It had been 786 days from the time of Guderian’s meeting with Erich von Manstein in October 1939 about Manstein’s incredible plan of how to exploit to the full the potential of the panzers, to the Fall of France, with the greatest military power in the world smashed in a matter of days, using the unplanned tactics for fighting the blitzkrieg that Manstein had conceived, which succeeded brilliantly to the invasion of Russia and the failure of the blitzkrieg before the gates of Moscow and finally the sacking of Guderian on Christmas Day 1941, when the first planned blitzkrieg had catastrophically failed, dooming the Third Reich.

It's now time to see what happened leading up to Guderian’s dismissal and the shape that Germany was then in on the Eastern Front to resume the offensive in 1942.

Tag words: Tag words: Karl-Heinz Frieser; Blitzkrieg Legend; David Stahel; Retreat from Moscow;Erich von Manstein; Heinz Guderian; Eastern Front; Adolf Hitler; Von Kluge; Franz Halder; Second Panzer Army; Albert Speer;