[Gotthard Heinrici]

Hi Zoya and great thread. Guderian was an extremely capable strategist and excellent tactician although he was stubborn and didnt take direction well. His biography is extremely self-serving and it paints a picture of a man who places himself firmly out of the line of fire when it comes to complicity. One of the funniest pieces of his biography must surely be when his wife is forced to leave their estate in the East and he describes the labourers having tears in their eyes as she left. He doesnt mention the fact that it might be that the russians were about to overrun them!!!!

What is not in doubt was his grasp of the use of armor both in a tactical and strategic view and also his courage. Other accounts from Bunker veterans state that the only Wehrmacht Officer to consistently stand up to Hitler was Guderian.
His campaign in France was a complete success and the initial success of Barbarossa is a noteworthy achievement also.

I would hold a certain amount of sympathy for him in his role as Chief of the Panzer Forces and then as Commander of OKH especialy as he tried to make Hitler and OKW see that the East was in danger of collapse, hence the quote in my sig.

Ultimately Guderian must be judged as a man who rose to high command under an evil regime and ultimately helped that regime to achieve as much as it did. He benefitted greatly from it and so was an accomplice of the regime. Most of the German High Command from a moral point of view was as bad as most of the Nazi party.