The T-34 Was a War-Winning Tank

War is Boring ^ | November 21, 2014 | Paul Richard Huard

[C19fan]

On June 22, 1941, Nazi German launched Operation Barbarossa, a massive attack on the Soviet Union that was the largest invasion in history.

More than three million German soldiers, 150 divisions and 3,000 tanks comprised three mammoth army groups that created a front more than 1,800 miles long.

The Germans expected to face an inferior enemy—the Slavs whom Adolph Hitler called untermenschen. Giddy from victories in Poland and France, Hitler and many in his military high command believed it was the destiny of Germany to invade Russia. “The end of the Jewish domination in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state,” Hitler announced in his manifesto Mein Kampf.

[17th Miss Regt]

You have also touched on an important point here - producibility. The vehicles were fairly simple as tanks go and were suitable for mass production lines. Once the production lines were set up in the Urals area the production could proceed very quickly. Another issue was the human factor. The Soviets had to deal with a population that was not very mechanically oriented. Giving them a Panther or Tiger was a formula for failure. Tactical finesse? It took several years for them to develop it on a large scale (result of the purges). So they had fairly simple people (but lots of them) and fairly simple tanks (but lots of them) and fairly simple tactics for the first couple of years. It worked.

[dfwgator]

It’s like the German General said in the early days of Barbarossa as the Germans were quickly advancing. The Germans were the elephant and the Russians were ants, the elephant would kill millions of ants, but eventually the sheer number of ants would overcome the elephant and eat him down to the bone.

[17th Miss Regt]

but stepping back for a second, there was no way Germany would ever conquer such a large, mineral rich and populous country.

I disagree. They nearly did conquer it in 1941 and came close again in 1942. Stalin put out peace feelers more than once in the first two years.

[dfwgator]

The big mistake the Nazis made in Russia was not to divise a ‘Divide and Conquer’ strategy. Many even welcomed the Nazis originally as liberators, but the Nazi brutality towards them, made it virtually impossible to foster and meaningful Russian resistance to Stalin.

[17th Miss Regt]

The Soviet General Staff understood what they had to work with (diverse, ill-educated populace, disrupted industry) and managed to turn necessity into virtue. It was at the cost of about 1/4 of their population, but they did what they had to do to win.

[Fiji Hill]

"Uncle Sam did make them chew it, but so did Uncle Joe"

Stalin wasn't stallin!

[dfwgator]

And after the war, Stalin pretty much demoted most of that staff, including Zhukov. Because no one was allowed to show up Stalin.

[17th Miss Regt]

The civil policies they adopted were unwise, but they were a product of the world view of national socialism. The results were bound to cause opposition. The activities of the Einsatzgruppen made sure that opposition to Nazi rule would be very bitter.

[C. Edmund Wright]

I disagree they almost conquered it. Had they over run Stalingrad that first year, the war would have been different, but the Soviet Union would still have been a huge and resourceful and massive piece of ground with astonishing personnel and natural resources.

A minnow cannot swallow a whale. It just cannot happen. It was never going to happen.

[norton]

"The Soviet philosophy on the T-34 was make it with easily replaceable items such as turret, engine and crew."

So the only difference between Soviet philosophy / T34 and US philosophy / M4 was that Sov's used diesel rather than gasoline so that their tanks weren't apt to be referred go as "Ronsons".

To freedom; I once knew (served with) a Georgian who had been conscripted into the Red Army, captured and conscripted by SS, and quite happily went about fighting Soviets.
(If he'd written a book it would have been a blockbuster)

[smoky415]

exactly...sheer numbers won it for the Soviets.

one example cited-

On 7 July, SS Unterscharführer Franz Staudegger, commanding a Tiger tank, encountered a group of 50 T-34s. In the ensuing battle, Staudegger knocked out 22 T-34s. For his actions, he was awarded the Knight’s Cross (the first Tiger commander to be awarded such a medal).

[Oatka]

Another flaw was treating the locals as sub-humans when they initially welcomed the Germans as liberators. Had they armed them and proclaimed Ukraine as a liberated country there would have been much less resistance from them.

I read with some astonishment that as late as 1944, when everything was falling apart for Germany, they had Russians, Ukranians, et al STILL volunteering to fight the Communists. I understand that there were many German officers who promoted the use of these people but the Nazis were afraid of having so many of them under arms.

[Sidebar] My dad worked at a Seaman's YMCA during WWII and told us that the sailors were reporting these volunteers were trying to commit suicide in various ways upon learning they would be "repatriated" back to Russia. In our naivete, we thought it was because they didn't want to live under Communism, when in reality, they knew they were headed for the Gulags.

[rfreedom4u]

I had read that Soviet prisoners that we (USA) had liberated were being repatriated from New York. Upon hearing they were going back they rioted and started tearing apart the ship until they were told they wouldn’t go. They were then fed soup (drugged) and once they were all asleep they put to sea and were under guard the entire trip.

Politically we had to or else Stalin wouldn’t send ours back that the Soviets had freed.

[LS]

And consider this: in 1939, the US had one car for every 4.5 people. The Germans, one for every 37. I don't know what the stat was in the USSR, but I'm guessing it was one for every 10,000. In wartime, we immediately could ask recruits, "Who here can drive?" A hundred hands would go up. "Who can drive a tractor?" 50 would stay up.

But Germany had to build a driving school to TRAIN 165,000 drivers. Now, that doesn't take a terrifically long time, but it's one more impediment to getting people into the right places in combat, quickly.

[Chainmail]

I will differ, thank you. War is all about investment. You have to choose the best tactical and strategic paths and develop technologies to support those paths in parallel. We chose the M4 and even though it was easy to produce and reliable it was also a death trap for hundreds of good allied crews. It was too tall, so it was visible at great distances, the 75mm and the later 76mm guns were far less deadly than the German counterparts. We built hundreds and lost hundreds. Like our miserable torpedoes, we had the wrong people deciding our technological paths for our tanks, particularly since we had a wealth of experience by 1942 available for our use.

The Germans had an undeservedly vaunted reputation for their stuff too. They made stupid design decisions throughout the war. Both the Panther and the Tiger were maintenance nightmares and couldn’t go significant distances without replacing tracks, transmissions, or engines and sometimes all three. They did have fine optics, guns, and ammunition and good frontal armor but they were slow and few in number compared to us and the Soviets. They also had really funny excursions in wasting effort, like their monster siege guns and Porsche’s useless Elefant and Maus.

The T-34 on the other hand, was fast, had good cross-country mobility, reasonably well armored, had excellent guns, and was useful at all temperatures, unlike the Panther whose interleaved road wheels froze together on cold winter mornings.

Remember that the Germans lost, big time, at Kursk and every battle after thanks in part to the T-34 and the dang T-34 was still a problem for us at the Pusan perimeter in Korea, five years later.

You judge a technology on how well it performed its mission. In this case, it was an excellent design and an excellent balance of characteristics. And the silly Nazis lost..

[Chainmail]

I meant to copy you on my last Post but misspelled your name..!

[rjsimmon]

Remember that the Germans lost, big time, at Kursk and every battle after thanks in part to the T-34

The German loss at Kursk had nothing, Nothing, NOTHING to do with the T-34. They were simply out manned. Fielding 900k versus 1.9m Soviets. Germany had less than 3,000 tanks and the Russians had over 5,000. 10k Nazi guns to 25k Soviet guns.

Losses were 198k (KIA/WIA)on the German side compared to over 550k Russians (KIA/WIA). Germany lost 760 tanks to over 6000 Russian tanks.

The battle belonged to Germany for the first 2 days but lost on the 3rd due to massed Soviet forces. The Soviet KV-1 and the brilliance of Zhukov being the deciding factor on more than one occasion. Germans had a kill ration of upwards of 22 to 1. They simply could not sustain their salient.

Buy-in-large, the Germans defeated the Soviets until the Russians massed with their artillery and rifle companies. Typical tank-v-tank engagements ended like this:

[dfwgator]

Soviets lost 100,000 just taking Berlin.

[Chainmail]

We will have to disagree, I guess. The Germans lost because they vastly underestimated the Soviets, their leadership and their commitment.

It doesn’t make any difference at all if the Sovs lost more tanks than the Germans. The important part was that the Soviets knew their equipment and forces and the ground. The Germans started retreating from then on.

I can never fathom how we get so many Germanophiles on the FreeRepublic. The Germans lost because they made bad decisions and they had a corrupt cause. Nothing is better than when evil is defeated.

By the way, the KV-1 was a mediocre tank whose only claim to fame is massive armor. It was slow and difficult to maneuver and easily defeated in combat. Conversely, we had to develop new anti armor weapons when it was our turn to deal with the excellent T-34.

Other than comic books, what actual experience do you have with armor?

[rjsimmon]

Other than comic books, what actual experience do you have with armor?

Oh, only the fact that I commanded a Marine Corps tank Company. Co C, 4th Tank Bn, 4th MarDiv.

You?