Tank Warfare

Book excerpt: “An “insightful and informative” overview of the role of tanks in combat from the First World War to the present day (Dennis Showalter, author of Armor and Blood). The story of the battlefield in the twentieth century was dominated by a handful of developments. Foremost of these was the introduction and refinement of tanks. In Tank Warfare, Jeremy Black, a recipient of the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize from the Society for Military History, offers a comprehensive global account of the history of tanks and armored warfare in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. First introduced onto the battlefield during World War I, tanks represented the reconciliation of firepower and mobility and immediately seized the imagination of commanders and commentators concerned about the constraints of ordinary infantry. The developments of technology and tactics in the interwar years were realized in the German blitzkrieg in World War II and beyond. Yet the account of armor on the battlefield is a tale of limitations and defeats as well as of potential and achievements. Tank Warfare examines the traditional narrative of armored warfare while at the same time challenging it, and Black suggests that tanks were no “silver bullet” on the battlefield. Instead, their success was based on their inclusion in the general mix of weaponry available to commanders and the context in which they were used. “An excellent overview of the subject.” —Alaric Searle, author of Armoured Warfare: A Military, Political and Global History