The Kaiser's Panzers

German Tanks of The First World War

David Mitchelhill-Green

• Publisher: Greenhill Books
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781805001805
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Geschichte

The Kaiser’s Panzers charts the development of German armoured vehicles during the First World War. Late to adopt the tank as an offensive weapon, in a theatre characterized by bloody trench warfare, the Imperial German Army’s fledgling tank force fielded only twenty A7V tanks by the time of the November 1918 Armistice. To address this shortcoming, the German Army pressed more captured British Mark IV tanks into service through a dedicated workshop facility in Belgium during the final year of the war. A handful of these vehicles later saw service in the Freikorps to suppress left-wing uprisings in Berlin and Leipzig.

Although German tanks played an insignificant part in the conflict, two early commanders rose to prominence in the Third Reich: Ernest Volckheim a leading interwar armour theorist and later Panzer commander; Josef ‘Sepp’ Dietrich a SS Panzer general implicated in the 1945 Malmedy massacre.

Drawing on contemporary records, newsreels and newspaper accounts, The Kaiser’s Panzers is a heavily illustrated record of Germany’s first tanks, the predecessor force to Adolf Hitler’s vaunted Panzertruppen, and will be enjoyed by all military history enthusiasts.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations, Conventions and Definitions
• Chapter One An Armoured Fighting Vehicle
• Chapter Two ‘This strange creature, with its steel hide . . .’
• Chapter Three ‘The enemy succeeded in achieving a surprise attack’
• Chapter Four ‘The finalising of a German model is highly urgent’
• Chapter Five A7V Sturmpanzerwagen at War
• Chapter Six ‘An armoured caterpillar carrying a 6-pounder gun . . .’
• Chapter Seven Mark IV Beutepanzer
• Chapter Eight Beutepanzerwagen at War
• Chapter Nine Post War
• Bibliography