GUDERIAN: THE MAN BEHIND THE GENERAL
Hailed as the fearless spearhead of Germany’s armoured forces, Heinz Guderian’s private letters home reveal a more fragile truth
The picture of Heinz Guderian, like Erwin Rommel or Walter Model, probably evokes an image of a steely eyed man leading from the front and, almost invariably, striking a commanding pose. This is no accident. The leading panzer generals were accompanied by so-called ‘propaganda companies’, who took thousands of images and framed the war around bold and dashing commanders triumphing over the enemy by guile, intellect and sheer force of personality. The published images of National Socialism’s warrior leaders had to reflect this stylised man, and Guderian was uniquely skilled at performing the part, while also understanding the difference between war in reality and war in the public imagination. Yet if the stoic man with a confident smile was a front for the camera, who was the real Guderian? Who was the man behind the general?
For most German generals, questions like this would be impossible to answer, but Guderian left a trove of personal letters to his wife Margarete portraying the war, and his own struggles in it, in the starkest of terms. The contrast between the Guderian of German propaganda and the man who has appeared in our history books is not as great as one might imagine. In fact, those two men bear little resemblance to the one privately writing letters home from the front, especially in 1941 as his Panzer Group 2 unsuccessfully attempted to subdue the Soviet Union.
There is no question that Guderian was bold and brave, and in the early weeks of the invasion of the Soviet Union it looked as though the key commanders in the East were headed for another sweeping victory followed by a new set of accolades and public rewards. On 12 July 1941 Guderian’s confidence was sky-high as he believed an end to Soviet resistance was at hand, writing Margarete: “I hope to defeat them in the coming days […] and achieve in the process a success that will decide the campaign in our favour.”
On 17 July Guderian was awarded the Oak Leaves to the Knight’s Cross (only the 24th man in the army to receive this distinction). His beaming smile was the public face of the victories at Smolensk and Kiev with the cinema newsreel series, Die Deutsche Wochenschau, focusing on Guderian as the principal German commander.
