Public Lecture - Hitler's Panzer Generals

Public Lecture - Hitler's Panzer Generals: Guderian, Hoepner, Reinhardt and Schmidt Unguarded

The German panzer generals of the Second World War have been the subject of great historical interest. Much has been written about their campaigns and military decision making, however we know much less about the men themselves – their private thoughts, personal relationships, and ability to cope with the pressures of command.

This presentation is based on four of Germany's leading panzer commanders in 1941 and draws upon their private wartime correspondence to reconstruct who were the German panzer commanders behind the scenes? What motivated them and what accounted for (or undermined) their success?

The research is based on David’s recent book: Hitler's Panzer Generals: Guderian, Hoepner, Reinhardt, and Schmidt Unguarded (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).

Speaker – David Stahel

David Stahel is an Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales in Canberra and teaches for the Australia Defence Force Academy. He is the author of numerous books about German operations on the Eastern Front during the Second World War, but has also written about the Wehrmacht's wartime criminality, the German army as a social institution and the politics of the German alliance system.