The Chieftain's Hatch: Truth as We Know It: Reprise

The_Chieftain:   OK, re-reading the book again, I think I know where this confusion is.   There are two meanings of 'Blitzrkieg'. We, in the English-speaking world, tend to view it at the operational and tactical level. The intense use of multiple arms in order to quickly break through and then emphasise a war of maneuver. In this, Frieser traces such tactics to WW1, and he's not really wrong. The other meaning, though, is at the operational/strategic level, where the objective is to have a war which is over and done very quickly. The lightning war in this context refers not to the maneuver or use of arms, but the fact that it is decided quickly. This was not the expectation of the German planners in 1940 and Frieser claims this led to the retro-active appelation of the phrase to the German operations after the fact.