Tank Warfare A History of Tanks in Battle

Military men-and military historians-have not ceased to debate whether tanks are effective, efficient machines of war. Those best kinown in the history of tank warfare-General Fuller, sir Basil Liddell Hart, Patton, Guderian-changed their minds often. Kenneth Macksey's Tank Warfare is the definitive history of the policy-makers and the strategists who talked tanks. Perhaps even more important, it is the story of tank warfare itself - the split-second decisions, the battle-weary tank crews, the mud. Although use of tank-like vehicles was envisioned long before World War I (in 1903, for example, H. G. Wells published an article entitled "The Land Ironclad"), it was during that war to end all wars that tanks became a fact of modern military life and strategy. Macksey gives the reader of Tank Warfare a sense of being a part of the tank crews fighting for their lives. He also provides a clear understanding of the technical and tactical development of these "ungainly monsters" which were originally seen as armored horses (Liddell Hart wrote in 1926, "The tank attack is the modern revival of the cavalry charge") but which later, as the spearhead of the German blitzkrieg, came to be recognized as the key component in the mechanized land army's need for mobility and strategic flexibility. The book has 284 pages and is illustrated with photos and maps. Published in 1972.