Welcome to the first episode of the World War II podcast. My name is Angus Wallace and in the coming months I am to cover an eclectic mix of topics related to the Second World War. If you've not heard my name before, for the last nine years I've been co-producing the History Network.org

podcast, short or shortish essays in military history.

The Second World War has always fascinated me, especially growing up with stories

told to me first hand. My aim is to release one episode a month looking at a topic that I find

interesting and would like to know more about and hopefully you will too.

In this first episode I'll be looking at one of the iconic vehicles of the war, the German half track

the Schutzen-Pansavagun 251, designed by the German company Hanomag.

The advent of the tank during the First World War had created a new class of weapon, envisaged to smash the front line allowing the infantry

to rush through.

In a post-war world, it was seen as an infantry support weapon, often designed to go no

faster than the infantry.

Advocates of the tank, such as JFC Fuller

and Basil Liddle Hart, pushed for fast-moving armoured columns.

But it was Heinz Gedarian who brought much of this thinking together in his book

Achtung-Panza in 1937. He wrote,

Now that technology can put the infantry in the armoured escort vehicles which can move

every bit as fast as the tanks, it is the tank which

must determine the speed of the infantry.

The idea of an armored infantry vehicle was not new.

The British converted a number of tanks during the first war to provide armoured transport,

but in the post-war cutbacks the idea had been left to languish.

The Spanish Civil War had shown that in confined areas such as woodland or urban environments,

...