3181 GERMAN OFFICER AND MOUNTED DISPATCH RIDER

Despite their defeat in World War I, the German officer corps in the interwar period still saw the main means of victory in a future war in an offensive operation. Thus, he drew a different experience from the Great War than his French counterpart. Based on the experience of 1914-1918, including the infiltration tactics used by the Stosstruppen troops, but also noticing the intense development of aviation and armored weapons, part of the German officer corps (e.g. Gen. Heinz Guderian) developed theoretical assumptions of the so-called lightning war (German: Blitzkrieg), that is, striving to knock down the enemy with one decisive offensive operation carried out in the shortest possible time and with the maximum intensity of forces and resources. The German officer corps was also trained according to this offensive doctrine of war in the 1930s and during the world war. It is also worth adding that German officers of almost all levels in the course of World War II used the principle of the so-called command by task (Ger. Auftragstaktik), that is, they outlined to their subordinates the task to be achieved and the forces at their disposal, while the execution of the task was entirely up to them. Such a model of command, based on very well and uniformly trained officers, led to the fact that the German army was highly flexible in action and was able to react faster to various levels than its opponents (e.g. the French army during the campaign of 1940 or Soviet army of 1941). This system proved successful (especially at lower levels) throughout World War II. It is also worth adding that many outstanding commanders served in the German officer corps from the Second World War, including: Erich von Manstein, Heinz Guderian, Erwin Rommel and Walter Model.The beginning of the development of German self-propelled artillery can be considered in the mid-1930s, when the concept of creating an assault gun (German: Sturmgeschütz - in short StuG ) intended to support the offensive activities of the German infantry. Very often the author of this idea is considered to be the later field marshal Erich von Manstein. The first prototypes of such vehicles were created in 1937, and when they entered mass production, they received the designation StuG III. They were used for the first time during the French campaign in 1940. In the course of this campaign, the Bison guns (sometimes referred to as Sturmpanzer I) were also used, i.e. the 150 mm sIG guns mounted on the Panzer I chassis. During the further part of World War II, the German army introduced more and more perfect self-propelled guns on a large scale. The armored and mechanized units were equipped with vehicles such as the Wespe or the very successful Hummel, which allowed for a significant improvement in the mobility of artillery in these units. The StuG III carts were also developed and the StuG IV cart was introduced to production. At the end of the war, a small number of Sturmtiger vehicles armed with a 380 mm rocket mortar appeared.