[jltsiren]

The speed of logistics is more important than the speed of combat troops. Tanks can go behind enemy lines, but only for a short while. If they don't return, they will quickly run out of fuel and become vulnerable.

Genghis Khan would have laughed at the slow German Blitzkrieg.

[ethbr1]

Genghis had the advantage that his tanks ate grass, and grass grew everywhere the Mongols decided to conquer.

That said, they still specifically timed their campaign cycles around the availability of forage in the country to be attacked.

[brazzy]

> Genghis had the advantage that his tanks ate grass, and grass grew everywhere the Mongols decided to conquer.

More like: wherever you didn't have abundant grass, Mongol armies essentially couldn't go, or at least lost so much advantage that they usually chose not to.

On a related point: the southern half of Ukraine has some of the best soil in the world for agriculture, yet for centuries it was very thinly populated and called the "Wild Fields", because it's naturally steppe and living there put you in reach of the Crimean Tartars, descendants of the Mongols who also used the same tactics for devastating raids. Further north, where the land was covered in forest, they did not go.

> That said, they still specifically timed their campaign cycles around the availability of forage in the country to be attacked.

Everyone did that (had to) back then.

[jltsiren]

And his soldiers could eat tanks, if necessary.

A Mongol army could have reached Paris in 2-3 days, because their troops could operate without support for a while. WW2 Germany still relied largely on horse-drawn carts for logistics, and its armies could not advance substantially faster than a Roman legion.