The Great Offensive 1922: Prelude to Blitzkrieg

The Turks achieved a decisive victory over the Greeks in 1922. Despite the remarkable triumph, the tactical lessons that should have been learned from this victory were mostly ignored. The Turks won the Greek-Turkish War using the new German breakthrough tactics that had been developed during the First World War and unsuccessfully put into use in the Spring Offensives of 1918. Despite their defeat, the Germans never abandoned this concept and further developed it during the interwar era; it eventually became known as Blitzkrieg during the Second World War. Since both German operations in the Second World War and Turkey’s 1922 campaign were based on the same tactical fundamentals, the Great Offensive against Greece resembles the German operations two decades later, especially the Battle of France in 1940.