“The aim, as would have been understood by the great nineteenth-century Prussian generals, such as von Moltke, was to encircle and physically annihilate the enemy in a kesselschlacht (cauldron battle) and through this achieve a vernichtungsschlacht (the annihilation of the enemy’s armed forces through a single crushing blow). Blitzkrieg, therefore, presented Hitler with the means for a swift, efficient and decisive military victory, which avoided the protracted, bloody and resource-sapping fighting that he had experienced during the Great War.”