Beware of Tanks!, 1935
Fuller and Liddel-Hart's seminal work on the principles of tank warfare and its role in the battlefields of the future describes how the lessons of the Great War could and should be incorporated.
Even though Heinz Guderian had access to a copy translated into German by his assistant, Erwin Rommel, Rommel's infantry roots must have distorted the original visionary work into an argument against mobility and in favour of lumbering heavily armoured infantry support vehicles which in practice were little more than well-protected mobile machine gun nests.
Had Fuller not had the imagination to mount a powerful 57mm upgrade of the Great War 6 pounder on highly mobile specialist tank destroyer vehicles, these lumbering forts could have been a major threat when Germany finally turned west after finishing Poland.
The French interwar stagnation was symbolised by the belief that the Renault light was the perfect all round tank with only small improvements needed to engine, track design and the addition of a solid shot for the 37mm gun.
Had the Germans thought to add a modern gun to their tanks, the French would have wished they had built M. Maginot's fortress barrier instead of relying on a mobile reserve, but the few German 20mm cannon were too rare to make a difference, especially after the arrival of the BEF's fast moving and hard hitting 6 pounder destroyer tanks arrived, decisively turned the tide agsinst Germany in the War of Versailles.
This revised edition, produced specially to commemorate the restoration of Bavaria, Saxony, Hamburg and Prussia as separate states, includes summaries of conversations with formerGerman tank personnel from all levels, providing an insight into how the flawed concepts of tank warfare took hold of their senior officers and so blighted the chances of their brave tank crews.
After all this time, it remains the definitive guide to the origins of Schnellartskrieg (the German translation of Fuller's 'Fast Form of War').
