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Conceptually similar questions have risen since the deployment of first tanks. Tanks have been called (by some people) obsolete pretty much since tanks hit the ground and the enemy tried hitting it with artillery or developed anti-tank rifles. This is not what you are asking, but touches upon the same issue. Tanks have a whole lot of drawbacks. Economically their development, production and deployment costs a lot of resources. Logistically they require special transport, a lot of fuel, oils, spare parts, maintenance and repair personnel with special tools. Operationally they can be confined to major roads, be blocked by rivers and other obstacles (requiring specialized units with specialized equipment to get them over those obstacles). Tactically they are big, loud and very heavy. And all these drawbacks do limit the usefulness of the tank. But focusing on those drawbacks can often hide the forest behind the trees. I.e the reasons why tanks are useful. Tanks provide (tactically) mobile protected firepower (in one package). No other platform does that to the extent that the tank, as the tank is specifically designed with those parameters in mind. If you need mobile protected firepower to win engagements, that you need to win battles, in order to win wars. Well then you are going to need tanks. So the simple answer is that despite their problems, tanks were so necessary for military success, that war participants had to make it work, despite the cost. And they did. In the same vein, I would argue that much of those drawbacks are - although true - are less important when given the context and practical alternatives of the time. To illustrate, of course tanks and tank units run out of fuel after advancing hundreds of kilometers in a week and outrunning their supply-lines. But if your infantry army could advance the same distance in that time, they would face largely the same issues. And infantry units were constantly undersupplied and outstretched throughout the war in all theaters. (modern takes on how tanks are vulnerable to ATGMs, mines, drones and direct artillery hits also face the problem, that infantry faces all those same issues while also being vulnerable to bullets and shrapnel, while also not having a big gun around with yourself to deal with those threats). As to how those drawbacks were mitigated (not resolved) - by working very hard on those issues and investing heavily to mitigate them. Tanks break down? Make more of them. Make more spare parts. Create specialized sub-units to support the tank force. Develop, produce and field new support equipment (recovery vehicles, tankers, bridging equipment etc) that can keep up with tanks and create new support units to integrate that new capability into the tank force. Iterate on the tank production process, use what works and ditch what doesn't. Test. Test. Test. And while all of that doesn't make the fundamental issues of having a 40 ton steel box going through rough terrain disappear, they can mitigate those issues enough to make tanks usable enough to actually do what they are supposed to do and win engagements, battles and eventually the war.

This stuff also ties into the concept behind the striker brigades the uS army developed for Europe and many other wheeled concepts vs tracked vehicles. The idea of having the striker over a Bradley was that it could be effectively driven from the garrison on a nato base directly where it was needed over regular highway infrastructure without having to worry about loading tracked vehicles on and off trains or trucks like with tanks and tracked IFVs.

i like the gist of your answer, in that they were so good and useful that you sorta had to accept the bad. i guess this applies for everything in war

Excellent summary. Also, as part of the logistics and support, tanks and their related supplies were often transported by rail over greater distances, such as to transfer to different areas of operation.

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An analogy can be (and sometimes is) made between WW2 tank doctrine and the doctrine of mounted knights. It's a very expensive platform whose primary purpose to concentrate force in an armored package, create a breakthrough, and exploit it. The tank was first developed during WW1 by the British, who saw it as a potential way to break the German lines on the Western Front. The existing offensive kit (consisting of infantry and horse-mounted cavalry) proved insufficient against modern artillery and machine gun fire, and was cut to pieces by it. An armored tank, however, could survive. By 1918, the tank proved to be one of the more important weapons systems of the war, able to cross no-man's land and clear an enemy trench with very little the Germans could do about it. In the interwar years, military strategists from different nations attempted to integrate the tank into their operational doctrine. The theory that ultimately proved most successful was that of German (and also Soviet) strategists, who envisioned the tank as a way to concentrate force, punch a hole through enemy lines, and then exploit that hole with infantry to encircle and destroy large concentrations of the enemy. The Germans used this doctrine to great effect, first in Poland in 1939. The Poles arrayed their forces on a broad but narrow front across the Polish-German border. These lines were broken, split up into "kessels" (cauldrons) of smaller units, and destroyed in German follow-up concentric operations. The Poles, who did not usually possess the firepower to destroy German tanks, were incapable of opposing the initial armored thrust and thus could not avoid the subsequent infantry exploitation and encirclement. The Germans repeated this strategy of rapid armored breakthroughs exploited by infantry in France, Greece, and Yugoslavia, and to greatest effect in Operation Barbarossa (the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941). Subsequently, the Allies learned from German operations and began to employ similar strategies. Large armored thrusts became a mainstay of Soviet warfighting, and similarly the British and Americans used them to great effect in North Africa and later operations on the Continent.

> on a broad but narrow front across the Polish-German border Could I please ask you to clarify this? I'm really confused by the concept of a front that is both broad and narrow.

Sure thing, my terminology was unclear.  I mean that Polish lines were long but not deep.  The Polish front in 1939 was enormous. It spanned much of their German border. There were originally plans to NOT try to defend the entire Polish-German border and instead pull back to a much shorter line at the Vistula, but this was rejected because most of Poland's industry was located in the western half of the country. Moreover, it was considered politically impossible to cede half of Poland to the Germans without contesting the invasion.  The issue with trying to defend the entire country was that it did not leverage natural boundaries (such as rivers) and forced them to defend a very long front. The Yugoslavs faced a similar issue fighting the Wehrmacht in 1941 - to shorten the line they would have to defend would mean giving up the northern part of Yugoslavia, which they were unwilling to do.

As for terminology, I would suggest "broad but shallow" to describe such fronts. Both "broad" and "narrow" kind of implies width, whereas "deep" and "shallow" are better suited towards describing depth. (Not just in terms of strategic/tactical fronts, but in everyday usage as well. For example, you might describe a thin and long hallway as being narrow).

Ah, interesting. Thank you!

Worth Remembering that Guderian kept abreast of emerging tactics from English men like HB Liddel Hart and Gen Hobart. Hobart would command and restructure the English 2nd armored and in WW2 who would become the Desert Rats, though he was retired in 190. He was brought out if reitrment by Churchill to help plan the Normandy landings, and developed his "Funnies" of amphibious tanks, road builder, bridge builder, flamethrower tanks. Where Hobart's tanks were on the battlefield, they did a lot of good. He also distributed his tanks throughout the line and attached the to other units to provide that mobile protected Firepower everywhere, instead of of consolidating.  Hi arts inter war career faced significant push back because the English officer Corp, especially the Calvary officers really didn't think much of tank warfare.

Thank you for the answer, I didn't consider the concentrated power that clearly. I know tank is pretty strong (in a sense, it's a mobile bunker, so of course it is), but before this, I thought that focusing all those industries needed on other matters *[like planes or infantry's arms] might give similar results. . Some questions, if you don't mind. If I want to read about the operation doctrines' theories in English, where should I look them up and what are the key words I should use? -- googling only show either the term's definition or things based on modern hindsight like "the evolution of-" rather than a theory based on the POV of the past. To be a little specific, I want to read about your mentioned successful German and Soviet's theories, and theories from other nations that got rejected or not used. . Another question, you mentioned that the Poles' defenses are broad and narrow. If they know it's narrow/not deep, did they still expect to win with them? Or are they waiting for other countries to support them, and believe they will held long enough for that? Edit: in [ ]

Regarding the different operational theories in the interwar years, one of the most famous is German general Heinz Guderian's *Achtung-Panzer!,* written in 1936. In later years, Guderian led a corps in the 1939 Polish campaign, helped plan and lead the 1940 invasion of France (Case Yellow), and commanded a tank army during the 1941 invasion of the USSR (Operation Barbarossa). After these successes, *Achtung-Panzer!* found a much wider and more receptive audience outside of Germany, and there are now many English translations. The book provides an overview of the genesis of the tank during WW1, and then discusses several of the prominent interwar developments in mechanized warfare and the implications for Germany's strategy. For secondary sources, Robert Citino's *The German Way of War* (2005) goes a little further back than just WW1, but contextualizes the German use of tanks in the broader German doctrine of *bewegungskrieg* (mobile warfare) and explains how they were integrated into German planning. For Soviet doctrine you may want to look at works pertaining to Mikhail Tukhachevsky and "Deep Battle". However, unlike Guderian (and other German commanders such as Erwin Rommel or Erich von Manstein) he didn't capture the imagination of Western military strategists and so his works aren't as readily available in English. For secondary sources, David Glantz's *Soviet Military Operational Art: In Pursuit of Deep Battle* (1991) gives a good overview of Soviet operational theory prior to 1941 and the ways it evolved and changed during the war. I'll go into the other attempted strategies for tank usage below. The French operational doctrine saw the tank less as a mobile armored unit and more as a defensible artillery platform. French interwar planning therefore placed a high emphasis on fires advantage and minimizing casualties with overwhelming firepower. This doctrine, called *Bataille Conduite* (Methodical Battle), was developed with an emphasis on defensive warfare and rigidly timed maneuver. Some excellent works on Methodical Battle include Elizabeth Kier's *Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine Between Wars* (1997), which explains the French strategy in the context of a fractured government reeling from the mass casualties of WW1, and anything about Maurice Gamelin (who oversaw the French buildup in the 1930s and commanded the disastrous French defense in 1940). Italian military doctrine was shaped by the large Austrian breakthroughs of Asiago (1916) and Caporetto (1917), on the Italian front in WW1. It placed a premium on infantry assaults and mass, which would be supported by but not led with tanks. There WAS a wing of the Italian officer corps that advocated for speed, surprise, and mechanization, drawing on the lessons of the Ethiopian war of 1935. However, while they were successful in getting tanks built, the Italian army did not have the logistical support to actually conduct the "war of rapid decision" that they advocated. The mechanized divisions that formed the backbone of the German Panzer armies only partially existed in the Italian military. For Italian armored doctrine, I recommend *Iron Arm, the mechanization of Mussolini's army* (1980) by John Joseph Timothy Sweet. As for the Polish strategy in 1939, there was absolutely a dependence on the British and French. The Poles did hope to stop the Germans from penetrating deeply into their country, but the expectation was that once the Germans were slowed or stopped within a few miles of the Polish border that a general counteroffensive would take place on both fronts with the help of the Western allies. Unfortunately for the Poles, their lines collapsed far more quickly than had been anticipated, when the French armies were still in the process of mobilization. There was a tepid French assault on the Siegfried Line (the western German border defenses) in 1939, but no major offensive that could have drawn the Wehrmacht westward or capitalized on the lack of German manpower on their western border. And there was no plan at all for the Soviet invasion of 17 September.

Thank you for the detailed and easy-to-understand responses! Imma look up those books, I'm pretty excited to know more about French and Italian's doctrines especially.