Seldom in the history of military thought have such elaborate interpretive structures been built on a more limited foundation. The term blitzkrieg was in fact never used in the title of a German military manual or handbook. Nor is it to be widely found in the memoirs or correspondence of German generals. The word was used in the Wehrmacht during World War II but was commonly considered to be of foreign origin. Guderian wrote in Panzer Leader that “our enemies coined the word.” The first known use of the word blitzkrieg in an English publication occurred in an article in Time magazine in September 25, 1939, discussing the Polish campaign. From there the word came into general circulation as a shorthand description of a form of war that seemed to have no convenient existing frame of reference. From Western sources it expanded into German popular military literature, and from there into history. The transmission process was facilitated by the British theorists J. F. C. Fuller and Basil Liddell Hart, who insisted that their concepts of mobile war were fundamental to the German victories of 1939-1941.

In March 1943, the Krakow ghetto was being liquidated, and all the remaining Jews were being moved to the forced-labor camp of Plaszow, outside Krakow.  Schindler prevailed upon SS-Haupsturmführer Amon Goeth, the brutal camp commandant and a personal drinking companion, to allow him to set up a special sub-camp for his own Jewish workers at the factory site in Zablocie. There he was better able to keep the Jews under relatively tolerable conditions, augmenting their below-subsistence diet with food bought on the black market with his own money. The factory compound was declared out of bounds for the SS guards who kept watch over the sub-camp.
The British army took lessons from the successful infantry and artillery offensives on the Western Front in late 1918. To obtain the best co-operation between all arms, emphasis was placed on detailed planning, rigid control and adherence to orders. Mechanization of the army was considered a means to avoid mass casualties and indecisive nature of offensives, as part of a combined-arms theory of war.[35][36] The four editions of Field Service Regulations published after 1918 held that only combined-arms operations could create enough fire power to enable mobility on a battlefield. This theory of war also emphasized consolidation, recommending caution against overconfidence and ruthless exploitation.[37]

Overy wrote that blitzkrieg as a "coherent military and economic concept has proven a difficult strategy to defend in light of the evidence".[127] Milward's theory was contrary to Hitler's and German planners' intentions. The Germans, aware of the errors of the First World War, rejected the concept of organising its economy to fight only a short war. Therefore, focus was given to the development of armament in depth for a long war, instead of armament in breadth for a short war. Hitler claimed that relying on surprise alone was "criminal" and that "we have to prepare for a long war along with surprise attack". During the winter of 1939–40, Hitler demobilised many troops from the army to return as skilled workers to factories because the war would be decided by production, not a quick "Panzer operation".[128]
What the arms, whose charges can be partly traced in tithing seals and boundary stones back to the 16th century, mean is unclear. The charge that the German blazon describes as a “wall anchor” (Maueranker) is not accepted as such by everyone, with some saying it could have been meant to be taken as a weaver’s reel. With a document from 22 July 1926, the interior minister of the People's State of Hesse granted the community the right to bear these arms.
It has been argued that blitzkrieg was not new; the Germans did not invent something called blitzkrieg in the 1920s and 1930s.[109][151] Rather the German concept of wars of movement and concentrated force were seen in wars of Prussia and the German wars of unification. The first European general to introduce rapid movement, concentrated power and integrated military effort was Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus during the Thirty Years' War. The appearance of the aircraft and tank in the First World War, called an RMA, offered the German military a chance to get back to the traditional war of movement as practised by Moltke the Elder. The so-called "blitzkrieg campaigns" of 1939 – circa 1942, were well within that operational context.[109]