Blitzkrieg. Now this word is probably familiar to everyone. Short, like a shot, loud, like the click of a bullet on armor, clanging like tank tracks - at the beginning of World War II it terrified all of Europe. “Lightning war!..” Crushing blows of German tank wedges, rapid tank raids behind enemy lines, grandiose “cauldrons”, columns of thousands of prisoners. Burning Warsaw, the roads of France clogged with refugees, Russian fields torn by caterpillars... This is a blitzkrieg. Winning strategy. A universal tool for maneuver warfare, which allowed the Wehrmacht to defeat any enemy. It seemed that the Panzerwaffe tank divisions could no longer be stopped. It seemed that they would reach the Urals, Iran, India - to the triumphant march of “Panzer voran!” (“Tanks, forward!”), under the slogan - “Victory follows in the footsteps of tanks!” It seemed so - until I found a scythe on a stone. Until the German panzers disappeared into the vast expanses of Russia. Until the Red Army stood in the way of Hitler's blitzkrieg... A new book by a leading military historian is an in-depth study of the strategy of the "lightning war", a story about the rise and fall of the German tank forces, about the grandiose triumphs and crushing collapse of the tank blitzkrieg.