Mark Urban

But many of their tanks...

during that pivotal battle of May 1940, don't have radios at all.

And the Germans exploit superior doctrine, this idea of going right the way through the depth of the enemy with Stukas and artillery and then tank attack, so-called Blitzkrieg.

All of that develops and delivers the most terrible shock to all the militaries of the world who've just seen the French army, you know, in all its might, defeated in the matter of, what, three weeks.

and the Germans getting to the Channel in even less than that.

So yes, that causes this huge wave of shock and this huge reflection among those who, up until that point, have been a bit blind as to what the actual value of armoured forces was, to think, well, we'd better get some in a hurry.

And that's when the Americans start trying, for example, to quickly put right the mistake they made at the end of the First World War of disbanding their tank corps.

Well, it's certainly up there, isn't it?

It's in the top three.

A lot of people point out that the German army in 1940, or even the one that went into Russia the following year, was largely unmechanized, that 90% of the divisions, infantry divisions, relied on horses.

A lot of the artillery was pulled by horses.

And it was still, in that sense...

only a small minority of the German divisions that were panzer divisions, armoured divisions.

But of course, in a way, that underlines the point that what the Germans were doing in adhering to the principles of the great theorist Clausewitz was concentrating at the key point with this armoured reserve, this precious number of panzer divisions that they had, and achieving breakthrough and then exploiting it and, as it were, keeping on moving as fast as they could to exploit the disarray of the enemy.

And so, yes, they may only have had 10% of their divisions motorized or armored.

But boy, did they understand how to use them effectively.

There are some other moments.

You mentioned the 1967 war in the Middle East, which is a sort of bittersweet victory.

It's incredibly quick.

It's incredibly effective.