Illustrated throughout and featuring new historical data, an expert study of the tanks that fought the Poland campaign in 1939, and their combat performance. The opening campaign of World War II saw the first full-scale armored clashes between modern European armies. However, the clash was less one-sided than many believe. In this book, world armor expert Steven J. Zaloga presents a fresh analysis of the tanks of the German and Polish armies during the 1939 invasion, drawing on and presenting combat data from untapped archival accounts. He explains how the technical disparity between the two sides was not as great as generally assumed, and the victory of the Panzers relied more on their three-to-one numerical superiority. Germany was still behind its goals in fielding its modern PzKpfw III and PzKpfw IV tanks and so depended on the weaker and more poorly armed PzKpfw I and PzKpw II tanks. Although the bulk of Polish tanks were the obsolete TK and TKS tankettes, Poland had about 200 of the modern 7TP light tank, armed with a powerful Swedish Bofors 37mm gun.

Packed with historical photos from little-known archives, and superb original profiles of the tanks involved, this is a concise study of the reality of tank warfare in the first shots of the war.