauldron battle") strategy, the standard German strategy for decades. (He doesn't so much as mention Blitzkrieg Japanese style, as practiced in Burma, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies and especially in Malaya 1941-42, or the Russian destruction of Army Group Centre in 1944.) Up till 1940, rail-borne supply and logistics had determined the lines of advance; this applied equally to the Polish campaign. In order to keep my topic more manageable, I've more-or-less used this timetable, but not because I agree with it.

Messenger, on the other hand, casts his net very wide indeed. He works his way from the beginnings of the tank, through an enlightening and detailed account of the development of armoured and combined arms (not always the same thing - viz. the British "all-tank" mania) doctrine between the wars, to WWII and beyond. In fact, he says the true inheritor of the Blitzkrieg tradition is the Israeli army, and details its operations in the Suez in 1956 and especially the Six-Day War in 1967.

Both of these books are well worth reading.

Answer: Soviet Union

Tukhachevsky, A.N. Lapchinsky (chief of staff of the Red Army's air force) and N.P. Ivanov were among the chief advocates and developers of this form of warfare. A major trial was held in 1930, and 2,500 paratroopers were dropped near Kiev in 1935, in a military demonstration to which many foreign observers were invited; in that same year they air transported 14,000 troops from Moscow to Vladivostock in another exercise, and landed them after "seizing" the airfield with 1,000 paratroopers. Expansion after that was rapid.

The Germans were inspired by these activities. Specifically, the Red Army drop of 5,000 men near Minsk in 1936 was witnessed by Kurt Student; it was this that led him to advocate and foster the German paratroop force.

Soviet paratroopers saw action against the Japanese at Khalkin Gol and the Poles, both in 1939, and in November of that year launched the first full-scale combat jump against the Finns near Petsamo, after which the five airborne brigades were earmarked to be expanded to corps size. By the middle of 1941 they had five corps of three brigades each, totalling 50,000 men. The German attack in June 1941 devastated the paratroop forces, however, and they fought for the most part as elite infantry in WWII.

All other countries' efforts bar the Germans' were by comparison intermittent, at least until the outbreak of WWII, even if some countries like Italy started earlier than the Russians. Britain didn't start seriously forming airborne units until after Dunkirk. (see http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Quarters/2116/airborne13.htm)