Panzer Leader () is an autobiography by German General Heinz Guderian, written during his imprisonment by the Allies after the Second World War.
The most prominent English language version is the 1952 translation by Constantine Fitzgibbon published in the United Kingdom by Michael Joseph and the United States by E. P. Dutton, with a foreword by B. H. Liddell Hart. The Da Capo Press editions have an additional introduction by Kenneth Macksey. Panzer Leader and its subsequent editions sold over 180,000 copies worldwide by the 1970s. It eventually reached its 18th printing in Germany in 2003. The most prominent themes discussed by Guderian are his involvement in the creation of Germany's armoured forces in the 1930s and subsequent operations on the Eastern Front. The topics discussed by Guderian in Panzer Leader include: Guderian's time as Acting Chief of General Staff in the German Army High Command (from July 1944 to March 1945) was also documented where he worked to prevent a total collapse of the Eastern Front, lamenting the fact that the front was "tottering on the edge of an abyss". Guderian also wrote comments on several of the co-conspirators of the plot: he reprimanded Dr Carl Friedrich Goerdeler for his "security carelessness"; referred to Generalfeldmarschall Erwin von Witzleben as "a sick man"; criticised Generals Ludwig Beck, Erich Hoepner and Friedrich Olbricht on their inability to properly organise and cope with the "special circumstances"; and remained ambivalent in his views of General Friedrich Fromm and the "impulsive" Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. In doing so, original Wehrmacht sources were closed off to the public and only made accessible to American researchers and German generals in hopes of restricting German military knowledge only for the United States. It would be in the 1960s when the original sources were released to the German federal archives for public use that publications of alternative perspectives to the idea of the 'clean Wehrmacht' could be made, first in Germany then overseas. One review written by U.S. Marine Corps Colonel Theodore L. Gatchel in 1983 praised Panzer Leader as one of the few books written by former Wehrmacht generals that offered the best insights to the functioning of the German army during the war. This growing scepticism was fuelled by the increasing availability and access to English-translated historical sources on the foundations of Germany's armoured forces, and the exposure of prominent British army captain and military historian B. H. Liddell Hart's manipulation of historical recounts of military debates – including the writing of Panzer Leader. Other critiques of Guderian's legacy presented in Panzer Leader involved questioning the absence or sidelining of Guderian's close relationship with Hitler and his role in the Nazi regime – such as accepting large sums of bribes from Hitler to ensure loyalty.