Battleplan 01. Blitzkrieg (1 of 19)

Battleplan

Battleplan is a military-based television documentary series examing the various military strategies used in modern warfare, since World War I. It is shown on the Military Channel and UKTV History. Each episode looks at a particular military strategy (or "battleplan") used in warfare, through two well-know historical examples and compares them both with the military requirements needed in order to conduct that "Battleplan". All the episodes use examples from modern warfare, dating from the First World War (1914–18) up to the recent Iraq War (2003).

March 2003.
American mechanised forces slice through lraq, racing over 300 miles in 15 days to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein.

May 1940.
Hitler unleashes his Panzers in a similar Blitzkrieg against the Allies in Western Europe.
Blitzkrieg is German for ''lightning war''.
In Operation lraqi Freedom US forces went further, faster and more effectively than ever before.
The battleplan is Blitzkrieg.
March 2003.
American tanks race up the western flank of lraq.
The move is totally unexpected.
The lraqis think the main attack is to the east.
Just a week before, this campaign was merely a plan on paper.
But the Coalition battleplanners had little doubt about its outcome and none whatever about how it would be conducted.
This will be a campaign unlike any other in history.
A campaign characterised by shock, by surprise, by flexibility...
by the employment of precise munitions on a scale never before seen and by the application of overwhelming force.
General Tommy Franks is Supreme Commander of the Coalition forces in lraqi Freedom.
His battleplan incorporates the most modern military thinking, but it is based on methods pioneered by men like Germany's Heinz Guderian almost 60 years earlier.
Not surprisingly, because both men faced very similar challenges.