Word: anti-tank
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...understatement. > "It was clear from the outset that the ascendancy in equipment which the enemy possessed played a great part in the operations." Germany concentrated at least ten Panzer divisions against the B.E.F., threw five of them at the British rear defenses, and the British command had no anti-tank guns for this area except those to be got by stripping the units at the front. General Gort's armored forces were only seven mechanized cavalry regiments with light tanks, a regiment of obsolete armored cars, two battalions of infantry tanks, most of these with only a machine...
...anti-tank weapon, in 1938 Ordnance adopted the 37-mm. gun. European armies had already found the 37-mm. too light, had 45-and 47-mm. guns in service, were planning larger pieces. Even today Ordnance has not publicly conceded that the 37-mm. is too light to stop modern tanks. But field soldiers insist they need something more powerful-and Ordnance is getting it for them...
Partly, of course, by strategy-by drawing Russian strength aside, especially into the Ukraine. Partly by better dive-bombing. Partly by a highly developed anti-tank artillery technique. But mostly because of the difference between the German and Russian conceptions of the purpose of tanks...
...German tank technique is largely based on Der Kampfwagenkrieg (Battlewagon Warfare, 1935) by General Ludwig Ritter von Eimannsberger. The essence of the Eimannsberger thesis boils down to this: The tank is exclusively a weapon of large-scale strategic offensive, in no case of small-scale tactical attack, counterattack or defense. For defense against tanks, General von Eimannsberger devised a pattern of anti-tank guns in three rows-a six, twelve, six defense-covering a front about a mile and a half wide. Such a defense, he figured, would be able to knock out at least 54 tanks before being overcome...
...with tunnels, dugouts, telephone centers and munitions dumps. Dozen upon dozen of mortar shells still stand there, packed in boxes. . . . Here, beside piles of stretchers, is a great plot of turned-up earth, 400 yards square, where the Germans had swiftly buried their dead as they withdrew. A Russian anti-tank gun, wreathed in boughs, now stands there...