Guderian's Tankmen Speak: Why We Never Reached the Kremlin

This book is based on the memories of German tank crews who fought in the famed 2nd Panzer Group of Guderian. In this edition, you’ll find the testimonies of those who, under the command of “Schnelle Heinz” (“Swift Geytz”), carried out the Blitzkrieg, participated in the key “Kesselschlacht” (encirclement battles) of 1941—closing the Minsk, Smolensk, Kyiv, and Bryansk pockets—yet never reached the Kremlin. Unlike Guderian’s own memoirs, “inexpressibly boring, like feldgrau cloth,” reading the recollections of ordinary soldiers and officers of his tank group is far more interesting and instructive. A field sergeant or a lieutenant will provide details that you can’t see from the height of general’s grandeur. And in many cases, these descriptions are more eloquent than army reports—because if a young lieutenant says that only seven men remain from his company, should you believe the triumphant fanfares?.. How did the German tank crews fight, win, and die? Thanks to whom did the 2nd Panzer Group surge from triumph to triumph—until it met its stone wall, when the German Blitzkrieg didn’t crash into the Russian defense outside Moscow? Whose fault was it that they still didn’t reach the Kremlin? Why did their victorious march eastward turn into a collapse and the Wehrmacht’s first serious defeat—the beginning of the end?