Prussia could not afford to fight long, protracted wars against such enemies-it simply did not have the resources or staying power to do so. From the days of Frederick William, the Prussians have had to contend with enemies who both came from all sides because of Prussia’s central location, but who were also better endowed with workforce and economic resources. Robert Citino has been the most responsible for theorizing the existence of a “German Way of War.” According to Citino, the origins of Germany’s military-style came out of the particular strategic position of Germany’s founding state: the Kingdom of Prussia. Second, the tactics of maneuver and speed in warfare were not an interwar discovery by the Germans but were a reversion to traditional German/Prussian war styles. The term “blitzkrieg” appeared only rarely in official Wehrmacht literature before or during the war, and the term seems to have much more popular with foreign journalists. First, a formal and established doctrine of blitzkrieg probably did not exist in the German military. While the German military was indeed concerned with speed and maneuver in warfare, it is probably not true that their fighting style was either doctrinaire or even new. The historical reality was somewhat more complicated. The Germans were the only ones to find the “correct” way to use tanks and aircraft and created a strategy or tactic that enabled them to win wars quickly and cheaply. Blitzkrieg's simplified view also assumes it was a new tactic, one that arose out of the stalemate of trench warfare during World War I. Keegan’s reductivist definition of the term encompasses most of the popular stereotypes of blitzkrieg: speed, aggression, and the massed use of armored fighting vehicles, specifically tanks. “ essentially a doctrine of attack on a narrow front by concentrated armor, trained to drive forward through the gap it forced without concern for its flanks…" The early German successes have long been closely associated with the catch-all (and catchy) blitzkrieg term-the “lightning war.” What was blitzkrieg? John Keegan’s definition of it is fairly representative of the popular conception of the German war-making style:
Blitzkrieg - History Learning Site How is Blitzkrieg or "Lightning War" defined?
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