The Kaiser’s Panzers

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. AUTHOR: Over the last twenty-five years, David Mitchelhill-Green has roamed the world in search of lost stories from the Second World War. His photographic investigations have featured in the British military magazine After the Battle. With a Masters degree in Military History, Davids extensive knowledge of the war has also appeared in numerous newspaper features and encyclopedia entries. Years spent in Japan culminated in the co-authoring of the book Castles of the Samurai, with Jennifer Mitchelhill in 2003. David lives in Melbourne, Australia. 200 illustrations