Steel Fist: Tank Warfare, 1939-45

“If the tanks succeed, then victory follows.”
General Heinz Guderian, 1937

After seeing the success of the British tanks in the First World War, the Germans decided that the future of warfare lay in the Panzerkampfwagen, the armoured fighting vehicle, later simply known as the Panzer. In time, the Panzer Corps would become the German army’s new vanguard, an essential component of the new style of war that came to be known as Blitzkrieg – ‘lightning war’.

Steel Fist looks at the development of the Panzer concept, and the building and deployment of the Corps through the eyes of those who fought it. It tells the story of how the Panzers formed the spearhead of the world’s most efficient military machine, and how they were ultimately defeated.