this tank chats going to be about the German Panzer one tank here at the Tank
Museum we don't actually have an example of the turreted version of the panzer
one the classic German tank of the inter-war periods but what we do have is this
version here which is the command variant and we'll talk about that in a
little bit so why the Panzer 1 Germany is forbidden
to build tanks because of the Versailles peace treaty after the first world war
and it is limited to an army of a hundred thousand men and about four
thousand officers Germany has lost militarily it's lost the First World War
and one of the things that German military have is a in a way they've got
that advantage of a blank sheet of paper if they reconstruct they're going to
have to start with the onus on whatever we did before failed whereas if you look
at the other European armies in the 1920s 1930s the French in particular
they look back to the first world war with a view that look our methodology
must have been right because we won in the end and if you look at that period
in the 20s and 30s for the German military what we really see is a
defeated army looking at why it was defeated and coming up with new doctrine
equipment and tactics including of course the tank and that they're going
to use through to tremendously good effect for the German military in 1939
and 1940 those early victories so what causes that would amazing change in
their fortunes now one of the figures we have to look at is the what becomes the
he becomes a commander of the German forces the commander-in-chief of the
army hands von sect and he is put in charge of the German military in 1920
he's actually at Versailles peace treaty in 1919 as the German military
representative and as early as February of 1919 he is starting to send out
discussion papers in the military about how they want to go
forward in reforming what becomes the Reichswehr or the German army now that
force and that he's put in charge of he absolutely molds it along the lines of
what he wants it to be and gives it a direction and a sense of inquiry and
that is quite outstanding so he first of all he can make sure that all the
officers they can at least look after a position about two grades above what
they're serving in at the time he makes sure they're all at graduate level and
he starts he's not allowed to general staff but he starts saw the forum of
senior officers where they actually write papers they challenge orthodoxy
and he builds on the Prussian military German tradition of being able to look
back and study battles in the past to learn for the future so they ruthlessly
analyzed what the German military did in World War one to learn lessons there is
none of this what the Nazis later come up with a stab in the back fear of the
theory the German military are absolutely adamant they lost militarily
and therefore what are they going to do about it
so discussion papers are formed and the other big thing that happens with the
German military they again build on this tradition of being able to test their
theories with war games and exercise they've been doing that for the last
hundred years so again von Seeckt puts that forward as
if we've got an idea let's test it and see if it's actually got validity will
it work in the field can we do things with this now one of the key things that
von Seeckt imbues this new German military with is his experiences in
World War one which were not on the western front but on the eastern front
fighting the Russians and he's really keen on mobility and therefore he sees
the potential of the tank and he is pushing the idea of mobile maneuver
warfare using motorized forces he sees that as a
potential way forward for the German military and one of his early problems
is trying to get the German army after the experience of
one out of that trench meant alert mentality and the siege warfare sort of
way of going about things now as early as 1926 the German military are
experimenting on their exercises about how they might use tanks of course they
haven't got any real tanks hence we see the pictures of dummy tanks cars made up
to look like tanks and they start a discussion going and a body of work
emerges very early in the 1920s about how the Germans might be using armoured
vehicles such as a tank in the future now in the background we know as well
that the Germans are looking after the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922 they're
looking to work with the Russians about experimenting they start the kleiner
tractor in the gross tractor two codewords
small and large tractor to start building tanks secretly in Germany
they're shipped out to Kazan in Russia 1928 they're driving around they're
starting to pick up on the lessons about how we might manufacture tanks how they
might be used in the future and of course when Hitler comes to power in
1933 he gives the German military the money the opportunity to actually then
almost expand and enact some of these ideas they've been having in terms of
what they would like to build they've been doing these experimentations in
secret this allows them then to go forward with the proper building program
that then leads in the mid 1930s and the development in the building of the
Panzer divisions and again we often associate Guderian with that
Guderian even though in his memoirs he's kind of claiming credit trying to sort
of say I'm always been struggling against higher authority that's not
particularly bothered about tanks etc actually that's just wrong that's him
just sort of digging up his own role in in the affair yes he's very important in
the mid-1930s but he's actually building on a lot of experimentation and good
thought that has been going on in the German military from much earlier days
so they look at a program of being able to build tanks and as we know we've
discussed already on our Panzer 3 tank chat they look at building a tank
is going to be equivalent really of a cruiser tank and a support tank with a
75 millimeter gun on so we're really talking there about Panzer 3 and panzer
4 but almost instantaneously with that program they realize they need some
tanks to get going on quicker so the German military can start seriously
training and expanding its forces hence the need for a Panzer 1 now already in
1932 the Germans under a coat cover have actually brought into the UK three
carden loyd carriers they look at those as thinking here's the basis for a small
light vehicle they could start building and again in the German system under the
Waffen and what they do is they go out this time to five different companies to
say here's a specification we want about a five tonne tain two-man crew what can
you come up with in a time scale that is ridiculously short and they go to those
five companies they've got crap they've got daemon of Benz they've got RIE
Mattel they've got Hinkle I always forget one I'll come back to it
but what ends up happening is crap is the winner they are the one that takes
the idea forward and it goes under a code word or code letters la s basically
basically they're calling that again a light tractor they're building now that
vehicle it comes out the first prototype in January of 1934 it goes into
production in July of 1934 so this is a very again very quick time scale and we
often call them as an inter in tank or as a training vehicle actually the
Germans they build the first hundred and fifty without just the classes without
any covers on the top open vehicle they are definitely training tanks but the
truth is the rest of the Panther one production and it mounts up to about
1800 vehicles they are built with not just the idea of changing training the
German military but also with the idea that should combat come these will be
effective on the battlefield hence they are given on the plate that is proper
armor plate is not just mild steel so these are vehicles that are also being
built the idea that fighting might occur and
again from the late 20s or actually mid twenties really Germany one of its first
enemies it was looking at that could potentially have war with his Poland of
course and so when we look back and we see these Panzer one's looking rather
thinly armored they've only end up with two machine guns they don't look that
powerful a vehicle but actually in the period that they're being designed and
built a lot of other countries have just machine gun arm tanks and really the
Panzer 1 would be would fit in perfectly with that period it is not sort of some
sort of aberration as if they're they're not thinking forward enough they're
being sensible because they need to train the troops they need something
that could walk um they can use but meanwhile production of the Panzer 3 and
panzer 4 even though compared to two modern days it's a very quick production
schedule design and production at the time the Germans are jumping up and down
modding tanks to get in the newly spending Army's hands and of course from
the mid thirties these new Panzer divisions how can we use those vehicles
or how can we train about using a Panzer Division if we don't actually have any
kit to actually experiment or train with so they're an important vehicle an
armament 2 mg 13 7.92 millimeter machine guns in a small turret designed by crop
it's only going to have a two-man crew so commander in the turret driver in the
front and the first model of the alpha a or the mark 1 equivalent of the Panzer 1
that has an engine that's designed by crop it's an air-cooled engine it's
about 60 horsepower very quickly they realize that this after about 300
vehicles they build in the outside model they realize that engine is not up to it
now they're looking at building a command tank that they know is already
going to need more power because of the nature of what it's going to be built
like so they then look at putting a new version of the parents of one together
which is about just over a foot longer and this time they also get a Maybach
engine that can give it about a hundred horsepower and the rest of the
production of panzer ones is this alfe be
which is slightly longer and in making it longer as well with this new engine
that they are housing they give it five road wheels as opposed to the four road
wheels that are on the earlier alfaye now that pans that see service in the
Spanish Civil War all the countries that sent Spain obviously was a testing
ground for Russian and German vehicles the reports on the tanks and not
particularly good but that doesn't particularly worried the Germans because
again from their point of view a bit like the Soviets when their tea tanks
were being used in the Middle East they didn't see the tanks being used in the
way that they thought they would be used in a major conflict and it comes back to
as well that idea what were they really thinking these tanks are going to be
useful get back to von Seeckt he's got that idea of mobile warfare that he's
been promoting and pushing and he's again when even when he's left the
military his influence is still there 1932 they do one of their exercises of
German maneuvers and again they're looking at how could we integrate
perhaps the cavalry and armored cars together and at the end of that exercise
even though it's been a sort of a pet project of van sequent it before he'd
left the military actually at the end of that exercise they realized straight
away there is no way that horses can keep up with armored cars on the open
road just like the British realized in 1918
so that exercise ends up saying goodbye to that as a program even though the
French the Americans carry on trialing this you know using horses and armored
cars together because again the Germans being very objective about this and it
also tells the German cavalry they then realize their horses are so vulnerable
on a modern battlefield they actually embrace motorisation and
mick mechanization in a way that again is quite salutary they are not trying to
hang on to their horses they are going forward and again that influence going
into the Panzer divisions that they're looking there in the mid-1930s how can
we use what we hope is going to be the pans of threes and fours coming into
production but these pans are one tanks and then
Panza two tanks into a mobile force that has support with it
engineers supplies that would go forward with it to be able to not only break
through but continue a battle into the enemy's rear areas and keep that sense
as Vaughn sect has been saying all along the time of mobility and maneuver back
on the battlefield now our particular vehicle we've got
here is a result of some of that thinking which is if you are going to
have tanks like the panzer one you need to be able to control them on the
battlefield so again very early on the Germans are saying we need receivers or
radios in those tanks so they put the food to receiver in all of the panzer
ones the problem there is the commander cannot actually send radio signals he's
got to get out the tank and go to a different type of vehicle quite often
unarmored or lighter and to actually send if he wants to go back and send
messages to headquarters or command centers so again very early in the
process in 35 the Germans start looking at a panzer one and thinking how white
might we adapt it into a command variant so the commander doesn't have to leave
the battlefield and can continue sending messages not only out to the rest of his
whether it's a platoon or battalion or even a whole regiment of tanks how can
he also report back to higher headquarters so they look at getting
some of they end up with about six of the al sayi tanks they build up at
Daimler Benz a structure on the top and where the charities they almost the same
sort of turret size they put a little extra coppola on the top top and the
idea being that inside that structure a commander a radio operator and a driver
can fit and you not only have the fu - you also have the fu six so he can
actually send messages as well as receiving them and their spacing their
format boards now the first six look fairly crude some of them when they're
actually put together don't actually have and they were going to put a
machine gun ball mount on the front plate some of them
the ball mounts weren't ready so they were plated over but they liked the idea
of this and then they go on to actually producing about a hundred and eighty of
these what they call kleiner or small Panzer befell wagon or command vehicles
they make about a hundred eighty of them on the owl species and again different
manufacturers make the basic chassis its deign the Benz that puts it all together
on the top there now these vehicles they're used in a Panzer Division you
ended up with about twenty four of them so you've got right down from platoon to
battalion so the company and then battalion level sometimes regimental
level and certain other units were given these vehicles as well because if you're
trying to keep up with the main armored force and being controlled you need some
sort of protection now they're used in the Spanish Civil War a couple of them
go out there they use mainly in Poland where again the German tank forces learn
a lot of lessons they also suffer a lot of losses and one of the problems they
find is a very thin about thirteen millimeter
armor protection so they add another fifteen millimeters of cut-out armor
plate on to the front before the invasion of France in 1940 there's about
90 of these command vehicles are available to the German forces then and
they are already as a word client a small command vehicle already the
Germans are looking that basically most models of tanks they're making they're
going to develop some sort of command variant in the production run so their
lifespan is relatively short in the Second World War some are later
converted just like the pans one tanks actually are to carry assault guns some
created into almost ambulance vehicles all sorts of things are done because
again the Germans will quite happily reuse a chassis but these are their
actual life in the front line starts trailing off pretty quickly from 1941
although you will still see them being used sometimes by policing units and
sometimes as training vehicles but they are the first
the idea of putting that command variant that's the first one that the Germans
are doing and it leads again just as a plan to one is that first tank that
leads to so many things in the German military and how they're going to use
armor in the Second World War our particular command tank here was
actually sent out to Tripoli North Africa in March of 1941 and it ends up
with the fifth Panzer Division v panther regiment 1st as well be fighting there
it's captured by the British and we can see on it it's got that extra armor
plate and on the side you can actually see some Battle Damage where whether
it's 2 pounder rounds we're not too sure has actually penetrated that thinner 13
millimeter armor so this as an example that we've got here small vehicle but
it's representative of that amazing transformation that the Germans make in
the 20s and the 30s leading to those quite astounding victories that
astonishes of Western certainly early on as well Soviet Union using panzer forces
but with the ideas that have been developed starting just right after the
first world war
as ever with these tank chats we're only doing them because you're supporting us
so can I thank those of you who have joined our patreon scheme oil are
supporting the Tank Museum in one way or another as an independent charity we
just can't continue doing the activities we do unless we get public support so
please if there's any way you can support us patreon is the obvious one -
we encourage people to go for please do and we hope you do still continue to
enjoy these tank chats we're making