Carruthers - Panzer Combat Reports

Adolf Hitler was, by nature, a gambler and in the course of a long career marked by a series of calculated risks which spiralled upwards from the gamble of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch through the carefully measured and successful ventures in the Rhineland, Sudetenland and Austria. The decision to invade Poland was the first in a long litany of mistakes which led to Gterdmmerung, the second main error was the flawed logic which culminated in Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, but surely Hitlers biggest mistake of all was to drag a reluctant US into World War II.

Even after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour Hitler still had the option to keep the US out of the war, but in a typical act of self-delusion Hitler, on 11th December 1941, declared war on the largest industrial nation on earth. From that moment onwards the fate of Nazi Germany was sealed. It took some months to awake the sleeping giant, but once the US Juggernaut began to roll the end result of World War II was never in question.

While the US was busy assembling its new armies, navies and air forces the US Intelligence Service was already beginning to collate intelligence on its new enemy. This information was gathered and disseminated to the troops who needed it, in the form of two main monthly intelligence bulletins. These were Tactical and Technical Trends which first appeared in June 1942 and the Intelligence Bulletin which began to appear from September 1942 onwards.

The main focus for the US was initially on the war with Japan and a great majority of the early reports are concerned with the war in the Pacific. However, as America began to come up to speed US forces were soon engaged in North Africa followed by Sicily, Italy and finally Northern Europe. As the war progressed the requirement for good intelligence on the German Panzerwaffe became more and more important, and in consequence there are more and more reports of German fighting vehicles available to us. The vast majority of those reports concerned the fighting in Russia and it is those reports which form the bulk of what you are about to read here.

The material for the two US intelligence journals was originally collected from British combat reports, German newspapers, captured German documents, German training manuals and Soviet sources. As such the quality of much of what was printed was highly variable, some reports are very accurate while, in others, the precision of the information is questionable to say the least, but thats what makes these reports so fascinating. Regardless of the overall accuracy this is a priceless glimpse into how the men in the front lines learned about their enemy, and as such it presents us with a invaluable insight into the events of the Eastern Front were perceived at the time when they actually unfolded. The reports also provide us with a host of information concerning the minor aspects of the thousands of tactical combats being waged day in and day out which expand our knowledge of the realities of the fighting in Russia.

Thank you for buying this book. I hope you enjoy reading these long forgotten reports as much as I enjoyed discovering them and collating them for you. Other volumes in this series are already in preparation and I hope you will decide to join me in other discoveries as the series develops.

Bob Carruthers