Best Tank of 1940 (and Big Saturn What-If)

[MKSheppard]

Circa April 2007:

Which was arguably the best tank deployed by the major military powers at the onset of WWII in 1940? 1940 seemed to be a major breaking point for both tank development and tank tactics, with the paradox of military powers equipped with tanks that were technically the best, but not necessarily having the best collective tank forces on the battlefield (case in point France vs. Germany). But what was the best tank that saw combat in 1940, which tank had the best techinical innovations and which tank was the most successfully used?

Many many many posts saying "Panzer IV".

I thought it was equipped with a 75mm short barreled cannon firng mostly HE.

Oops, mild brain fart...

But it was true that the Panzer IV's initial 75 mm stubby cannon was not designed for taking out heavy armour, but it must've been good at demolishing buildings, pillboxes and earthworks (but it must've completely mashed up lots of soft French and British vehicles as well). But how would WWII be affected if the Germans had, in 1939, converted the Panzer IIIs into STuG assualt guns and upgraded the Panzer IVs with 75 mm KwK 40 cannons?

But how would WWII be affected if the Germans had, in 1939, converted the Panzer IIIs into STuG assualt guns and upgraded the Panzer IVs with 75 mm KwK 40 cannons?

It would be a bit of a job to do it in 1939 since the KwK-40 was only accepted for service in 1940 (that's what the 40 bit meant).

However, nit-picking aside, I don't think it would make much difference at all. Used as an anti-tank weapon, its pretty much overkill for the tanks that were around in 1939; using it marks the difference between blowing the target up and discombobulating it into tiny fragments.

It's arguable the change would have been counter-productive. Going from 37mm to 75mm would have meant a marked decrease in the number of rounds carried per tank without a comparable increase in the number of tanks killed by that load-out (on the grounds that pretty much any 1939 tank that's going to get killed by a 75 is going to be killed by a 37 and the exceptions aren't around in large numbers). However, going to a 75mm tank-killing main gun in 1939 could well have kicked off interest in more heavily armored allied tanks earlier so hastening the obsolescence of the German 37mm and 50mm tanks that otherwise remained viable up to 1941/42.

Also, there's a doctrinal problem. In the 1939/40 era, tanks weren't the tank-killing weapon, anti-tank guns were. The shift to the tank as the primary anti-tank system really comes in two or three years later.

A good argument could be made though that the decision to give the Pzkfw-III a 37mm gun (to standardize with the infantry anti-tank guns) was an error and the Germans should have stuck with the 50mm the Pzkfw-III was originally designed for.

Some of your points make sense, but the Russians were two or three years ahead of everybody else in terms of tank development anyway by bringing out the T-34 and KV-1 in 1941 with their sturdy, slopped armour and high velocity 75 mm AT cannons - the Germans were marching ahead of their tank development and were employing ground breaking tank tactics with tanks that were somewhat lacking, even in 1940. They used artillery like Flak 88s to destroy heavier enemy AFVs because it was part of their combined arms doctrine and they were (to be blunt) hiding the weakness of their own AFVs - if they had more Panzer IIIs with 50 mm guns and made the 75 mm cannon of the Panzer IV higher velocity and of longer calibre, then they would've used the Flak 88s much less.

The Panzer III not being fitted with a 50 mm AT cannon right away was down to the bean counters who wanted to streamline the production of 37 mm AT shells and not disrupt it by manufacturing other AT shell variants. Also late 1930s tank manfacturing seemed to be geared towards churning out the crappy Panzer Is and IIs with their Sparrow shooting popguns and papier-mâché’ armour, which points towards the tank manufacturing being a few years behind Nazi Germany's war aims and they were moving against their enemies a little too soon (although to be fair the early Panzer divisions used what they had very well).

Some of your points make sense, but the Russians were two or three years ahead of everybody else in terms of tank development anyway by bringing out the T-34 and KV-1 in 1941 with their sturdy, slopped armour and high velocity 75 mm AT cannons.

I wouldn't put the Russian lead at two or three years, probably half that, and the critical point is that nobody else knew about it. The T-34 and the KV-1 came as horrible surprises to the Germans in 1941. Also, the original T-34s had a 30 caliber 76.2 mm gun that was barely different form the short-barrelled 75mm in the early Pzkfw-IVs and that reduces the differential still further. If the details of the T-34 had been known in 1939/1940, the tank as it existed then, would have been regarded as just another tank with a short-barrelled, low-velocity gun for infantry support.

the Germans were marching ahead of their tank development and were employing ground breaking tank tactics with tanks that were somewhat lacking, even in 1940.

There's no doubt about the fact that German tactical doctrine was the key to their success in 1940; in 1941 the same factor lead them to be able to fight the later-model T34s. However, that doesn;t affect the issue of whether the Germans should have gone toa high-velocity, tank-killing 75mm in 1939. The question remains, given the threat profile that the Germans knew about in 1939, what does a 75mm tank-killing main gun give them that a 37mm or a 50mm doesn't? You said it yourself, the opposition tanks were equipped with popguns and papier-mache armor.

They used artillery like Flak 88s to destroy heavier enemy AFVs because it was part of their combined arms doctrine and they were (to be blunt) hiding the weakness of their own AFVs - if they had more Panzer IIIs with 50 mm guns and made the 75 mm cannon of the Panzer IV higher velocity and of longer calibre, then they would've used the Flak 88s much less.

Everybody did that, the doctrine wasn't unique to the Germans. It came out of the division in tank roles. There were infantry support tanks that were (relatively) heavily armored but slow and armed with large, low-velocity guns intended to take out pillboxes and machine gun nests and fast cruiser tanks that were fast and long range but had thin armor intended to infiltrate into enemy rear areas and spread alarm and despondancy. Combining both roles into the same tank required additional weight which wasn't acceptable to peacetime armies. So, the infantry needed to fight enemy infantry support tanks - and they got anti-tank guns suited for the job. that meant guns capable of knocking out said tanks but also ones that could move with and be handled by infantry. The 37mms around the world (the German 37, the British 2 pounder etc) all filled those requirements. They could knock out most tanks that were likely to be around yet were small and light enough to be manhandled. Remember, in this era, anti-tank rifles were still perfectly viable weapons. Cruiser tanks might be likely to run into other cruiser tanks so they needed to be gunned accordingly. They were not likely to run into infantry tanks.

What happened is that the British went to their next generation infantry support tank, the Matilda II, that had the two-pounder and was armored against two-pounder fire. That was pretty logical, in the absence of other data, one armors against one's own guns. The Matilda II was well-protected but agonizingly slow - it moved at less than walking pace. However, in the infantry support role, it made the 37mm obsolete. Hence the use of field guns and 88s as extemporized anti-tank guns (much as the British later used 25 pounders as anti-tank guns in the same situation)

The Panzer III not being fitted with a 50 mm AT cannon right away was down to the bean counters who wanted to streamline the production of 37 mm AT shells and not disrupt it by manufacturing other AT shell variants.

It's not beancounting, its operational analysis. A different thing. The way its done is this. One takes the threat profile, in the case of fighting other tanks, the tanks one is likely to be facing on the battlefield. Then, one takes a baseline and works out different options from that baseline. With tanks, the criteria for assessing main gun options is the number of kills per ammunition load-out. In the German case, their baseline was, logically enough, the 37mm. It was their standard anti-tank gun after all. Take the number of 37mm round the proposed tank could carry and divide that by the average number of shots per hit. That gives the number of tanks hit per ammunition loadout. Now, look at the threat profile and calculate the percentage of tanks that can't be killed by a 37mm hit and reduce the number of hits by that percentage and we have the number of enemy tanks killed by our proposed 37mm armed tank per ammunition loadout.

Now we take our next gun option, in this case a 50mm gun and repeat the process. The two key number changes are the number of rounds carried (the load-out) and the percentage of tanks in the threat profile that cannot be destroyed by the 50mm gun. Both numbers will be smaller (bigger rounds - fewer in same volume; more powerful gun, fewer tanks cannot be penetrated by it. The question is, how much smaller of each?) In the end we get another number of predicted kills per load-out.

Then we do the same with the 75mm and get a series of three numbers (four if we treat the 50mm L42 and the 50mm L60 separately). It is very far from a given that the largest gun gives us the largest number of kills per loadout. If the percentage of tanks in the threat profile that cannot be killed by a 37mm is very low (as it was in 1939), then the added kills from going to a 50mm or 75mm is not worth the reduction caused by the ammunition load-out reduction.

We had the same situation quite recently in US tank design. There was a lot of pressure to go to a new tank gun, a 140mm to replace the 120mm presently used by the M-1 Abrams. The above calculations were done and it was shown that the ammunition load-out from 40 rounds to 28 but the additonal percentage of enemy vehicles killed was negligible (if it could be killed by a 140, the 120 would kill it also, if it couldn't be killed by a 140, obviously a 120 wouldn't do the job either). So the 140mm tank gun was killed.

This is tough, of course, on the tank crews who run into the percentage of enemy targets they can't kill.

Also late 1930s tank manfacturing seemed to be geared towards churning out the crappy Panzer Is and IIs with their Sparrow shooting popguns and papier-mâché’ armour.

By now, it should be obvious that pop-guns amd papier-mache armor are intimately linked. If the enemy has papier-mache armor, the costs of going to a better anti-tank gun are questionable and the costs of jumping a generation are unsupportable. If the enemy has pop-guns, the costs of going to armor more than "enough" to stop his popgun are also unsupportable - why have four inches of armor if two will do the job? So, tanks tend to be in generations having roughly comparable - and proportional - armor and guns. By 1939, the standard was a 37mm/2 pounder pop-gun and armor to match. Going beyond that generation meant cranking vehicle size up and economic circumstances just didn't allow that to happen. When war broke out, all that changed.

which points towards the tank manufacturing being a few years behind Nazi Germany's war aims and they were moving against their enemies a little too soon (although to be fair the early Panzer divisions used what they had very well).

I'd disagree with that. It was the outbreak of war that kicked off the development of next-generation tanks that were designed to replace the papier-mache/pop-gun generation. Germany had done something very smart, their two basic tanks, Pzkfw-III and Pzkfw-IV had been designed so they could be easily upgraded. Other people hadn't. When the British went to the 57mm six-pounder and better armor, they had to deisgna completely new tank. The Germans just swapped out their 37s for 50s and replaced the frontal armor. That's good design. Then they messed the whole thing up by trying to jump a generation - its an old fallacy, lets work out what the next enemy generation will be and try to leap-frog it by producing the one beyond that. It sounds good, its never really worked.

Russian "lead"? Did I really hear "lead" when the new Russian tanks (T-34, KV) in the 1940 and 1941 struggled to have 150 motorhours of resource tops, and often having some 80-100 mhs - and that when other countries drove their tanks to over 200-300 motorhours resource?

The T-34 and the KV-1 came as horrible surprises to the Germans in 1941.

Actually only when the Germans (I mean the command staff) started failing their mass operations. Before that they met T-34 and KV but routinely killed them and only the frontline soldiers cared about Russians having those tanks. For example Guderian himself writes about first "problems" with KV and T-34 in late August IIRC - does that mean there were no "problems" with these tanks in June-July? No, just that the problems in the overall advance started getting big enough for Guderian to notice and that he decided to blame them on Russian newer machines. Who'd guess.

Russian "lead"? Did I really hear "lead" whenthe new Russian tanks (T-34, KV) in the 1940 and 1941 struggled to have 150 motorhours of resource tops, and often having some 80-100 mhs - and that when other countries drove their tanks to over 200-300 motorhours resource?

That was the problem with the Matilda I and Matilda II as well. Well-armored but horribly unreliable. Then we have the sad tale of the Covenanter, a tank whose reliability was so bad the British Army refused to send it into action. Built 1,771 of the things and they spend the whole war sitting in the UK.

I agree on the importance of maintainability; its one of the hidden factors of tank design. The Germans had their own spin on lousy maintenance though. Their engineers just wouldn't stop fiddling with the designs; there was virtually no effort to standardize parts. For example the level of commonality between the PzKfw IVF-1 and the PzKfw IVF-2 was around 40 percent. German spares depots had to stock large numbers of parts listed by vehicle number because of the need to match part to vehicle. (Erickson, Road to Stalingrad).

Actually only when the Germans (I mean the command staff) started failing their mass operations. Before that they met T-34 and KV but routinely killed them and only the frontline soldiers cared about Russians having those tanks. For example Guderian himself writes about first "problems" with KV and T-34 in late August IIRC - does that mean there were no "problems" with these tanks in June-July? No, just that the problems in the overall advance started getting big enough for Guderian to notice and that he decided to blame them on Russian newer machines. Who'd guess.

My impression was that the first T-34s and KV-1s didn't appear in the early days when the Germans were massacring obsolete tanks in the forward formations. Also, I'd guess it took some time for the news to trickle up from the front line and get believed. There'd be a lot of "The infantry are complaining there's a new tank out there that's hard to destroy!" "Yeah right, damned mudfeet, always whining about something."

It's an interesting angle though, that the T-34 and KV-1 were used by the German command as an alibi for their operational plans falling apart. It would certainly fit a well-established pattern. After all, they were the German General Staff, their plans couldn't possibly be wrong could they? No, it had to be the other side cheating by introducing a new super-weapon.

Another interesting thought, I wonder if that German's established use of enemy super-weapons as an excuse for screwed-up operational planning lead to their own fascination with such weapons?

Another interesting thought, I wonder if that German's established use of enemy super-weapons as an excuse for screwed-up operational planning lead to their own fascination with such weapons?

This is an interesting point. Germany, and I mean Hitler's immediate circle, later in the war, especially after the winter defeats, had some sort of a "mythical" view of the war, if you know what I mean, like htey were in some fairytale where morale+superweapons=win. They started sliding further and further from reality in their perception. Maybe they were compensating for the fact that "Barbarossa" was such an enormous failure, some sort of self-indocrination into ideas of a fairytale victory a-la 300 Spartans?

Oh, and the generals certainly had their illusions about the USSR, like Hitler. Halder wrote in his diary that "Russia will break like shattered glass". Given the fact that his predictions came true over the course of his diary for almost 2 years before that (Halder was a man with immense insight into the German war machine; I still read his diary and become amazed at how much they understood about military organization, but how little attention they paid to any "plan B" scenarios, i.e. if the operations take longer than planned). It was Halder who wrote "we have fuel till autmn, by then all operations will be over and I informed Hilter that we are ready" - proud, reckless, yet very smart when it came to organizing a battle force...

Must have been a huge moral downfall when things started slipping out of control. Reading the 1941 Winter notes is mildly satisfying - suddenly the oh-so-smart fascist general found himself unable to hold his promises to Hitler and _suddenly_ Hitler became a nuisance for him. Hitler solved that by removing Halder from the commander's post

You'd have to assume a connection between the German General Staff and the weapon designers who came up with all the paper designs. From what I understand, relationships between these two groups of people wern't that tight.

Franz Halder whom I wrote of just above, was the inspector-general of the armed forces of the Wehrmacht when relieved from duty as the land forces HQ commander. So I presume he was working rather tightly with car and armour manufacturers - in fact, he has been doing it even before and many of his notes are about Army-industry cooperation (or, rather, the inability of German industry to provide the needed resources for certain German plans, namely "Sea Lion")...

Stuart, I agree that the Panzer III and IV were both hugely successful AFVs if they could be greatly upgraded from their relatively modest pre-1941 armour/armaments specs and match up with most later enermy AFVs, plus the collective operational efficiency of the Panzers in their early campaigns was the factor in them outmanoeuvring most opposition tanks.

But it was still a notable mistake than the Panzer IIIs were fitted with 50 mm canons in time of the French campaign; while it's true that equiping tanks along operational analysis/beancounting lines makes sense in not wasting war resources, the 37 mm canon was almost obsolete as early as 1940 and proved to have unreliable stopping power against Somua S35s, Char B1s and Matlida IIs that all had well over four inches of armour, which is not exactly papier-mâché’, although Britain and France also fielded many lesser AFVs (like armoured cars or cruiser tanks) that the 37 mm or even 20 mm cannons could reliably knock out.

And mechanical reliability and decent crew ergonomics plays a siginificant part as well - the French Somua S35 and Char B1, despite their armour and weaponry being formidable by 1940 standards, they had totally appalling crew ergonomics with small turrets and questionable mechanical reliability (the Char B1 especially). Also the Somua S35 and Char B1 both dramatically got left behind in tank development, due to their rounded cast iron hulls and aforementioned small turret rings.

And Stas Bush has mentioned that the entrance of the KV-1 and early T-34 was blunted due to their early mechanical reliability and bad ergonomics (but ergonomics not as bad as the French tanks), although they were a significant step ahead in terms of a sturdy armour and powerful gun balanced together in a decent tank design; even the T-26 and BT tanks were already ahead of contemporary tank design with their 45 mm cannons (although the T-26s and BT-7s were decimated in astonishing numbers during Operation Barbarossa).

But it was still a notable mistake than the Panzer IIIs were fitted with 50 mm canons in time of the French campaign; while it's true that equiping tanks along operational analysis/beancounting lines makes sense in not wasting war resources, the 37 mm canon was almost obsolete as early as 1940 and proved to have unreliable stopping power against Somua S35s, Char B1s and Matlida IIs that all had well over four inches of armour, which is not exactly papier-mâché’, although Britain and France also fielded many lesser AFVs (like armoured cars or cruiser tanks) that the 37 mm or even 20 mm cannons could reliably knock out.

The S35 has 47mm max, the M Char B1bis 60mm max. Only the Matilda II gets over even three inches, with 78mm. Four inch armor is on line with that the Tiger had.

All three tanks however had very thick side armor in comparison to the frontal thickness, which meant that even waiting in ambush with a 37mm gun was not very effective. This was also why the T-34 was so good. On the basic models used in 1941 the frontal armor was only 45mm, not very impressive, but the side turret and hull armor was also 45mm. Later models increased frontal armor to 70mm, which is still less then the peak armor on a Sherman.

But it was still a notable mistake than the Panzer IIIs were fitted with 50 mm canons in time of the French campaign; while it's true that equiping tanks along operational analysis/beancounting lines makes sense in not wasting war resources, the 37 mm canon was almost obsolete as early as 1940 and proved to have unreliable stopping power against Somua S35s, Char B1s and Matlida IIs that all had well over four inches of armour

The Char B1bis had 60mm frontal armor (2.38 inches) and the Somua S35 had 47mm (1.86 inches).

Now, the 37mm L45 had an armor penetration of 64mm at 100 meters and 31mm at 500 meters. This means it could penetrate both tanks at less than 100 meters but was ineffective against both at 500 meters.

The 50mm L42 could penetrate 53mm at 100 meters and 43mm at 500 meters. This would mean it could penetrate the Somua S-35 up to 100 meters but not the Char B1. It could penetrate neither tank at 500 meters.

In other words, the 50mm L42 is actually less effective against those two specific opponents than the 37mm L45. Where the 50mm would score is that it's penetration drops off less sharply than the 37mm (logical) and it has a longer effective range. Now, the question is, given the fire control arrangements on that type of tank, just how operationally meaningful is that extra range compared with the reduced ammunition load.

I tend to think the ultimate example of German thinking and inefficiency is the thousand and one different self-propelled gun combinations they designed out of captured French tanks. Many of these combinations had production runs of literally a dozen vehicles, and yet took the same kind of resources that designing and prototyping a whole new version of a Panzer IV or Stug III would have taken. The maintenance problems of such unique vehicles spread across Europe can only be imagined.

As an example, the Panzerfeldhaubitz 10.5cm 18M auf Gw Char B (f) was a Char B rebuilt with a 105mm howitzer in a turret, the result being a 31 ton 16mph weapon which guzzled fuel. Production was 16 conversions. The 7.5cm Pak 40 auf Gw FCM (f) is another prime example, an FCM 36 light tank conversion with production totaling 10 with the prototype. Whats more even had the Germans had more resources to build the conversion, so few FCM 36s existed that they had armed only two French battalions to start with.

One thing I really don't get is the entire Panzer III and IV thing. I mean okay, you want a tank that's good for Anti tank and another one good for anti infantry; so why not simply make one chassis that is either an anti infantry tank or anti tank tank by changing out the turret instead of going with two completely different production lines (Pz III and IV)

OOC: This was almost 20 years ago; I know now what the reason behind the Pz III/IV in German Industrial Policy was:

The Pz III and IV were effectively the 1934~ and 1936~ tank competition winners; the overall idea was to develop the German industrial base by having two separate companies gain experience in building "heavy" tanks (compared to the Pz I/II); with an ultimate plan to maybe "unify" everything down the road; but two issues prevented this unification from happening:

A.) Hitler needed tanks and needed them NOW in the mid to late 1930s.

B.) In September 1939, the Iron Law of Mobilization (you use what you have in production) hit; and since the Pz III and IV were in production already, they got picked to be continued forward for mass production.

One thing I really don't get is the entire Panzer III and IV thing. I mean okay, you want a tank that's good for Anti tank and another one good for anti infantry; so why not simply make one chassis that is either an anti infantry tank or anti tank tank by changing out the turret instead of going with two completely different production lines (Pz III and IV)

Panzer III and Panzer IV were produced by different design teams and were competitive designs rather than complementary or successor designs. Everybody does that to some extent; the US has different engines in its F-15s and F-16s, the Chinese actually had two different design teams copying the Soviet P-15 anti-ship missile; they produced two different (and incompatible) weapons with virtually identical performance (neither quite as good as the original) and bought both.

The difference between the infantry support tank and the cruiser tank was a lot more than just the gun. The infantry tank had armor evenly spread around the hull, it had more armor and it was a lot slower, not just because of power limitations but because the suspension was designed to allow it to cross really messed-up ground (in Tunisia, Churchill infantry tanks proved capable of moving across ground that stopped Shermans cold). So, it was quite a different vehicle.

Where the Germans really moved ahead (conceptually) was to deisgn a general purpose tank that could execute both roles. They went for the "enough" solution. The PzKfw III and PzKfw IV were both "enough" tanks. They were fast enough, armored enough, gunned enough, had enough agility and enough range. They weren't as good infantry tanks as the infantry tanks but they were a lot better infantry tanks than cruiser tanks. They weren't as good cruiser tanks as the cruisers but they were a lot better cruiser tanks than infantry tanks.

Then they proceeded to make a complete pig's breakfast of the whole thing.

Why is an interesting question. Viewed on its face, Grazhdanin Stas's comment is perfectly correct; the German jump to the "supertank concept" was technically insane. What the Germans needed was another "enough" tank; something that was armored enough, fast enough, gunned enough etc to take on the T-34/85 and the 76mm gunned Sherman - and they needed to have lots of them Whether the PzKfw IV had enough stretch left in it to do the role, I don't know, I'm not a tank design specialist and I'd have to talk to the guys in the company who are. But that's what they needed.

What they got was the deadly "lets jump a generation" fallacy. The logic was, if we build an "enough" tank, it'll be answered by an enemy tank that is their "enough" tank. So we build our tank to face that next generation and we'll be OK in the long term and have a devastating advantage in the medium term. Of course, we'll have a problem in the short term but we can overcome that by upgrading what we have. Sounds very good, it never works.

The inherent problem with the whole idea is that jumping a generation means that all the design art is jumped as well (in aircraft terms, its like trying to build a P-51 in 1919, on paper it can be done, in reality, the "bits" needed just aren't there. I don't mean obvious things like the engines and so on, I mean non-obvious things like, how does one build the wings to the required level of uniformity? At 150mph it doesn't matter if the wings aren't uniform, at 400mph it matters a lot. At 700mph its super-duper ultra critical).

The Germans hit that problem with their generation-jumping tanks. They hit all sorts of problems that don't matter when building a 30-ton tank, they matter a lot when building a 45 ton tank and they are ultra-super-duper-critical when building a 70 ton tank. Simple question. How does one build torsion bars capable of taking the strain? Not an easy question to answer, there's a lot of design art there that's non-obvious. The metals needed for those torsion bars need specific alloying components (as a simple example, the composition of the steels used in modern tank torsion bars is highly classified) and those alloying components just weren't available. The Germans couldn't even make decent armor plate by 1944/45 and their armor-piercing shot was being flushed down the toilet quality-wise (no tungsten).

The question is, why did the Germans, who got it perfectly right in 1938-39 make a complete mess of it in 1942-43? Grazhdanin Stas and I are hypothesizing that the GGS were relying on the "enemy had a super-weapon" excuse to hide their truly terrible strategic planning and this created a brain-bug that lead them to demand super-weapons of their own. I'd never thought of that before this particular discussion started but the more I think on it, the more likely it seems to be a large part of the explanation.

Whether the PzKfw IV had enough stretch left in it to do the role, I don't know

I've spoken to a tank maker on the VIF. He's fairly certain that Germans needed to mass-produce the Pz. IV + Tiger later in the war instead of shifting over to experiments like the Panther. Why? Because the labour-costs for a mass-produced tank go down with mass - the T-34 production costs fell several times from 1941 to 1943, as an example, and the new medium tank was built on it's base.
Germans, on the other hand, just as soon as they got the KwK 40 L/48 on the Pz.IV, should've went for that + Tiger.

Why Tiger was justified, but the Panther was not? Simple, different roles. The Tiger, a heavy tank, is what tank leaders call "quality augmentation" (kachestvennoe usilenie), not merely quantity, but a specialized role - supplementing the brigades in heavy assaults, works perfectly as a tank killer against enemy counteraction. It was built in accordingly small numbers, so devoting these resources to construction of medium tanks would've not given a crucial quantity superiority, but would've cost the forces their specialized heavy warfare machine. The USSR also understood this, with the production of Is-2 - you can't fulfill _all_ roles with medium tanks.

The Panther, on the other hand, wasn't a new role - it was the same "medium battlehorse", but - 3 times more expensive in currency, and probably 5-6 times more in labour-costs (how much manhours you need to construct the tank) than a Pz.IV chassis - which had the same function. It was a lot more vulnerable to medium tanks, and it's firepower wasn't something the Pz.IV with KwK L/48 could not be used for.The Panther wasn't a dedicated tank killer which could also withstand heavy enemy assaults, it _died_ in those assaults a lot faster than "Tigers". And thus - a waste of very expensive and good guns on medium tank chassis. Someone needs to hack off the designer's head, mmkay...

The Germans could've built 3-4 Pz.IV with KwK L/48 (production started in 1943) for each Panther, if not more, taking into account the ready and running lines for Pz.IV production and the totally new and _very_ labour intensive Panther lines, not to say that they could've also increased their production of "Tigers" as the "quality augmentation"

NOTE: I've condensed out several sidetracks between me and Elfdart, I was in a bit of a feud with him at the time, and my posts effectively added nothing to the productive capacity of the conversation. Sorry Elfdart from 20 year older me.

But what really really harmed German production was that until 1942, they weren't even on a War Economy footing! They had factories still producing Grand Pianos for christ's sake! This was basically because the Nazi leadership were afraid of another 1918, and so chose to keep a significant fraction of the economy tied up into producing luxury goods, and various other things, that everyone else simply abandoned at the outbreak of war.

Minor correction: until 1943. But prior to 43, they tried to compensate their own leniency in mobilization by, well, plundering the rest of Europe for war material, resources and trophy machinery. Skoda, for example.

I also seem to recall that german war factories also basically operated on a peacetime shift basis until about 1942 as well

War factories on peacetime regime? This is interesting? Where's it from? How did the regime change in 1942-1943?

The Germans license produced everything as well.

The problem lie in the design stage, so the particular contractors who made the parts and pieces aren't that important. German contractors (and possibly the German higher staff working with them) were prone to arbitrary choosing an over-engineered advancement design, or even a totally new chassis... just because they felt like it. Considerations of labour-intensiveness of both production and maintenance generally flew out of the window. Why? I think the fact that you'd get paid enormous sums of money for both R&D and then new production kind of hindered the will of German companies to behave rationally.

Compare that to the USSR, where the key OKB projects were often rejected simply because they were too badly compatible with already existing production lines. Clearly, Germans lacked a more coherent oversight of their war industry.

Because the labour-costs for a mass-produced tank go down with mass - the T-34 production costs fell several times from 1941 to 1943, as an example, and the new medium tank was built on it's base. Germans, on the other hand, just as soon as they got the KwK 40 L/48 on the Pz.IV, should've went for that + Tiger.

We've had that in aircraft as well; one of the things in doing the economic work behind the TBOverse is the effect mass production had on aircraft costs and production times. That's why there's an iron rule of mobilization - when a country goes to war, it builds what it has, not what it would like. Disrupting the production lines to bring in a completely new type of equipment simply isn't worth the effort. (Hence not putting the T-44 into mass production until after the war). The only exceptions are where one is building entirely new factories or the equipment being replaced is so obsolete that it's no longer viable. Neither of those applied to the PzKfw IVH et seq.

Why Tiger was justified, but the Panther was not? Simple, different roles. The Tiger, a heavy tank, is what tank leaders call "quality augmentation" (kachestvennoe usilenie), not merely quantity, but a specialized role - supplementing the brigades in heavy assaults, works perfectly as a tank killer against enemy counteraction. It was built in accordingly small numbers, so devoting these resources to construction of medium tanks would've not given a crucial quantity superiority, but would've cost the forces their specialized heavy warfare machine. The USSR also understood this, with the production of Is-2 - you can't fulfill _all_ roles with medium tanks.

Perhaps the greatest criticism of the American tank program is that there wasn't a real heavy tank - we had to improvize one with the Sherman Jumbo. The problem we had was weight; we were thinking amphibious operations from a very early stage and that meant landing craft compatability. A 30-ton tank can be handled by a landing craft made of cheap, non-strategic materials (wood, junk steel etc), go much above 30 tons and we have to use proper shipbuilding steel which immediately impacts on other shipbuilding programs. even going to 32 tons for the 76mm gunned Shermans cost us a lot of problems.

The Panther, on the other hand, wasn't a new role - it was the same "medium battlehorse", but - 3 times more expensive in currency, and probably 5-6 times more in labour-costs (how much manhours you need to construct the tank) than a Pz.IV chassis - which had the same function. It was a lot more vulnerable to medium tanks, and it's firepower wasn't something the Pz.IV with KwK L/48 could not be used for.The Panther wasn't a dedicated tank killer which could also withstand heavy enemy assaults, it _died_ in those assaults a lot faster than "Tigers". And thus - a waste of very expensive and good guns on medium tank chassis. Someone needs to hack off the designer's head, mmkay.

I'd suggest starting with other bits of his anatomy but that's just me.

I guess the driver behind the Panther was the desire to get the 75mm L70 onto a tank chassis; I think that would be beyond a PzKfw-IV derivative. So really the question is, was the 75mm L70 really needed on a medium tank? What percentage of the threat profile could not be defeated by a 75mm L48? There's another factor that might crop in here. German steel quality was sinking fast from about late 1943 onwards as their supplies of alloying metals ran out. That meant their armor plate was gruesome (too hard, it splintered when hit even by shots that didn't penetrate) and the quality of their armor-piercing shot also went down the pan. Now, the question is, did that degrade the performance of the 75mm L48 so much that the 75mm L70 was necessary to restore the tank-killing potential?

Of course, that doesn't alter the insanity of the decision to build the Panther, IIRC that was taken in early 1942. The over-engineering of the design is another issue though. Its a basic principle of German design art never to use two tons of large parts when 26 tons of small parts will do the same job (just try stripping an HK-5 and comparing its internals with an AK-74!) That's why I won't buy German-built cars.

Another good example, comparing the Makarov PM with the Walther PPK. The Makarov is simpler, easier to clean, doesn't bite you when one fires it, feeds better and its magazine holds two extra rounds. The sights are better as well Yet the Walther costs three times as much...........

The Germans could've built 3-4 Pz.IV with KwK L/48 (production started in 1943) for each Panther, if not more, taking into account the ready and running lines for Pz.IV production and the totally new and _very_ labour intensive Panther lines, not to say that they could've also increased their production of "Tigers" as the "quality augmentation"

It would certainly have made much more sense which is what makes me think we're dealing with a brain-bug here rather than a rational decision. After all, the decision to keep building the Sherman was basically an echo of the old adage "quantity has a quality all of its own". Viewed as a tank (forgetting the economic and production side of things for a moment), the Panther was a very dangerous opponent. The problem was that there was so few of them they were never around when they were needed.

A friend of mine explained this very neatly - when the infantry need a tank in support, they need it very badly and they need it immediately. If they have to take down a pill-box, without a tank, its hard and bloody work. With a tank, any tank, its much easier and much less costly. A tank that's available beats one that isn't. The Germans forgot that - I think they understood it in the 1939-40 era but somehow the message just faded away.

War factories on peacetime regime? This is interesting? Where's it from? How did the regime change in 1942-1943?

I don't recall, I read it a while ago; and I can't remember the source; but yeah, they had factories running your basic equivalent 9-5 shift, and then sitting idle through the night until next morning until some absurdly late date in the war; again, because of Nazi party worries about a 1918-style Bolshevik insurrection once again if they imposed too much wartime restrictions on the populace and what they could buy.

War factories on peacetime regime? This is interesting? Where's it from? How did the regime change in 1942-1943?

I can give you a simple example of that. J.P Sauer & Sohn was one of the companies producing the Kar98k rifle for the German Army (my Kar98k is a 1942 Sauer & Sohn - a Russian Capture of course). Yet, Sauer & Sohn were making rifles for the civilian market until 1944! There was one for sale on Gunsamerica quite recently, hunting rifle, looked a bit like a Kar98k but had non-military furniture and was chambered for a different round.

The problems the Germans had was that they sold WW2 on the basis of being a short sharp war that would not affect the home front. Thus, they couldn't cut back on civilian production without knocking a hole in their basic internal propaganda. They only managed to overcome that when they could sell the line "well, things didn't go as we planned but we're stuck with it". Its notable that internal opposition to Nazi rule in Germany only picked up steam after that shift was made (and even then, the thrust wasn't 'Nazis are evil' but 'we're not winning').

The problem lie in the design stage, so the particular contractors who made the parts and pieces aren't that important. German contractors (and possibly the German higher staff working with them) were prone to arbitrary choosing an over-engineered advancement design, or even a totally new chassis... just because they felt like it. Considerations of labour-intensiveness of both production and maintenance generally flew out of the window. Why? I think the fact that you'd get paid enormous sums of money for both R&D and then new production kind of hindered the will of German companies to behave rationally. Compare that to the USSR, where the key OKB projects were often rejected simply because they were too badly compatible with already existing production lines. Clearly, Germans lacked a more coherent oversight of their war industry.

I think you've put your finger on the crux of things here. The problem isn't that the German corporations had too much influence, they had too little. In the US, companies were deeply involved in the military production planning process right from the start and at every level so every decision was made with an eye on what effect it would have on production and capability overall. Good example, there was a lightweight P51 Mustang family, the XP-51F and XP-51G that were major improvements over the P-51D - like they would have ripped the pants off the much-vaunted (but actually rather mediocre) Ta-152C. However, they were so different structurally from the P-51D they they were essentially new aircraft and putting them into production would have caused major delays and production losses. Instead, the P-51D was kept on the lines and those features of the XP-51G that could be incorporated without disrupting production were included to give the P-51H

just try stripping an HK-5 and comparing its internals with an AK-74!) That's why I won't buy German-built cars.

Another good example, comparing the Makarov PM with the Walther PPK. The Makarov is simpler, easier to clean, doesn't bite you when one fires it, feeds better and its magazine holds two extra rounds. The sights are better as well Yet the Walther costs three times as much.

I never laid my hands on a Heckler-Koch but I used the AK, Makarov and the Walther PPK (many thanks to my friends from the military...). I, too, found our technology better fit for the "grunt job", so to say, than the German one.

A tank that's available beats one that isn't. The Germans forgot that - I think they understood it in the 1939-40 era but somehow the message just faded away.

- Look, we're losing! Quick, let's build new supertanks to counter the good tanks of the Russische schweine!
- Wait, didn't the Russians have superior armed- and armored tanks in the start of the war, and it didn't help them? Perhaps the reason...
- Russians? Those dirty apes, know nothing of the KULTUR! Commence building the Panther at once!

Uhm, that was not the original intent of the Soviet Union. They had several types of tanks being produced, with several more designs well into the prototype phase and being finalized for production.

The "several types" you refer to were all having different functions on the battlefield. The pre-war production of several tank lines was pretty obvious in the light of a lack of a certain Darwinian mechanism. The war reduced the necessary lines to a main medium tank + heavy augmentation tank, and that was it.
The experiments of the USSR with hand-built multiturret heavy tanks like T-35 and other of this kind were ultimately not successful.
I also advise you to look at tank line re-arrangement during the immediate pre-war years, and during the war with Finland. It already set up the Darwinian mechanism in place, and tank lines started getting re-arranged.

Remember that the pre-war idea of a mechanized unit was X% light tanks of various kinds, Y% medium tanks and Z% heavy tanks. Also, it was the time of outphasing 1930's production by newer tank lines, which was "caught up" in the war.

Germany on the other hand did not learn from the war's Darwinian mechanisms. It's tank industry continued to behave like it did even when Barbarossa failed and Russians were knocking on the doors of Germany.

Loss of productive power? Maybe, but for the USSR, armed conflicts 1940-1941 have also shown the wrong composition of it's mechanized force, which led to the re-drafting of mechanization plans. And remember, the basic plans for medium + heavy tanks rearmament were corrected, but still executed on the base of a T-34 chassis.

To elaborate a bit more on the reason why the USSR engaged into various lines of tanks in pre-war years - the "reactive planning". The USSR was only starting to create the tank industry, and thus it was looking out for what other companies built. How did the T-28 come about? Well, simple - the Soviet spies brought word of a 16-ton Vickkers tanks. And so on, so forth.

But show me an instance where the USSR would take up two absolutely different chassis for the same task. And no, the T-34 versus T-28 doesn't count - the latter failed "natural selection" during the Winter War and thus was doomed, in fact, it was a rather poor construction from the start.

1937, not 1941 was the turning point for Soviet hodge-podge, actually. This was when the NKT ABTU commitee said that "...We have to run very fast works on creating a breakthrough assault tank with heavy armor and a powerful artillery tank armed with high-power guns to act against hardened firepoints" (the projects ended to be respectively T-34 and KV).

The principal tanks were planned on the BT chassis, not to waste money - it was only when the realization of chassis inadequacy came in full view, was this plan changed.

I, too, found our technology better fit for the "grunt job", so to say, than the German one.

It's not just better for the grunt job, the Makarov PM is a better pistol all round. I needed a .380 class compact pistol as my wife's carry piece and I tried a clutch of designs including the Walther PPK, the SIG P232 in .380ACP and the Makarov PM and the Hungarian PA63 in 9x18mm Makarov. What was fascinating is that not only was the PM simpler and more robust than any of the others, it's a much nicer pistol to fire. It's smoother, has a better trigger and doesn't bite. One mystery perhaps you could throw a little light on? The Hungarian PA-63 was made at the same time as the PM and fills the same role as a Warsaw Pact officer's pistol yet is a thoroughly nasty little piece. Fragile, poorly designed inside, and has a really nasty bite. Why on earth were teh Hungarians allowed to build it? A localized version of the PM I can see (the way the Romanians built localized versions of the AK-47) but a completely different and much inferior weapon?

We settled on the Makarov PM, if anybody needs a compact pistol, that's the one I'd recommend. The new "civilian version", the IH-70, is even nicer.

- Look, we're losing! Quick, let's build new supertanks to counter the good tanks of the Russische schweine! Wait, didn't the Russians have superior armed- and armored tanks in the start of the war, and it didn't help them? Perhaps the reason... Russians? Those dirty apes, know nothing of the KULTUR! Commence building the Panther at once!

I think endemic German racism has a lot to do with it; its not just a German fault, the US got a sound paddling in 1941/42 because it assumed that the Japanese were incapable of challenging a "western" country on an equal basis ( still have a recognition book from the era that suggests that Japanese pilots were all short-sighted and prone to vertigo due to the structure of their eyes).

I'd also suggest, though, that the operational experiences of the winter offensive of 1941 may have had a lot to do with it. This was the first time in WW2 that the German Army had suffered a set-back let alone a major defeat and the German Army didn't take it very well. In fact, for a while they were pretty much routed and falling back in chaos (Zhukov's Siberians never got the credit they deserved for the sheer destruction they inflicted). It came as a horrible shock to the German strategic command that they could be defeated so comprehensively and they were desperately seeking for an alibi that didn't reveal how incredibly badly they'd screwed up. So, the need for "superweapons" suddenly emerges.

It's a pretty well-established pattern; we get the same thing in late 1944/45 when the Luftwaffe has been shot from the skies. Instead of mass-producing aircraft that are available and debugged (the FW-190D for example) the Germans go into a frenzy of "advanced" fighter designs that are, in reality barely more capable than the ones they putatively replace yet cost a lot more to produce and disrupt the production line comprehensively. The TA-152 is a beautiful example, its touted as an uber-fighter yet in reality it's pretty mediocre; its inferior in performance to the Martin-Baker MB.5, the P-51H or the La-11 and only manages to achieve that level of performance by using GM-1 and MW-50 boost that wrecked its engine.

There's an old saying "a bad workman blames his tools". I think the German General Staff were very bad workmen on the strategic level.

An OT PS. I've been playing with alternate points of departures in history and come across an interesting one. In 1943, after Uranus cut off 6th Army in Stalingrad, there were two operational plans. Little Saturn envisaged pushing Army Group Don back further and solidfying the Stalingrad encirclement, Great Saturn envisaged a strike towards Rostov that would seize the Don Crossings and isolate the whole of Army Group Don, Army Group A and Army Group B, effectively putting between 1.2 million and 1.5 million troops in the bag with even less chance of getting them out than 6th Army had.

In the event, Stalin went for Little Saturn. We know now that all that stood between the Russian Army and the Black Sea were three divisions, two Romanian and one Italian. Suppose Great Saturn had been tried and the great encirclement pulled off. The result is that it isn't just one Germany Army that capitulates, its three whole Army Groups, leaving the southern third of the front without any German troops at all. SO where does history go from there?

I think endemic German racism has a lot to do with it

I have sent you a document of the Gestapo which proves exactly that. The core points of German propaganda were that all Soviet Slavs were stupid subhumans and a sizeable number of Germans had in fact thought that "inferior nations" were not capable of rivalling the sheer awesomeness that they thought German engineering was. Hwoops. Of course, these perceptions were partially shaken off, but they still persisted until the very end of the war in various forms. The notorious trait of lifting up tactical successes of lone units or even lone examples of weaponry on the general background of strategic failures was also prevalent in the German high command; but when Hitler sacked several people for the inability to take Moscow or even hold near it, the new ones weren't much better.

This was the first time in WW2 that the German Army had suffered a set-back let alone a major defeat and the German Army didn't take it very well. In fact, for a while they were pretty much routed and falling back in chaos (Zhukov's Siberians never got the credit they deserved for the sheer destruction they inflicted).

I don't know how, perhaps in the Western historiography the Battle of Moscow is eclipsed by things like Stalingrad, Kursk and then, well, your own operations on the Second Front, but in our own historiography the Battle of Moscow and, also, Siberian units' action in this battle, is just slightly below Stalingrad in popular exposure - an epic tale with few rivals.

Instead of mass-producing aircraft that are available and debugged (the FW-190D for example) the Germans go into a frenzy of "advanced" fighter designs that are, in reality barely more capable than the ones they putatively replace yet cost a lot more to produce and disrupt the production line comprehensively.

FW-190D was a very good fighter; the idea that reactive planes could revolutionarize air warfare came to the Germans, frankly, too late - when their first new reactive planes arrived in the forces, the Allies already commenced mass bombardments of Germany proper, which allowed for mass destruction of even the most advanced and expensive planes right on the airfields, or even on the factories and not to mention the fact that German reactive machines were the first of such things to come, and thus plagued with lots of problems which there was no time and money to correct. Controlling them was a bitch, landing and takeoff - problems even for the most experienced pilots, and they often broke machines like Me262 (in both variants).

An OT PS. I've been playing with alternate points of departures in history and come across an interesting one. In 1943, after Uranus cut off 6th Army in Stalingrad, there were two operational plans. Little Saturn envisaged pushing Army Group Don back further and solidfying the Stalingrad encirclement, Great Saturn envisaged a strike towards Rostov that would seize the Don Crossings and isolate the whole of Army Group Don, Army Group A and Army Group B, effectively putting between 1.2 million and 1.5 million troops in the bag with even less chance of getting them out than 6th Army had.

In the event, Stalin went for Little Saturn. We know now that all that stood between the Russian Army and the Black Sea were three divisions, two Romanian and one Italian. Suppose Great Saturn had been tried and the great encirclement pulled off. The result is that it isn't just one Germany Army that capitulates, its three whole Army Groups, leaving the southern third of the front without any German troops at all. SO where does history go from there?

Jesus. That's pretty nasty.

My opinion?

Shortens the war by 1 to 1.5 years, so Victory day is somewhere from January 1944 to May-June 1944, and we have a post war germany united under the DDR, and a France split in two, with probably a not too small Soviet dominated slice of France.

This is all dependent however on the Western allies recognizing the damage that's been done to the German Army. If Churchill continues to be an obstinate idiot demanding a med strategy, then Stalin probably gets all of France.

If the plans are cancelled for the invasion of Italy and Sicily and everything tossed together into a ramshackle invasion of France, then we can possibly if things go good, meet the Soviets somewhere in Eastern France or Western Germany..

An OT PS. I've been playing with alternate points of departures in history and come across an interesting one. In 1943, after Uranus cut off 6th Army in Stalingrad, there were two operational plans. Little Saturn envisaged pushing Army Group Don back further and solidfying the Stalingrad encirclement, Great Saturn envisaged a strike towards Rostov that would seize the Don Crossings and isolate the whole of Army Group Don, Army Group A and Army Group B, effectively putting between 1.2 million and 1.5 million troops in the bag with even less chance of getting them out than 6th Army had.

In the event, Stalin went for Little Saturn. We know now that all that stood between the Russian Army and the Black Sea were three divisions, two Romanian and one Italian. Suppose Great Saturn had been tried and the great encirclement pulled off. The result is that it isn't just one Germany Army that capitulates, its three whole Army Groups, leaving the southern third of the front without any German troops at all. SO where does history go from there?

Big Saturn was abandoned because all the mobile forces (specifically 2nd Guards Tank) slated for it were tied down defeating German relief attempts, and the pocket itself. There might only have been three divisions directly between the Red Army and Rostov, but there were signifigant mobile forces in the area - the various forces under Manstein. Given that the panzers still had the wood on the Red Army's tanks during this period, Big Staurn could have turned into another Mars.

Essentially thejester is correct.

Let me explain why, post Kharkov, the USSR would not try, ever, to run a large-scale operation with less forces than planned. Because, that's what they planned in the Kharkov advance and it turned out a disaster. Timoshenko was making correct predictions, there were plans for a bigger strike to Dnepropetrovsk, then Stalin "downscaled" the operation but still it was massive, intending to take Kharkov, but the result was a positional bloodbath between us and Nazis. We can't say Kharkov opened the Germans way to Stalingrad, that happened a bit later, but it seriously damaged our own offensive capabilities in the South.

The problem was, in 1942 the German Army retained their mobility. Which means - behind it's frontline, the German Army was free to move mobile units whereevr it wanted, and quickly. The Soviet Army by that time was only getting to that (Small Saturn was one of the first attempts at covert reinforcement from behind front with mobile units) - the Germans, when bogged down, lost control over the Russian movements.

Could Great Saturn have been pulled off? Who knows. In a great operation, it's a game of nerves and reaction. Who reacts first and blows the cover and location of his units? Who will move faster?

But, if it were so... in 1944 we'd be knocking on the gates of Germany. Possibly a second Front from the Allies in 1943, as we asked. After all, they weren't all mumbling fools, I'm sure Churchill would recognise the need for a joint operation in Europe, because otherwise the USSR would take all the spoils of war and liberation to itself.

Essentially thejester is correct.

I agree with you both. Erickson goes into the decision to abandon Great Saturn in favor of Little Saturn in "The Road To Berlin" and I think Stalin was right to make the decision he did. The Germans were just too damned good at making up ad-hoc battlegroups et al. The chance of failing to make the bag tight and have Uranus turn into another disaster was too high. But, in the best spirit of alternative history, I can't help but wonder about the results of pulling Great Saturn off even if it was improbable.

But, if it were so... in 1944 we'd be knocking on the gates of Germany. Possibly a second Front from the Allies in 1943, as we asked. After all, they weren't all mumbling fools, I'm sure Churchill would recognise the need for a joint operation in Europe, because otherwise the USSR would take all the spoils of war and liberation to itself.

There's the political side to this. Lets assume Great Saturn has worked, 1.35 million German troops have capitulated and the whole southern end of the Russian front is a gaping void. Would there be a chance of Hitler meeting an unfortunate end (accidently shooting himself 32 times in the head while cleaning a submachine gun then brutally cutting his throat while shaving and carelessly drinking poison).

If that happens, Germany gets a leadership that's at least partially sane. They'd have to pull back, probably all the way to the Polish border and strip troops from everywhere nonessential. That does open up Europe to a 1943 invasion.

Question then - assuming the above takes place; German troops evacuate Rusisan territory and manage to piece together a defense line along the Polish border. Will Russia stay in the war? Or, having saved the Rodina and smashed the invasion, pull out and lick its wounds in order to be ready for a final reckoning a little later,

Question then - assuming the above takes place; German troops evacuate Rusisan territory and manage to piece together a defense line along the Polish border. Will Russia stay in the war? Or, having saved the Rodina and smashed the invasion, pull out and lick its wounds in order to be ready for a final reckoning a little later

If the Germans are stupid enough to give out Russian territory back without a fight, they will only face a stronger rival crushing at them on Polish borders right there in 1943.

Stopping after a big success isn't exactly a good idea, there would be a large Russian offensive in Mid-43, but with the Germans falling back in disarray, I think their losses would be even more severe than simply trying to hold the front after the success of "Great Saturn".

A disarray retreat opens up the possibility for the Soviet Army to try out the deepest and most rapid encirclements possible. Probably Russia would be knocking on Germany's doors by early 1944, just as I said.

And no, going to a "phony war" i.e. stopping operations for a year or so, with such a foe as Germany was totaly out of the question. During 1944, the so-called "10 Stalin's strikes", were so rapid and fast, massive, after each other, that the German front simply crumbled overall. This is the result Russian Command, including Stalin, wanted to see. Not any sort of Germany resting and taking a deep breath while the USSR does nothing.

Technically, by this time it only depends if the Allies are willing to deal with Nazi Germany. If they are, the USSR would probably either confront them, which means a new bloody war in Europe, or negotiate the terms of German surrender _with_ the Allies, not with Germany.

[jemhouston]

Fascinating stuff.

Almost makes me wish I could read it over a sniffer of brandy.

[Nathan45]

Ok, ill vote for the panzer 3 as a change of pace. Any tank with a 2 person turret is a non starter

[Johnnie Lyle]

Ok, ill vote for the panzer 3 as a change of pace. Any tank with a 2 person turret is a non starter

That’s the Chieftain’s vote, and for much the same reasons. Three man turret, good ergonomics compared to the competitors, and really good for the times comms gear.