The Theory and Practice of Armored Warfare In Spain October 1936-February 1937

Over fifty years after its conclusion, the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 continues to pose a problem for historians of armored warfare: In seeking the roots of the mechanization-oriented doctrines which were to become a prominent feature of World War II, some historians have held that Spain was an almost ideal tactical laboratory; others have concluded that experiments conducted there yielded few if any definite conclusions.1 These opinions, although diametrically opposed on the question of Spain’s viability as a testing ground, share a common foundation: an assumption that only grand tactics are deserving of the military intellectual’s attention. The most prominent military intellectuals of the interwar period took this assumption more or less at face value: If tactically independent mechanized corps were massed in sufficient density against a sufficiently narrow segment of the enemy’s defenses — a strategically significant success would follow. Small unit tactics — particularly those involving the close coordination of tanks with non-mechanized infantry — would scarcely matter where the tank formations were too small to meet the larger requirement. From October 1936 to February 1937, as Francisco Franco’s Nationalist rebels laid siege to Republican Madrid, contemporary military intellectuals were proven wrong. Neither the German Imker Drohne group aiding Franco nor the Soviet Krivoshein Detachment, which brought the tank to the Republic’s Popular Army (Ejercito Popular), possessed enough tanks to execute the tactically independent exploitations envisioned by interwar theorists. Tank companies were employed piecemeal, in support of dismounted infantry, and often without the element of surprise. Nevertheless, tank forces proved useful in these limited operations once effective small unit tactics had been developed. Moreover, contrary to another article of contemporary conventional wisdom, the Germans were not the only ones to benefit from experimentation in the “Spanish Laboratory;” their Soviet counterparts not only learned, but learned first. Early Republican tank operations, although hardly the theoretical group in the Spanish Republic’s Ejercito Popular, was the first to propose that the “Spanish Laboratory,” as he called it, was ideal for the testing of mechanized tactics.2 “The pace was slower and the scale was smaller” than that of later operations in Poland, France, and North Africa, he reasoned. Written in the aftermath of the French army’s 1940 collapse, Miksche’s Attack: A Study of Blitzkrieg Tactics was a resounding I-told-you-so which treated the operations of the German Imker Drohne advisory group operating with Franco’s Nationalists as unqualified successes. “The road that the evolution of war was taking could not fail to be seen by an attentive observer who studied it in Spain,” lamented Miksche in his introduction, and the French clearly were not paying attention. Only the Germans “learned...that war had changed” and Heinz Guderian’s armored drive to the mouth of the Somme was proof enough of that. Tellingly, Miksche did not see the Soviet tank officers operating on his own side as innovators, but regarded them instead as slaves to the same antiquated tactical conception as that of the French. Republican tanks in 1937, like French tanks in 1940, were largely infantry support weapons, parceled out to line units in small groups, rather than concentrated for effective offensive or counter-offensive actions. As is so often the case with such pointed theses, this one was oversimplified. In 1939, Miksche had attempted to warn Western military authorities that Gu d- erian’s schwerpunkt, or thrust point, tactics were indeed viable. The warning had been taken lightly, and Miksche’s selection of historical evidence for Attack was correspondingly tendentious. He ignored even more concerted — and earlier — Soviet attempts at tactical reform, especially those of the first two senior tank officers in Republican Spain: Lieutenant-Colonel Semyon M. Krivoshein and his successor, Major-General Dmitri G. Pavlov. Not only did the Soviet field regulations of 1936 deem independent mechanized operations necessary, but their rejection over the next three years had little to do with tactical failures in Spain; Mikhail N. Tukhachevsky, their chief proponent, was executed for espionage and treason in June of 1937. Nor did Miksche note that, by February 1937 — scarcely four months after their arrival — the panzer crews of Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma’s Imker Drohne group had been repeatedly ordered to avoid enemy tanks.3 Not until early 1939 were those panzers committed under Spanish command to a war-winning offensive. Nevertheless, Miksche’s glowing assessment of the Wehrmacht’s “Spanish Laboratory” was taken at face value by a generation of blitzkrieg victims in search of an explanation. The seeds of the historiographical counterpoise to Miksche were sewn in June, 1941, when the Soviet West Front, under the command of Dmitri Pavlov, collapsed. This collapse resulted partly from the misapplication of conclusions that Pavlov had formulated while serving in Spain. Frustrated with the failure of independent armored operations there, and knowing that Tukhachevsky had incurred Stalin’s wrath, Pavlov convinced the People’s Commissariat for Defense in July 1938 that tanks were suited only to the close support of infantry formations.4 He had also replaced Tukhachevsky as his army’s senior tank officer, and his views held official credibility on that account as well. In July 1939, the four Soviet armored corps were disbanded, and the brigades of their component divisions were distributed among infantry divisions. For Miksche, Pavlov’s 1941 defeat indicated that the Soviets, like the French, had neither learned from the Spanish experience nor heeded the findings of those who had.5 However, when German accounts became available after World War II, a different picture emerged. Thoma spoke not of a perfect laboratory, but of practical limitations which rendered effective mechanized experimentation impossible. Similarly, Guderian believed contemporary developments in Germany to be much more important. A bizarre byproduct of this interpretation was the partial rehabilitation of Pavlov — from moron to ignoramus: He failed on the West Front because he could not possibly have learned anything of value in Spain anyway. More important was the historiographical effect wielded by the Allies’ reversal of their earlier fortunes. Just as the blitzkrieg’s victims sought an explanation for its short term success, its designers now grasped at any opportunity to account for its ultimate failure.

Imported Theories: A Common Thread German doctrinal reform of 1926-1937 paralleled its Soviet counterpart in content as well as timing, although the similarities were to be obscured by comparisons of the blitzkrieg’s success to Pavlov’s 1941 failures. Before Tukhachevsky’s downfall, however, the mutual affinity of Soviet theorists and their “bourgeois” German contemporaries was strong. That affinity had been fostered during the 1920s by joint military exercises conducted under a secret provision of the Rapallo Pact. During those exe r- cises, Tukhachevsky studied the reform initiatives of Hans von Seeckt. As chief of the Reichswehr’s troop bureau and de facto Chief of Staff from 1920 until his death in 1926 Seeckt argued that, contrary to the apparent lessons of the recent World War, the defense was not inherently superior: “Science,” he observed, “works for both sides.”6 Although inclined toward small mobile forces, Seeckt, like Tukhachevsky, held that, even with their mechanical limitations, vehicles held significant advantages over men. Guderian also considered Tukhachevsky’s work carefully: “[T]here is something to be said for the way the Russians have organized their [tank] forces,” he later noted. But this approval was conditional; the Soviet demand for immediate infantry support, long range artillery support, and independent tanks required Armored Warfare in Spain, Cont’d from Page 30 ARMOR — 39