History of the Panzer Troops, A - 1916-1945

Werner Haupt presents an organizational history of the German Panzer troops from to 1945, and offers the reader much new historical data. Historically, this new battlefield weapon was highly tactical, but in the end no longer influenced the out- come of World War II. The German Panzer troops were defeated by faulty evaluations by the top leaders and by Hitler himself. However, this book is not merely a chronology of the Panzer as a weapon, but also includes a wealth of human aspects and technical details, reports on developments, fail- ures and successes. The emphasis is on the organization of a service arm that changed Its structure in dramatic fashion from World War I to the end of World War II.

This book also includes many statistics, photos, many of them unpublished, maps and documents. The contents range from the surprising appearance of British tanks in Flanders in 1916, through the times of secret development and construction of German battle tanks in the Soviet Union, the resistance of the General Staff to this new weapon, to the mighty tank battles on the western and eastern fronts. A History of the Panzer Troops concerns only the tank itself and the tank units, not the armored grenadiers, Panzerjäger, armored armore artillery etc. It is a down-to-earth documentation of a troop that was always applied at focal battle points. This book is also devoted to all soldiers of the Imperial Army, the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht.

Such a standard work, which belongs in the hands of everyone interested in military history and the history of our times, has never existed in this form, depth and clarity.