ABSTRACT
German Blitzkrieg technique did bear some resemblances to Plan 1919, but it also was firmly in the tradition of the infiltration tactics of 1918 and the Kesselschlacht. The poor roads in Russia inevitably limited mobility of the Panzer’s wheeled transport, and mobility was the key to Blitzkrieg. If Blitzkrieg at a tactical level owed much to the practice of 1914-1918, there was another sense in which it belonged to an even older German military tradition. The attrition of the previous years undoubtedly played a major part in the disintegration of German military morale in 1918, as well as the effects of the British economic blockade. The armies of Europe and the United States still trained for essentially the same style of warfare that was developed on the Western Front in 1914-1918 and honed on the Russian steppes twenty-five years later.
