Beskrivning
It was just under seventy years ago, after the outbreak of World War I, that the tank made its first appearance on the battlefield. It did so in an effort to break the deadlock of trench warfare in France, which had been brought about by the advent of the machine gun, the magazine rifle and the quickfiring artillery gun. It did not immediately succeed in doing this, for the first tanks were too primitive in design. However, the seeds were sown, and by November 1918, when World War I ended, the potential of the tank had been realized. The era of Blitzkrieg During the next twenty years many nations experimented with tanks, but it was only the Germans who really appreciated the effect that they could have, if properly handled. The result was their Blitzkrieg or ’lightning war’ campaigns of 1939-42 which changed the face of Europe.
