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With the western frontier fortified, Brauchitsch could plan his attack, and the form it took was as old as warfare itself. Only the materials and the name were new. Blitzkrieg, in its simplest terms, is merely a war of movement, as opposed to a war of position, carried out with the fastest units available. Before World War I it was cavalry that flanked enemy positions, cut off communications, destroyed supplies. In both the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 the Germans won their decisive battles within six weeks after hostilities began. In the last World War they tried and failed—but only after the retreat from Paris did the War settle down to one of position and exhaustion. This time Brauchitsch had previous German experience to rely on, plus the theories of the Italian Giuseppe Douhet, plus a new kind of cavalry: airplanes, fast tanks and infantry transported in armored trucks.
Douhet believed that early control of the air is essential for quick victory. This was proved in Spain, where Germany tested many theories and where Franco took two years to get control of the air, then won hands down. By 1937, when General Brauchitsch took command at Leipzig, it was already pretty clear that to deliver a lightning blow Germany needed not only a superlative air force, but plenty of motorized strength.
In Leipzig, and later as Commander in Chief, Brauchitsch concentrated on building up the armored motor divisions of the Army. In 1937 Germany had only two such divisions. By September 1 of this year she had six, each with an average strength of 13,000 men, besides a fleet of 8,000 tanks capable of going 18-20 m.p.h. It was this force that swept through Poland with such devastating fury.
The Prize that Walther von Brauchitsch had won for Germany was, from a military standpoint, well worth its cost in men and machines. "At almost the precise moment" that England blockaded Germany, as Field Marshal Goring remarked last fortnight, Germany got her hands on Poland's rich coal fields. Poland's production of 36,000,000 tons a year will increase the Reich's coal supply to some 220,000,000 tons—if she can hold the coal-producing Saar into which France was pushing last week. If France takes or cripples the Saar, Germany will be little better off than she was before, for the Saar's 13,500,000 tons of coal are of a much better grade than Silesia's.
Germany won an iron & steel industry with an annual output of 2,000,000 tons; some zinc mines (annual production 191,500 tons); and a rich agricultural region producing wheat, rye, barley, oats, potatoes, sugar beets.
But Poland produces only 500,000 tons of oil a year, and oil is Germany's greatest need. Her peacetime imports were 4,000,000 tons, and to run her war machine she will probably need 8,000,000 tons. Even a light French motorized division needs 423 gallons of gasoline to move a mile, and Germany's Panzerdimsionen with tanks and armored trucks burn many times that much fuel. Darting in and out, operating far from base and covering scores of miles on each raid, their refueling problem becomes tremendous. If Germany is to fight a long war, she must get still more oil.