For Colonel Heinz Guderian and other German officers whose careers spanned the tumultuous period between the two world wars, the death of Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg on August 2, 1934, marked the end of an era. A war hero who overcame defeat by the Allies in 1918 to win election as president, Hindenburg was reduced to a figurehead by Adolf Hitler, who abolished his office when he died and assumed his role as commander in chief. Officers would now have to swear allegiance to a former corporal who distrusted military leaders and feared they might thwart his efforts to remake the armed forces and restore Germany to greatness.

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Even innovators like Guderian, who had impressed Hitler earlier in the year by demonstrating how tanks could break through enemy lines, had qualms about submitting to a supreme commander with no command experience, whose plans for rearmament defied strict limits imposed by the Allies at Versailles. “Tomorrow we swear the oath to Hitler. An oath heavy with consequence!” Guderian wrote his wife. “The army is accustomed to keep its oaths. May the army be able, in honor, to do so this time.”

Guderian’s pledge to obey the Nazi leader proved fateful for him and for the nation he served. He and the 45-year-old Hitler were contemporaries, born 10 months apart, and were united in opposing the Versailles Treaty, which carved up the powerful state of Prussia—Guderian’s homeland and the heart of the old German empire—and ceded part of it to Poland. Guderian favored Hitler’s plan for a resurgent German empire, known as the Third Reich, and shared his enthusiasm for new weapons and tactics. Only belatedly would he recognize that Hitler’s dictatorial ways threatened German mili­tary traditions and spelled disaster.

The German army had recently gained a formidable reputation for its astute General Staff, which examined past conflicts and planned future campaigns through rigorous analysis and debate, and for an officer corps noted for the drive and initiative it displayed in battle. In years soon to come, it would draw on those strengths and launch the modern era of mechanized warfare through a tactic that became known as blitzkrieg—literally “lightning war”—involving quick, deep strikes into enemy territory, spearheaded by armor with close air support. But honor would prove fleeting for Guderian and his colleagues as the dynamic tactics that brought them swift victory over France in 1940 inflated the strategic objectives of the leader they swore to follow. They succeeded in harnessing lightning, only to see Hitler let it loose in explosive struggles against superior powers that left Germany in ruins.

Eager and ambitious, Guderian saw Hitler’s rise as an opportunity and sought his support for the creation of an independent panzer force that would lead Germany to swift victories in the next war. In promoting and developing this armored force, Guderian was guided by his commander, General Oswald Lutz, and by his training as a signals officer, which taught him that reliable radio communications were crucial to the effectiveness of armor.

Without radio, tanks could clear the way for advances by foot soldiers, as they did during World War I. But tank commanders could not exploit their mobility and drive deep into enemy territory unless they were in radio contact with other elements of the panzer force Guderian and Lutz envisioned, which included motorized infantry, artillery and reconnaissance units. The goal was to free this mobile force from reliance on troops advancing on foot and make sudden, rapier-like armored thrusts that would paralyze the opposition. Lacking such capacity, Guderian warned, the army must “give up all hope of quick decisions in the future” and resign itself to sluggish, brutal combat like the trench warfare that exhausted Germany’s resources in the last war.

Anything that promised quick victory was of keen interest to Hitler, whose military ambitions exceeded the nation’s productive capacity. After Guderian demonstrated panzer tactics to him on the army training ground in early 1934, he felt he’d gained a champion in Hitler. The then-chancellor was much taken “by the speed and precision of movement of our units,” Guderian recalled, “and said repeatedly, ‘That’s what I need!’” Hitler could not afford everything he wanted, however, and the army and its budding panzer divisions had to vie with the navy and Luftwaffe for funding and materiel. By his own estimate, it would take 10 years to prepare Germany for war.

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