Armoured Forces

The German military developed tanks as early as World War One, but employed them only sporadically. Armour at that point in time could not yet be defined as an individual arm or service.

Tanks were first deployed by the British at Flers on the Somme in 1916. The British Army, though, had already established its own individual Royal Tank Corps. By the end of World War One the German military would also have a number of tanks in service, some of which had been captured.

Pre-World War Two

German Colonel General Heinz Guderian (1888-1954) is regarded as a pioneer in the development of modern armoured forces. He was a German army officer and commander of major armoured formations.

After World War One, Guderian undertook tactical ground work, realising that the massed use of tanks was more effective than their isolated employment as a weapon to support non-motorised infantry.

The organisation, equipment and operational doctrine of the newly formed tank divisions were geared to battle tanks being the primary weapon system. All other weapons in these major units were required to act in synergy with battle tanks. 

The military buildup in Nazi Germany enabled Guderian to implement his ideas relating to organisation and use of armour. These formed the basis for the blitzkrieg tactics adopted by the German Wehrmacht in World War Two. In other countries, however, officers with similar ideas, such as Charles de Gaulle in France or John Frederick Charles Fuller in Great Britain, found a less receptive audience.

Armoured core

Main battle tanks were a primary weapon during the Cold War, fielded in far greater numbers by NATO and Warsaw Pact forces than they are today. Soviet armoured forces in the late 1980s, for instance, encompassed around 29,000 main battle tanks and more than a million soldiers.

Post-Cold War, armour still constitutes the core of land forces in many armies, as well as their main weapon. There is, nevertheless, a noticeable trend among NATO military members toward lighter and more agile forces.

Rose pink as the arm-of-service colour

Unlike for many arms and services, the origin of rose pink as the arm-of-service colour is not definitively clear. One possible origin might be a mix of the colours as they used to be for the infantry (white) and the artillery (red), since both arms were closely associated with armour.

Originally, the term grenadier described infantrymen specially trained to throw grenades. The name Panzergrenadier was first adopted in World War Two to describe the infantry units in the Wehrmacht’s armoured divisions. The formation of motorised / armoured infantry units is ascribed to Colonel General Heinz Guderian, who is deemed to have had an instrumental role in the development of modern armoured forces.

Support for armour in combat

Guderian’s concept was to give armoured units every necessary support as they advanced. This included engineers, artillery, repair and maintenance services, and also infantry. For the Panzergrenadiere, he envisaged a special armoured vehicle, or infantry fighting vehicle, from which they would be able to fight, either mounted or dismounted.

Meadow green as arm-of-service colour

At the outset of the war the motorised / armoured infantry units, referred to as ‘rifles’ (Schützen) or ‘cavalry rifles’ (Kavallerie-Schützen), were assigned to the armoured and motorised divisions.

After the Polish campaign the motorised divisions were reorganised into armoured divisions, and all infantry units were referred to as rifles. In 1942 these were redesignated as armoured infantry (Panzergrenadiere). From then onwards their arm-of-service colour was meadow green.

Creation of the Bundeswehr in 1955

When the Bundeswehr was established in 1955, the Panzergrenadier forces were considered as infantry.

Lessons learned from World War Two and the need for the capability to conduct manoeuvre operations led to the decision to equip the majority of the armoured infantry battalions with fully mechanised combat vehicles.

From infantry to armoured forces

In the decades that followed, the armoured infantry forces were reorganised and restructured a number of times. The brigades under the new Army structure uniformly comprised two tank and two armoured infantry battalions each.

The Panzergrenadier forces were reassigned from infantry to armoured combat troops, and later as armoured forces. From 2012 onward, Army field units began to receive the Puma infantry fighting vehicle. This will in future replace one of the Army’s primary weapon systems, the Marder IFV.