Blitzkrieg
Continuity: It has been argued that blitzkrieg was not and that that the Germans did not invent something called blitzkrieg in the 1920s and 1930s. Rather, the German concept of wars of movement and concentrated force were seen in wars of Prussia and the German Wars of Unification. The first European general to introduce rapid movement, concentrated power and integrated military effort was Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus during the Thirty Years' War. The appearance of the aircraft and tank in the First World War, called an RMA, offered the German military a chance to get back to the traditional war of movement as practiced by Moltke the Elder. The so-called "blitzkrieg campaigns" of 1939 to around 1942 were well within that operational context.
At the outbreak of war, the German army had no radically new theory of war. The operational thinking of the German army had not changed significantly since the First World War or since the late 19th century. J. P. Harris and Robert M. Citino point out that the Germans had always had a marked preference for short decisive campaigns but were unable to achieve short-order victories in First World War conditions. The transformation from the stalemate of the First World War into tremendous initial operational and strategic success in the Second World War was partly the employment of a relatively-small number of mechanized divisions, most importantly the Panzer divisions, and the support of an exceptionally powerful air force.

Guderian: Heinz Guderian is widely regarded as being highly influential in developing the military methods of warfare used by Germany's tank men at the start of the Second World War. That style of warfare brought the maneuver back to the fore and placed an emphasis on the offensive. Along with the shockingly-rapid collapse in the armies that opposed it, that came to be branded as blitzkrieg warfare.
After Germany's military reforms of the Guderian emerged as a strong proponent of mechanized forces. Within the Inspectorate of Transport Troops, Guderian and colleagues performed theoretical and field exercise work. Guderian met with opposition from some in the General Staff, who were distrustful of the new weapons and who continued to view the infantry as the primary weapon of the army. Among them, Guderian claimed, was Chief of the General Staff Ludwig Beck (1935–1938), who he alleged was skeptical that armored forces could be decisive. That claim has been disputed by later historians. James Corum wrote:

Guderian expressed a hearty contempt for General Ludwig Beck, chief of the General Staff from 1935 to 1938, whom he characterized as hostile to ideas of modern mechanised warfare: [Corum quoting Guderian] "He [Beck] was a paralysing element wherever he appeared.... [S]ignificantly of his way of thought was his much-boosted method of fighting which he called delaying defence". This is a crude caricature of a highly competent general who authored Army Regulation 300 (Troop Leadership) in 1933, the primary tactical manual of the German Army in World War II, and under whose direction the first three panzer divisions were created in 1935, the largest such force in the world of the time.
By Guderian's account, he single-handedly created the German tactical and operational methodology. Between 1922 and 1928 Guderian wrote a number of articles concerning military movement. As the ideas of making use of the combustible engine in a protected encasement to bring mobility back to warfare developed in the German army, Guderian was a leading proponent of the formations that would be used for this purpose. He was later asked to write an explanatory book, which was titled Achtung Panzer! (1937) in which he explained the theories of the tank men and defended them.
Guderian argued that the tank would be the decisive weapon of the next war. "If the tanks succeed, then victory follows", he wrote. In an article addressed to critics of tank warfare, he wrote that "until our critics can produce some new and better method of making a successful land attack other than self-massacre, we shall continue to maintain our beliefs that tanks—properly employed, needless to say—are today the best means available for land attack".
Addressing the faster rate at which defenders could reinforce an area than attackers could penetrate it during the First World War, Guderian wrote that "since reserve forces will now be motorized, the building up of new defensive fronts is easier than it used to be; the chances of an offensive based on the timetable of artillery and infantry co-operation are, as a result, even slighter today than they were in the last war." He continued, "We believe that by attacking with tanks we can achieve a higher rate of movement than has been hitherto obtainable, and—what is perhaps even more important—that we can keep moving once a breakthrough has been made". Guderian additionally required for tactical radios to be widely used to facilitate coordination and command by having one installed in all tanks.
Guderian's leadership was supported, fostered and institutionalized by his supporters in the Reichswehr General Staff system, which worked the Army to greater and greater levels of capability through massive and systematic Movement Warfare war games in the 1930s. Guderian's book incorporated the work of theorists such as Ludwig Ritter von Eimannsberger, whose book, The Tank War (Der Kampfwagenkrieg) (1934) gained a wide audience in the German Army. Another German theorist, Ernst Volckheim, wrote a huge amount on tank and combined arms tactics and was influential to German thinking on the use of armored formations, but his work was not acknowledged in Guderian's writings.

See also: AirLand Battle, blitzkrieg-like doctrine of US Army in 1980s
Armoured warfare
Maneuver warfare
Shock and awe, the 21st century US military doctrine.
Vernichtungsgedanke, or "annihilation concept".
Mission-type tactics
Deep Battle, Soviet Red Army Military Doctrine from the 1930s often confused with blitzkrieg.
Battleplan (documentary TV series)
Vernichtungsschlacht, Battle of annihilation

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Conferences: Glantz, David (2001b). The Soviet-German War 1941–1945: Myths and Realities: A Survey Essay. A Paper Presented as the 20th Anniversary Distinguished Lecture at the Strom Thurmond Institute of Government and Public Affairs. no ISBN. Clemson, SC: Clemson University. Archived from the original on 18 February 2015.

Journals: Erickson, Edward J. (2001b). "Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War". Contributions in Military Studies (201). Westport Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISSN 0883-6884. OCLC 43481698.
Fanning, William Jr. (April 1997). "The Origin of the term "Blitzkrieg": Another View". Journal of Military History. 61 (2): 283–302. doi:10.2307/2953968. ISSN 0899-3718. JSTOR 2953968.
Harris, John Paul (November 1995). "The Myth of Blitzkrieg". War in History. II: 335–352. doi:10.1177/096834459500200306. ISSN 0968-3445. S2CID 159933010.
Watt, Robert (2008). "Feeling the Full Force of a Four Point Offensive: Re-Interpreting The Red Army's 1944 Belorussian and L'vov-Przemyśl Operations". The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. XXI (4). Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. doi:10.1080/13518040802497564. ISSN 1351-8046. S2CID 143413006.
Winchester, Charles (20 January 2002). "Advancing Backwards: The Demodernization of the German Army in World War 2". Military Journal. 2 (1). Osprey: 18–25. ISBN 978-1-84176-041-4. ISSN 1467-1379. Archived from the original on 5 April 2013. Retrieved 11 August 2015.
Yerxa, Donald (June 2011). "Military History at the Operational Level: An Interview with Robert M. Citino". Historically Speaking. 12 (3): 10–12. doi:10.1353/hsp.2011.0039. S2CID 162320393.

Websites: Andreas, Peter (2020). "How Methamphetamine Became a Key Part of Nazi Military Strategy (January 7, 2020)". Time. Time USA, LLC. Retrieved 23 February 2022.
De Gaulle, Charles (2009). "1890–1940: un officier non-conformiste" [1890–1940: An Unorthodox Officer]. charles-de-gaulle.org (in French). Archived from the original on 25 May 2015. Retrieved 13 December 2009.