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Linguistically, I understand blitzkrieg as its literal translation - lightning war.
Operationally, I think you can reasonably apply it to almost any assault characterised by deeply penetrating armoured thrusts supported by all-arms coordination.
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I completely agree on both meanings, although I'd say 'deeply penetrating armoured thrusts' mustn't necessarily be armoured. I regard the Japanese expansion in Asia of 1941-1942 as the 'Eastern
Blitzkrieg', and even if armoured units were well-used, they did not play the decisive rôle. For that matter, we could count the Mongolian invasions of the Middle Age as true 'lighting' thrusts and battles.
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So by definition a Blitzkrieg is always successful?
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Not necessarily. The greatest of the German
Blitzkriegs was very successful in the beginning (the most successful of them all, in fact) but it failed miserably in the end, probably because the strategic objectives (or the lack of) didn't completely match with the
Blitzkrieg tactics.
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I tend to think of blitzkrieg as a strategic concept of using surprise and/or concentrated forces to relatively rapidly collapse the military and political resistance of an enemy nation, by deep maneuvers into the unprepared rear areas. The key concept for me is the fact that the country is to be utterly defeated by these maneuvers.
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I absolutely agree with this definition.
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I would not call Bagration (for example) a blitzkrieg as such, having a more reasonable operational success in mind rather than knocking the enemy out of the war.
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Maybe it could be a
Blitzschlacht perhaps? But I think that if we regard 'Operation Bagration' as a battle in which
Blitzkrieg tactics were the rule, then it is not only one of the greatest examples of
Blitzkrieg. It is in fact the perfect proof that the Red Army not only learned everything from the German
Blitzkrieg, but actually perfectioned it and overcame almost all its flaws.
In the case of Germany, its war machine was designed because and exclusively for
Blitzkrieg. It was its war-winning method and the only method available. But it was intended for short wars against inferior enemies. Germany could launch a too-agressive
Blitzkrieg which could defeat almost anything, but they couldn't launch successive
Blitzkriegs nor mantain one for too long. In 1943, 1944 and 1945 the Red Army completely overcame this and taught the Germans what a real
Blitzkrieg was.