This video is part of a number of specials we're doing on the military context to Operation Barbarossa. You can check out Indy's video about transport vehicles and logistics here: ruclips.net/video/4lSCnOltYdY/видео.html. If you want to help us make a complete documentary series on World War Two through more specials just like this one, you can join the TimeGhost Army on www.patreon.com/timeghosthistory or timeghost.tv. Take care, Joram . *RULES OF CONDUCT* STAY CIVIL AND POLITE we will delete any comments with personal insults, or attacks. AVOID PARTISAN POLITICS AS FAR AS YOU CAN we reserve the right to cut off vitriolic debates. HATE SPEECH IN ANY DIRECTION will lead to a ban. RACISM, XENOPHOBIA, OR SLAMMING OF MINORITIES will lead to an immediate ban. PARTISAN REVISIONISM, ESPECIALLY HOLOCAUST AND HOLODOMOR DENIAL will lead to an immediate ban.
My father drove the T-26 ,BT7 in Finland and then the T-34 during Barbarossa . He said some of the tanks had no seats and he had to drive sitting on ammunition crates . His tank was ineffective because lack of ammunition and like you said poor communication. No hits penetrated the tanks armour but His tank was disabled by Stuka dive bombers. Out of fuel he was overrun and eventually captured.
@@Cotswolds1913 Bob Semple tank drives through mud just as well as on everything else. For this day it's the single best tank ever build. It was so terryfing in fact, that they decided not to build any more of them.
Oh hey, it's me again. The guy who talked about Romanian a lot a couple months ago. So today, since we're talking tanks, lets talk about Romania's armoured forces at the outset of Barbarossa! In 1919, as part of French-Romanian collaboration, 76 Renault FTs were supplied to Romanian, forming the First Armoured Regiment. 48 were males with the 37mm gun and 28 were females with an 8mm Hotchkiss machine gun. 17 were refurbished at the Leonida works and the State Armoury at Bucharest. These were eventually moved to a separate FT Regiment, created for training new tankers once more modern vehicles were acquired. These vehicles never saw combat, but it's worth mentioning. In 1936, Romania acquired replacements for the heavily outdated FTs in the form of 126 Skoda LT vz. 36s, designated the R-2. Indy discussed this vehicle, as it was also used by the Germans. In fact, the Romanians had ordered more from Czechoslovakia, which never made it as they were still in the factories during the annexation of Czechia. Armed with a 37mm gun, two machine guns, and equipped with a radio, it was the best vehicle in service with the 1st Armoured Division at the outset of Operation Barbarossa, but still heavily out classed. It would remain as the mainstay of the 1st Division until 1943, when it would be replaced by the Panzer IV. In 1938, 200 Renault R35s were ordered from France, though only 41 arrived before the fall of France due to slow deliveries. However, 35 more were taken from Polish units fleeing into Moravia in 1939. On November 1, 1939, the 2nd Armoured Regiment was created using these vehicles, the 1st and 2nd Regiments being combined into the 1st Division. The R35s low-velocity 37mm gun was deemed inadequate for anti-tank duty, and so these were designated as anti-infantry vehicles only. It also lacked a radio, making it poor for blitz operations. Also in Romanian service was the AH-IVR, a tankette utilized by the Recon elements of the Romanian Cavalry divisions. This vehicle was another Czech design, as with... well most Romanian equipment. The AH-IVR had a two-man crew, a driver on the left side and a commander/gunner in a rotating turret on the right. The driver had a machine gun mounted in the hull to his right, operated by a Bowden cable. In the turret was mounted another machine gun in a ball mount, operated by the gunner. The AH-IVR shared the riveted construction of the R-2, with armour ranging in thickness from 6 to 12 milimetres. These vehicles were utilized primarily for scouting, so their limited armament was not seen as much of an issue. Alongside these vehicles were several armoured cars of Czech design, including the Skoda vz. 25, vz. 27, and Tatra vz. 29. The First Armoured Division was rounded out by two Motorized Vanatori Regiments (3rd and 4th), and the 1st Motorized Artillery Regiment. The Division wouldn't take part in the initial fighting, though it would be used in offensives in the Ukraine later on this year, being assigned to the 4th Army. However, Romanian lacked the industry to produce tanks of its own, and thus would have to rely on German lend-lease to replenish their losses. We'll have to see how that one goes for them... Main sources this time are from the Tank Encyclopedia and WorldWar2.ro.
Big like from me, man. Really cool you mentioned the Romanian tanks of Barbarossa. One corection though: the R-2s (which I think formed the first armored regiment) participated both in the operation Munich (conquest of Bessarabia) and the siege of Odessa.
"And a commander who knows both himself and his enemy, need not fear the outcome of 100 battles" Thank you Bletchley Park. We had a liiiittle more than 100 battles after properly cracking Enigma but that promised 100 of them went just Ace.
Don't want to sound boring but the photo on 10:18 is one of the Palace Square in St Petersburg (Uritsky Square in Leningrad by the time the picture was taken) and definitely not the Red Square in Moscow. It shows the Winter Palace (aka the Hermitage) and the Alexander Column. Anyway, great job as usual, many thanks to all the crew!
10:59 There were tungsten rounds for the 5cm gun used by the Panzer III that could penetrate a KV-1, although they were only available in very limited numbers.
@@stevekaczynski3793 Krupp had made almost 2 million tungsten cores for the 5 cm gun before they ceased production in 1943, so the tungsten shortage only came into play late in the war when the Germans were forced to use hardened steel cores.
It's intriguing that in the early years of the war (1939-1941), allied tanks such as the T-34, KV-1, and the French Char B had far better armor and firepower than virtually all of the blitzkrieg panzers; it was simply superior German tactics and discipline that prevailed.
*Thank you so much for these videos... All of you guys over at the World War Two channel are absolute legends for doing these WWII in real time series... as well as these special episodes that dive deeper into different aspects of the war. Really love these videos where you go in depth of different topics during the war. Very happy I found your channel recently and have so many videos to binge watch... I feel bad for people who have already seen these older videos and are waiting for the new episodes weekly, while I am watching for the first time these amazing videos... This series may be over by the time I get to the end of the war... Thank you guys for making these videos, when I get the ability to donate & support you guys financially, you can bet your bottom dollar that I am for sure throwing my money at you guys for the wartime effort to keep fighting! 😂*
@Юрий Тойкичев Perhaps by 1940s standards you could consider them a tankette. By 1930s the Vickers 6-Ton aka 7 Ton Polish (actually 9 tons) or T-26 (9-10 tons) was a light tank. Keep in mind that Vickers design is from the 1920s, tank technology had over a decade to surpass it by 1941 A TKS was Polish tankette and it was only about 2 tons. A Panzer II was about 7-9 tons for comparison. Recon was pretty much intended use of light tanks.
I could say that StuGs were kinda oddball in German army as those were part of the artillery branch (very prestigious one) and not in Panzer units. Which some Panzer proponents never stopped complaining about, particularly a certain Heinz Guderian. "Wait? Weren't StuGs used as replacement tanks?" some may ask and to that I say "Yes but later in the war and that is interesting subject alone". For Barbarossa, Germany had organized the 250 or so StuGs into 10-12 battalions (each battalion had 18-20 vehicles) and several independent batteries (each battery had 4-7 Stugs) which were scattered to support various armies but not in motorised formations as those could call upon Panzers. During Barbarossa, StuGs were used particularly in cracking open some of the pockets that rapid advance created but even in this they were never used against other tanks (although 75 HE shell could crack T-26 and BT -tanks) and StuGs were limited to engaging machine-gun nests and field artillery. After Barbarossa, some StuG battalions would be re-named as StuG-Brigades without actually changing its formation into the size of an Brigade which may confuse some. Although there would be many changes in 1942 particularly after introduction of model F/8 which turned StuG from mobile armored gun casemate into a tank-killing meme machine we all love.
Doesn't hurt to have some organic self propelled anti-tank capability in your unit, rather than relying on the towed 37mm and new towed 75mm (pre-production units started appearing for Barbarossa in late 1941 and some captured French 75mm were also pressed into service), and 88mm anti-air guns (which didn't get the mount for quick low depression direct fire until later in the war).
They were not oddballs at all. They were direct support guns with a direct lineage to the "flying artillery" of the pre-mechanized era. The Panzer arm/formations used StuGs as defensive tank-destroyers, not assault guns or tanks. Save vehicle different purpose.
Same kind of story goes for the SU-152. They made a driving bunker buster just to realise in late 1942 that they were the only tanks that could break the Tigers armor/knock out their crew (from the front at least).
A StuG is a gun on tracks, for the simple reason once you have fired you have given your position away. So static close support guns became obsolete after WW 2 and during WW 2 they were already showing their age. A tank is an offensive weapon and a StuG with something like an 75mm L42 gun a defensive one.
@@CharlesvanDijk-ir6bl That is not accurate. The StuG was an offensive weapon (ie; *assault gun*). It was not just a "gun on tracks" but also heavily armored. It was designed to lead infantry against prepared defenses. it was only after Germany was on the defensive did it become used primarily as anti-tank guns.
Man the fact that this content is available on youtube(for free) puts History channel to shame!!!! I will support this work as soon I can get a job after this curent crysis.
@@30Mauser not really in German case. They described all big bore guns in centemeters. So you have 7,9 mm MG 15 machine gun and 2 cm MG151/20 autocannon. 8.8 Flak, 8.8 Kwk, 7.5 Pak, 10.5 LeFH howitzer etc.
About the BT-7 and sloped armor: the tank which had sloped armour was the M version of the BT-7 tank. They were several versions of the BT tank, most prominently the normal BT-7, which had a standart 20k 45mm gun, the BT-7M which had a 20k 45mm gun and sloped armour and the BT-7A (A standing for "Artillery"), which had a short-barreled 76mm field gun. All of them were considered as "glass cannons" by the soldiers: they weren't well armoured but they packed a really good punch at the time, and they were freaking fast.
It's interesting to take note of the different ideas on how tanks are to be used and made. To many comparisons boil it down to stats of the individual tanks. Good on you guys for talking about the production and tactics that both nations have towards their tank forces.
Important to note as well that throughout the war most tank kills were made by stationary AT guns, so you can get the wrong image when you just look at which tanks could kill the opposing tanks.
Czechoslovak tanks (Panzer 35 (t) and 38 (t)) will constitute an important part of the tanks employed by the Germans and Romanians against the USSR. They were very good against Soviet light tanks.
@Chris_Wooden_Eye They were used during invasion of France as well so I guess that was some karma for French for not holding up their treaty with Czechoslovakia lol
@Chris_Wooden_Eye The Versaille treaty had cut off German sympathetic populations in countries where they were unhappy, in Czechoslovakia it had resulted in civil disorder and a couple of massacres of German citizens. there was a general feeling that there had been errors by all the militarists in the Versailles treaty that nice liberal people ought to correct. Basically every time theres a treaty that draws up borders a generation later theres a dispute about the border because populations have moved and so have political alliances and theres a new generation of keen young people who want to redraw those borders without the mistakes the last generation made. See - Poland in 1939, Syria currently, any nation with a dispute in Africa, the pig war and a thousand other examples. Chamberlain didnt have the military or politcal backing to oppose the Germans over what many people in his own government thought was a legitimate grievance, they definitely didnt want to start a new war over it, the French probably had the same problem
@@voiceofraisin3778 For your info Borders between Czechoslovakia and Germany was not changed it was the same borders that Austria- Hungary had with Germany Historically.
I`ve always enjoyed playing with my Czech 34T and 38T tanks in microarmor games....I have tons and tons of French, Soviet, British, Italian, American, and German WW2 armor and other vehicles (representing from very early war to end of war), as well as some Japanese ACVs.....ah the sound of an 88L 76...good times of the miniatures tabletop war gaming...T U for another great show Indy and guys!! I always enjoy your stuff. I have replayed many scenarios from the initial German advance into Belgium (vs. French Somuas etc.), Stalingrad to Rostov and Karkov etc...and this episode brought back many fun memories of great gaming at conventions etc...T U.
Given your description of German tanks in this episode and your previous special about the logistics of Barbarossa, I am amazed that the Germans managed to be as successful in the initial stages as they were. A lot of what you are describing seems to be setting the Germans up for failure so it will be interesting to see why they were so successful at first.
Two nearly failed states start throwing punches to compensate for poor economic and ethical decisions, but one gets in a sucker punch after shaking hands with the other. That's basically what happened.
As a ww2 nerd this is the one of the best videos I've ever nerded out to on RUclips. Everyone loves the eastern front, esp, barbarossa and, everyone loves talking about panzers
Why haven't I watched these Specials earlier? These are great, and a great overview on the subject. One small issue, the Pz IV was not an infantry support tank. Stugs were for infantry support. Pz IV's were a tank support tank, since the Pz III never had a decent HE round until the N model, which had the same gun as the early Pz IV's.
I really thankful you guys adding subtitles. As a non native english speaker im having hard time to understand english speaking but subtitles helping me
@@SoundAndFuryy when the enemy troops start to call thier AT tanks Army-door-nockker-machine because the rounds bounds of your armour, I think you have at least some reason to be happy. However tinitus would have been killing
Hi Indy and crew. I love all your shows and have been watching for a while now, i had a question maybe for out of the foxholes. Was Carl Mannerheim a knight of the Mannerheim cross himself?
He was awarded it in October 1941, and was one of the only two people to receive the 1st-class Mannerheim cross (the other being general Heinrichs). Mannerheim thought it was odd to carry a cross named after himself, but accepted it from president Ryti after all the previous awardees requested that he be awarded it.
11:23 More specifically: The T-26 up to the model M and the earlier BTs up to the model BT-7 didn't have radios. So only a third of the Soviet tanks at this point have radios.
But does this account for all the tanks designed with radios but not built with them? A lot of soviet tanks were supplied with western lend-lease radios because of radio shortages in the USSR. Before those western radios were supplied and more wartime manufacturing in the Urals kicked on a lot of tanks designed with radios didn't have them.
As I understand it. Only the platoon leader had a radio, when available, so one of five and they were fragile and of very limited range. 15,822 vehicle radios to USSR under Lend Lease page 35 www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/LL-Ship/LL-Ship-5.html
@@auguststorm2037Training memo, 8th Mechanised Corp 15th Tank Division January 1941. "All of the 30th Tank Regiments TK Radios have been put into store the 1st year radio operators have only begun lessons on listening to radio messages, the 2nd year radio operators aren't working on radios and so unable to practise how to pickup or transmit using a telegraph key. Moreover in other units the radio operators have an unacceptably low proficiency, were unable to master equipment that was too complicated for them and as a result of unskilled usage the radios quickly broke, even cases of deliberate sabotage by tankers to hide their technical illiteracy."
@@RandomDudeOne I must agree. Even though it's not so black and white. By the time Tigers entered service the war was by no means lost yet. Not like with Tiger II etc. It all came down to Germany's industrial capacity compared to the allies. No single technology can change that.
Most of the world thought the same, while on the surface, the Red Army appeared to be a disorganized mess with a mostly inexperienced officer Corp and this was true, everyone underestimated the Soviet Unions ability to take horrific losses and continue fighting. It was just as much a sleeping giant as the US in my opinion.
The problem with the Soviet t-26'es and other tanks was that NONE of them were equipped with Armor Piercing shells. Prior to 1941 the Soviet Union did not have a production line for Armor piercing shells. They made few here and there but over 90% of shells made for Tank guns were high explosive anti infantry shells. Anti tank shells were made for artillery and field guns, since the Soviets tank doctrine were completely different than the german's and did not expect to fight tank on tank. However this changed in 41 when the 10 000 light tanks were indeed destroyed by other tanks.
The KV was truly a technological hiatus between Germany and Russia in 1941. No German AT Gun could get through its armor until the appearance of the PAK 40 in 1942. In 1941 Germans had to rely on the Flak 36 to do the job. Contrary to the earlier versions of the T-34, which had many flaws in terms of vision ports and turret size given the fact it was a rushed into action tank, the KV, on the other hand, was a better conceived tank. It had more proper outside vision for the crew, the turret was big enough to fit three men inside. While theoretically it was still feasible for a Panzer III with the short 50mm barrel to fight an early version of the T-34 if it managed to close the distance with it, which was not a difficult thing to do, yet, I think neither the short 50mm nor the longer L60 50mm of it would be able to get through the KV armor, even at blank ranges. I have never seen so far a comparison between the KV-1 and the Panzer III L60 fighting against each other. It would be very interesting to see that. The KV-1 was quite much responsible for saving the city of Leningrad, stopping many units from Army Group North and delaying them.
@@TheStugbit That is indeed correct, but at this stage, in part due to the severe lack of training of the Soviet tank crews, and in part due to the effective German infantry anti-tank tactics, most tanks rendered immobile were sitting ducks.
@@Grondorn the one in Raseiniai still gave quite of a headache for the "duck hunters", you know. And it wasn't the only one. The KVs effectively delayed Army Group North to the point Leningrad's defenses were properly set. Not all Soviet units were incompetent and since the KV factory was in the North, there were more of them there. Well, all this changed when the PAK 40 appeared. The KV from an imminent threat it became a big and slow target. The T-34 surpassed it as the best Soviet tank. But in 41 the KV was best.
French "trophy" tanks like the Char B? As I understand it. USSR had no more than 400 operational T34's at the time. Even though the USSR had one of the lowest ratios of paved roads to area it was one of the largest, if not the largest, producer of armored cars before 1942. Developed from the Ford AA two wheel drive truck produced under license (this seems to be a thing with some) the BA-3, BA-6 and BA-10 had a 45mm gun. Captured & converted French vehicles in German service www.axishistory.com/books/138-equipment/equipment/4260-captured-a-converted-french-vehicles-in-german-service
Every episode is extremely enlightening and informative. I honestly watched some episodes and I didn't think they would be good but they were keep up the great work guys
Thank you - glad we didn’t disappoint - but mght we be so bold and ask why you expected to be disappointed? It’s always good to try to understand how we can be better at projecting the right expectations.
In 6 months I hope you guys do a episode like this on American and Japanese aircraft carriers and aircraft. You could also do an episode on various aircraft used.
Saying that the Panzer 1 was made only for training is perhaps an overstatement, it was used as a training tank and to develope doctrine but it was also built to go into combat. That said, keep up the good work and stay safe!
Hi Indy and team! Concerning your statement towards the fact, that the Wehrmacht had no tank mounted weapon that could penetrate a KV tank. That is not completely true. The independent tank destroyer battalion 521, subordinated to Army Group Center, Panzergruppe 2, XXIV. motorized korps in support of 3rd Panzer Division, had two "Dicker Max" prototypes. They fielded a 10,5cm K18 artillery gun on a Panzer-IV-chassis with 50mm of frontal armour. It was deployed as a heavy tank destroyer and infantry support gun. This gun could penetrate the KV's 90mm of armour at a range of more than 2.000m (111mm at 2.000m, 155mm at 500m). Well yes, there were only two of them at all and one was destroyed just four days into the campaign, but your strickt thesis is not correct. Additionally, the Wehrmacht fielded the Panzerjäger I, which was a czech 4,7cm gun on a late Panzer-I-chassis. They had a armour piercing capability comparable to the newest Panzer III (up to 59mm at 500m, 41mm at 1.000m),but no armour whatsoever. They were organized in independent tank destroyer battalions (like the mentioned 521). 202 Panzerjägers were built in total, I have yet to find a number of vehicles in June '41. As you mentioned the StuG III, of which - by this point - only around 400 were built in total (and some lost in France), it is only fair to mention its little brother, that was employed in the same manner. In all other respects this was a very enjoyable episode! Well done
I'm going to use this comment in an Across the Airwaves episode, a format where i read the most interesting and enlightening comments we've got. We're just getting it going, but that should come out in August or early September. Big thanks for that!
beutepanzer.ru is a good site for documenting Allied vehicles in Axis units. Folk seem to forget all the British and Polish vehicles which served with the German army in the Soviet Union.
8:06 That vehicle in the center has what looks like a manual transmission diagram painted on the back. I thought that all vehicles back then were manual? Am I mistaken in what that painted icon is, or is there a reason that they would externally mark the vehicle as MT?
10:19 / 13:15 it's not Red Square, it's Leningrad. The tanks are leaving the Uritskogo square (now Palace square). Google KV-1 Leningrad, you'll see this photo.
Now this is pretty interesting. I did not know the Soviets already had so many tanks at the start of the invasion, but their logistical and personnel shortcomings rendered them ineffective or outright useless. That's very cool.
@@viktorpetukhov727 It's hard to speculate whether Hitler really was so misinformed about Soviet armor strength, or whether he was just trying to excuse his own spectacular mistake. He was a delusional, self-aggrandizing sociopath and an ideological fanatic, after all. What's interesting is that - during that same conversation - he actually inflates the number of Soviet front-line tanks to be over 35.000, instead of the actual 23.000 -- This was obviously a bald-faced lie, but he stated it with so much confidence that everyone around him just nodded and went "yes, 35.000 tanks... that's correct". Which is pretty illustrative of the entire war.
@@runi5413 The German intelligence was notoriously bad prior to the invasion, so its pretty safe to assume that they were all grossly misinformed. And his inflated number might be an high estimate from his own command, which was embroiled in the largest invasion in history. Just about no one had exact numbers during the conflict.
They were in the middle of a massive reorganisation, and Stalin was *really* hoping that the Germans wouldn't invade until the Red Army was ready in 1942/43, in spite of the massive evidence and reports he received daily to the contrary.
The 20mm. L.55 KwK. 30 had received an ammunition upgrade with Pzgr.40 APCR shot (52mm. @ 0 degrees @ 100 metres) being available, alongside the more common PzGr.39 APCBC (40mm. @ 0 degrees @ 100 metres) by 1941.
The battle of Khalkhin-gol river showed them that USSR is not an easy target. Japanese did not have that many tanks and aircrafts. Second they really needed oil after USA established an embargo. They could get this oil only on Southeast Asia, not in Soviet Union.
I was wondering if the Germans coordinating Japan to invade Russia. If the USSR had to find a war on 2 fronts would have made it difficult to fight the Nazis.
No, after the Japanese defeat at Khalkin Gol in 1939 they realised that fighting the soviet union would be alot harder then they thought, additionally they were in a huge war with china, one that wasnt ending as quickly as expected. They even signed a non agression pact with the soviets in april of '41 without even talking to the Germans before hand. Just another example really of how the Japanese and the Germans were only allies in name and not in action.
Odd that you specify that Pzkw1 was "meant to be a training vehicle" when MHV has claimed that it is utterly false in one of his more recent videos. Indy, Sparty, care to comment?
It was purely designed as a training tank to develop armoured doctrine and tactics. Many are confused by the Pz2 though thinking that was supposed to be a training tank that was pressed into combat service too when it was always intended to be a frontline unit.
@@TheChieftainsHatch Three points, Firstly It was designed to be resistant only to rifles with 14mm armour, the C variant doubled this. Second the Germans never used their best armour in tanks, they used homogenised steel and in some cases Einsatzhärtung (Treated or Case Hardened) which rather than being heated and quenched to make true hardened armour only heated it gently with flames. The only German tank that used Face Hardened steel of the same quality used by the German navy was the Maus. Thirdly the only Panzer 1 which received Einsatzhärtung were those that were intended to be retrofitted into other uses such as SPG at a later time, about 264. The Pz3 when introduced only had a bolt on plate of Einsatzhärtung on the turret face with bolt on plates being added to the glacis and superstructure in 1941.
Crazy that a 7 year old tank was obsolete in 1941, right now a 7 year old tank would be state of the art, military technology sure did go fast back then.
The T-26 was the best tank of the Spanish Civil War, but obsolete by the time of Barbarossa. Yes, tank technology did advance very quickly. Same with aircraft.
Ok, before I begin, this idea I'm putting out isn't completely my own. First RUclipsr to bring it up was Chieftain. This is purely a situation where we should NEVER stop questioning things in history. These two phrases are a huge pet peeve of mine: "The Panzer I was DESIGNED as a training tank." and "The Panzer I / II were 'stop gap' tanks." We will start with the later, it is easier to dismiss. There is no such thing as a stop gap tank. It was an evolutionary advancement from previous models. ALL tanks could be considered stop gap tanks. That is like saying the M60 was a stop gap until the US Army got the M1 Abrams. You could argue that the M3 LEE was a stop gap, since there was problems fitting the 76 mm in a turret. Yet, we can all agree that the M3 was a bad idea all around. As for the Panzer I being DESIGNED as a training tank. Chieftain had some harsh words for this, purely on the logistics standpoint. Even a nation that isn't thin on resources like Germany isn't going to devote time, money, or material to develop a "training tank." They are going to create a tank and then train soldiers to use that tank IN that tank. If the tank in question wasn't ready, they could be trained in other vehicles that are far cheaper to make, which the Germans did. You are also not going to design a "training tank" with armor and weapons as if it is going to fulfill a combat role. I think that a lot of our misconceptions that have become common knowledge about the Panzer I comes from looking at it from the end of the war. People find it hard to believe that a nation that was building KING TIGERS could start with something so small as the Panzer i. It has to have been something more than a combat vehicle. So we came up with this idea it was a "training tank" and now everyone just dismisses this as a known variable. It isn't, find me one German Army specification for the development and production of a "training tank." There isn't one. Matter of fact, the specifications for the Panzer I was for a vehicle comparable. with OTHER vehicles of the time. What was the Panzer I's competition in 1934? Well, the biggest was the ubiquitous Vickers 6 ton. Most of the tanks of the period copied that vehicle, including the Russian T26 still in use at Barbarossa. Yet, that was an iteration of the Type B, which was a groundbreaking innovation for the time. The Type A was armed with two machine guns, just like the Panzer I. It had better armor by a few millimetres but was a larger and slower tank. All in all, the Panzer I compared well to the BEST of the era. What else was it going against? Well, the Italians had their little tankettes, like the L3 / 35. That thing was horrible, but was still being fielded in large numbers in 1941. No one ever says it was a "training tank." I mean, they call it a lot of things, but that isn't one of them. Anyway, the point is, we should always fight against conformity in the field of history. Always question what we know, because sometimes it is wrong.
Another thing to add are the early Marders, and Jagdpanzers that hardly ever get mentioned in the early stages. These were invaluable to many divisions by giving them essentially a AT gun on treads to deal with targets the regular panzers couldn't.
@@comraderoffel why did they keep using them? Why did Italy still use the tankette? Why did any nation still use tanks that were obsolete? Because they couldn't build enough of the modern ones to keep pace with demand. It had nothing to do with them being "training vehicles." They were a design that was good for the time they were created and for lack of anything else they stayed in service.
"No serious threat in Europe by land will then [when the soviets are defeated] remain. The armaments industry can be diverted to the Navy and Air Force" - That alone says a lot about how stupid or badly considered attacking the Soviet Union was. Sure in Europe yes, but then you would have to fight on several fronts in Asia. There would be so much more land to cover and so many directions to be attacked. Supply trucks alone would have had to be produced in numbers beyond the capability existing land armaments industry, nevermind freeing up capacity.
what do you mean? if the Soviet union would have been crushed there would have been no competition left on the european continent. Hitlers goal of making Germany the most dominant power in Europe would have been archieved. there was no need to expand any further then that. the UK would have capitulated shortly after the fall of the Soviets because then there would be no hope at all for the UK. even if the UK stays and gets joined by the USA later there would not have been a single chance of landing on the european mainland when Germany isn,t fighting a multiple front war and has all the raw materials it could ever need from the captured soviet oil fields.
@@JesterEric How are you going to drop nuclear bombs without air supremacy above europe? this argument is pointless anyway because the americans would have never found a point in fighting the war once the USSR collapses. forcing the UK into a ceasefire.
Comments from gamer armchair generals who think they know about tanks: Loading... I don't have anything against computer games per se.. but there WAS a time when you could research a tank, a gun or an aircraft etc. without having to sift through tons of computer game nonesense before actually getting to the real, legitimate stuff.
I play WOT, but was reading about and tabletop gaming armoured warfare in 1972 I quite agree, as a game it teaches fuck all about historical machines or tactics
I should also be said, that the primary purpose of tanks is not to fight other tanks. That's what anti-tank guns are for, as they are much cheaper than a tank and can be more easily concealed. They were not as mobile tho, as most of them were not self-propelled.
Really puts paid to the notion that German armor was key to success in ANY of their campaigns... Against Poland, the advance was relatively slow...and the coup de grace was administered by the Soviet invasion. The primary advantage the German army had over the Polish army was artillery firepower. Against France, the Germans were heavily outnumbered in tanks...and had poorer tanks in general (the Somua 35 and the R series were superior to the Pzw1 and Pzw2, and even the Pzw3s in existence in 1940). The German advantage in the west in 1940 was that the French and British high command simply bungled the fight entirely. This is especially galling when you consider that the French army ALONE had superior firepower to the German army. Against the Soviet Union, it would be the experience of the officer corps and NCOs, coupled with all the doctrinal 'this is how we work together' know how that would be so deadly to the Soviet Army. You can have all the superior equipment in the world, but if you don't have a functioning system to maintain said equipment, nor knowledgeable staff to use it...nor leaders experienced in directing the equipment....a more poorly equipped enemy is going to defeat you tactically.
@@georgedoolittle7574, lol. No. You miss my point. The tank specifications are much less important than knowing how to use them. The overall tank numbers are less important than having tanks in the right location. Germany's tank designs are much less interesting and relevant to victory than Germany's land warfare doctrines and officer and NCO corps competencies. Both France and the Soviet Union jad superior armored equipment. France even had 'superior' armored doctrine...in that they actually planned to use armored divisions to Fuller's ideals. ...but those things alone do not win campaigns. German combat success, as far as I can tell, is primarily driven by having the most experienced and competent officer corps of their enemies.
Your analysis while very much right on many points seems to assume that superiority of one tank force against another in combat is the main thing that decides overall combat effectiveness of tank forces. This is not the case. 90% of the time what tanks are are mobile artilery fighting infantry. As long as tank force can cooperate efficiently with infantry that accompanies them (most sane militaries had in some form motorized infantry part of Tank forces on pretty much all levels) they'll do fine even if the other side's tanks are superior in most common paper stats. Tanks were quite important, if not to the overblown level pop history makes them to be. But they were important not as fighting other tanks but to bring superior mobile and protected firepower down on the enemy opposition. The combination of concentration of firepower (each tank is an artilery piece and several machineguns all protected by a mobile bunker) to overwhelm infantry and mobility to exploit such created opening is what makes mechanized forces important. In fact during the war, even the Germans kinda preffered not to have pure tank on tank engagements and preffered to lead the enemy to attack combined tank/infantry forces which can have much more heavier guns following them. Early in the war tanks were also kinda superior to the infantry more than later due to the numerical lack of effective anti tank weaponry. And if infantry on the opposing side doesn't ahve anything heavier than a HMG and tank is effectively invulnerable and can pretty much roll over any position and drive straight for enemy rear.
@@georgedoolittle7574, the French ALSO had wireless radio. But their doctrine didn't allow for as much flexibility in the use of firepower as the German army did. So those wireless sets were of limited use. The point remains, it was less technological innovation and more doctrinal innovation that made the German army as fearsome as it was.
@@georgedoolittle7574, see battle at Hannut. Quite a large tank battle and shows that your assertion that the French didnt try to fight the German armor is incorrect... en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hannut
just for information. The L number is the barrel length in calibers. So a 50mm L42 is 50mmx42 = 2100mm or 210cm. Any gun with the designation kwk is design for an armoured platform, Kampfwagenkanone literally 'assault wagon (vehicle) cannon'. apologies if this has been posted or mentioned elsewhere
10:37 Germans WERE AWARE of the T34 threat because soviets used them in the winter war, germans just ignored that fact because they thought soviets dont have a lot of them
@@peterstatsenko9866 There is a difference between what HQ knows and what troopers are told the enemy has. Germans might have gotten reports on these tanks, but they didn't expect many of them to be available (which is where they were right given the disastrously low state of readiness of pretty much all of the formations) or thought Finns were exagerating it. Hence both might be right.
02:57 There were actually, 337 PzKw Is in total, 152 with the Panzer regiments and 185 with the Pioneers. 03:58 There were 743 PzKw IIs in the Pz. regts. 05:15 There were 625 PzKw 35(t). 06:13 There were 259x37mm armed PzKw IIIs and 707x50mm L/42, 966 total. 06:35 Regarding StuG IIIs, there were 11 assault gun battalions, 5 independent assault brigades and one battery (of 7 StuGs) to each of the SS Reich, SS Totenkopf, LSSAH, Grossdeutschland and 900th Lehr motorized regts/brigades, 301 assault guns in total. 07:02 There were 439 PzKw IVs. 07:07 There were also 186 Pz.Bef.Wg unarmed command tanks and 3 independent Flamm-Panzer battalions with an assortment of 103 tanks, (Pz.II, Pz.III & Char B2) bringing the total of German tanks on 22nd. June 1941 to 3,855 tanks.
At 6:40 when talking about the Panzer IV , it's said they were designed for "close infantry support" however in The_Chieftan's video "Inside the Chieftain's Hatch: Panzer IV, Pt 1" with Hilary Doyle it's said the Panzer IV was a support tank providing close-in artillery fire for PANZER Units. Was there a role change?
This video is part of a number of specials we're doing on the military context to Operation Barbarossa. You can check out Indy's video about transport vehicles and logistics here: ruclips.net/video/4lSCnOltYdY/видео.html. If you want to help us make a complete documentary series on World War Two through more specials just like this one, you can join the TimeGhost Army on www.patreon.com/timeghosthistory or timeghost.tv.
Take care,
Joram
.
*RULES OF CONDUCT*
STAY CIVIL AND POLITE we will delete any comments with personal insults, or attacks.
AVOID PARTISAN POLITICS AS FAR AS YOU CAN we reserve the right to cut off vitriolic debates.
HATE SPEECH IN ANY DIRECTION will lead to a ban.
RACISM, XENOPHOBIA, OR SLAMMING OF MINORITIES will lead to an immediate ban.
PARTISAN REVISIONISM, ESPECIALLY HOLOCAUST AND HOLODOMOR DENIAL will lead to an immediate ban.
Person above is epic
At 2:42 i think you meant milimeter.
On this subject, I cannot recommend enough the book, written by Boris Kavalerchik, titled "The Tanks of Operation Barbarossa".
@World War Two will you go over the other nations armor forces who participate in the invasion of the Soviet Union?
Also, big guns should be described in mm rather than cm. E.g. 37mm, 50mm, 76mm, etc
Can’t say no to a Barbarossa tank special!!!
It is easy just say Nnn... NNnnnnnn.... NNNNNnnnn.... darn just can’t say it
@@45brav BC u know u get banned haha
Das my mood rn at 2am here (PHIL) hahahahahhahahahahahha
Agreed
no, sir!
Indy, your tie looks like a NERF ball. 4/5
What Operation Barbarossa? I thought the planned attack on the USSR is a bluff.
Damn spoilers...
No, it's a capitalist plot to drive a wedge between socialist brothers. Heh.
Operation Barbarossa, also known as operation screw up.
And here I thought Stalin-senpai really would lease Ukraine to the Reich for 80 years
@@feddyvonwigglestein3481 OMG, considering the nature of the senpai-kohai relationship that is hilarious.
It was their main goal, all along...
My father drove the T-26 ,BT7 in Finland and then the T-34 during Barbarossa . He said some of the tanks had no seats and he had to drive sitting on ammunition crates . His tank was ineffective because lack of ammunition and like you said poor communication. No hits penetrated the tanks armour but His tank was disabled by Stuka dive bombers. Out of fuel he was overrun and eventually captured.
"Steiner will attack with his 7.92 cm cannons."
"Mein Fuhrer..."
Rotfl :)
Hahahaahahah good one!
Steiner... is a myth. Men like him are our last hope... and in that sense, he is a truly dangerous man.
I guess you are saying 7.92mm.
Still, it's a really nice one
@@MrLeo613 he mean 7.62 cm,captured soviet gun
Imagine if every single tank was a mighty thicc Bob Semple
That is too terrible a timeline to even contemplate
ha.
How would those do in the mud?
@@Cotswolds1913 Bob Semple tank drives through mud just as well as on everything else. For this day it's the single best tank ever build. It was so terryfing in fact, that they decided not to build any more of them.
@@Cotswolds1913 they are basically upgraded tractors so most likely quite good.
Oh hey, it's me again. The guy who talked about Romanian a lot a couple months ago. So today, since we're talking tanks, lets talk about Romania's armoured forces at the outset of Barbarossa!
In 1919, as part of French-Romanian collaboration, 76 Renault FTs were supplied to Romanian, forming the First Armoured Regiment. 48 were males with the 37mm gun and 28 were females with an 8mm Hotchkiss machine gun. 17 were refurbished at the Leonida works and the State Armoury at Bucharest. These were eventually moved to a separate FT Regiment, created for training new tankers once more modern vehicles were acquired. These vehicles never saw combat, but it's worth mentioning.
In 1936, Romania acquired replacements for the heavily outdated FTs in the form of 126 Skoda LT vz. 36s, designated the R-2. Indy discussed this vehicle, as it was also used by the Germans. In fact, the Romanians had ordered more from Czechoslovakia, which never made it as they were still in the factories during the annexation of Czechia. Armed with a 37mm gun, two machine guns, and equipped with a radio, it was the best vehicle in service with the 1st Armoured Division at the outset of Operation Barbarossa, but still heavily out classed. It would remain as the mainstay of the 1st Division until 1943, when it would be replaced by the Panzer IV.
In 1938, 200 Renault R35s were ordered from France, though only 41 arrived before the fall of France due to slow deliveries. However, 35 more were taken from Polish units fleeing into Moravia in 1939. On November 1, 1939, the 2nd Armoured Regiment was created using these vehicles, the 1st and 2nd Regiments being combined into the 1st Division. The R35s low-velocity 37mm gun was deemed inadequate for anti-tank duty, and so these were designated as anti-infantry vehicles only. It also lacked a radio, making it poor for blitz operations.
Also in Romanian service was the AH-IVR, a tankette utilized by the Recon elements of the Romanian Cavalry divisions. This vehicle was another Czech design, as with... well most Romanian equipment. The AH-IVR had a two-man crew, a driver on the left side and a commander/gunner in a rotating turret on the right. The driver had a machine gun mounted in the hull to his right, operated by a Bowden cable. In the turret was mounted another machine gun in a ball mount, operated by the gunner. The AH-IVR shared the riveted construction of the R-2, with armour ranging in thickness from 6 to 12 milimetres. These vehicles were utilized primarily for scouting, so their limited armament was not seen as much of an issue. Alongside these vehicles were several armoured cars of Czech design, including the Skoda vz. 25, vz. 27, and Tatra vz. 29.
The First Armoured Division was rounded out by two Motorized Vanatori Regiments (3rd and 4th), and the 1st Motorized Artillery Regiment. The Division wouldn't take part in the initial fighting, though it would be used in offensives in the Ukraine later on this year, being assigned to the 4th Army. However, Romanian lacked the industry to produce tanks of its own, and thus would have to rely on German lend-lease to replenish their losses. We'll have to see how that one goes for them...
Main sources this time are from the Tank Encyclopedia and WorldWar2.ro.
Big like from me, man. Really cool you mentioned the Romanian tanks of Barbarossa. One corection though: the R-2s (which I think formed the first armored regiment) participated both in the operation Munich (conquest of Bessarabia) and the siege of Odessa.
If you know yourself but not your enemy, for every victory gained, you'll also suffer a defeat.
-Sun Tzu
"And a commander who knows both himself and his enemy, need not fear the outcome of 100 battles"
Thank you Bletchley Park. We had a liiiittle more than 100 battles after properly cracking Enigma but that promised 100 of them went just Ace.
Who would win
The entirety of Panzergroup 4
Or
1 KV boi
The side with more lend-lease trucks and Spam will win, every time.
The side with heavy artillery at the end of a radio.
Who would win over 163 Enemy Tanks or One Kurt knispel ? 😂
Who would win:
2 entire Soviet armies with 3500 tanks?
Or
2 German army corps with 750 tanks?
Panzergroup 4 because the KVs were outmaneuvered and dispatched pretty easily.
Don't want to sound boring but the photo on 10:18 is one of the Palace Square in St Petersburg (Uritsky Square in Leningrad by the time the picture was taken) and definitely not the Red Square in Moscow. It shows the Winter Palace (aka the Hermitage) and the Alexander Column.
Anyway, great job as usual, many thanks to all the crew!
10:59
There were tungsten rounds for the 5cm gun used by the Panzer III that could penetrate a KV-1, although they were only available in very limited numbers.
Europe's main tungsten deposits are in Portugal and the Portuguese, neutral in WW2, were pressurised not to sell tungsten to the Germans.
@@stevekaczynski3793 Krupp had made almost 2 million tungsten cores for the 5 cm gun before they ceased production in 1943, so the tungsten shortage only came into play late in the war when the Germans were forced to use hardened steel cores.
It's intriguing that in the early years of the war (1939-1941), allied tanks such as the T-34, KV-1, and the French Char B had far better armor and firepower than virtually all of the blitzkrieg panzers; it was simply superior German tactics and discipline that prevailed.
ALSO THE PANZER COULD OUT SHOOT WALLIES 3:1 OR MORE....BUT LIKE IN UKRAINE MORAL TRAINING AND LEADERSHIP. BECOME DECISIVE .
*Thank you so much for these videos... All of you guys over at the World War Two channel are absolute legends for doing these WWII in real time series... as well as these special episodes that dive deeper into different aspects of the war. Really love these videos where you go in depth of different topics during the war. Very happy I found your channel recently and have so many videos to binge watch... I feel bad for people who have already seen these older videos and are waiting for the new episodes weekly, while I am watching for the first time these amazing videos... This series may be over by the time I get to the end of the war... Thank you guys for making these videos, when I get the ability to donate & support you guys financially, you can bet your bottom dollar that I am for sure throwing my money at you guys for the wartime effort to keep fighting! 😂*
Thanks so much for your comment and support, Brandon!
- TG Ambassador
I consider myself pretty well read on ww2 but I always find out more when I watch you guys. Glad to be a patron.
Thanks to people like you. This channel continues to go on. Thanks.
@@GunnyKeith it's not that much money anyway man, I'd just waste it on a few pints anyway haha
Thanks for the kind words. It may not seem like much but Keith is right! Its people like you who keep us going.
The "I cannot predict just what is going to happen" joke makes me laugh every time. I love the clips - just awesome.
Everybody is always talking about the T-26 tank but not much is ever said about the BT series. Would really like a special about them.
They were good at the time they got introduced but they lacked armour.
The Chieftan has a couple good videos about the BT tanks.
I believe the BT holds the record for most airtime and long distance jump achieved by a tank.
@Юрий Тойкичев A tankette is only fitted with Machineguns. The BT and T-26 are tanks, but what you say about their actions intended is true for 1941.
@Юрий Тойкичев Perhaps by 1940s standards you could consider them a tankette.
By 1930s the Vickers 6-Ton aka 7 Ton Polish (actually 9 tons) or T-26 (9-10 tons) was a light tank.
Keep in mind that Vickers design is from the 1920s, tank technology had over a decade to surpass it by 1941
A TKS was Polish tankette and it was only about 2 tons.
A Panzer II was about 7-9 tons for comparison.
Recon was pretty much intended use of light tanks.
I could say that StuGs were kinda oddball in German army as those were part of the artillery branch (very prestigious one) and not in Panzer units. Which some Panzer proponents never stopped complaining about, particularly a certain Heinz Guderian.
"Wait? Weren't StuGs used as replacement tanks?" some may ask and to that I say "Yes but later in the war and that is interesting subject alone".
For Barbarossa, Germany had organized the 250 or so StuGs into 10-12 battalions (each battalion had 18-20 vehicles) and several independent batteries (each battery had 4-7 Stugs) which were scattered to support various armies but not in motorised formations as those could call upon Panzers. During Barbarossa, StuGs were used particularly in cracking open some of the pockets that rapid advance created but even in this they were never used against other tanks (although 75 HE shell could crack T-26 and BT -tanks) and StuGs were limited to engaging machine-gun nests and field artillery.
After Barbarossa, some StuG battalions would be re-named as StuG-Brigades without actually changing its formation into the size of an Brigade which may confuse some. Although there would be many changes in 1942 particularly after introduction of model F/8 which turned StuG from mobile armored gun casemate into a tank-killing meme machine we all love.
Doesn't hurt to have some organic self propelled anti-tank capability in your unit, rather than relying on the towed 37mm and new towed 75mm (pre-production units started appearing for Barbarossa in late 1941 and some captured French 75mm were also pressed into service), and 88mm anti-air guns (which didn't get the mount for quick low depression direct fire until later in the war).
They were not oddballs at all. They were direct support guns with a direct lineage to the "flying artillery" of the pre-mechanized era.
The Panzer arm/formations used StuGs as defensive tank-destroyers, not assault guns or tanks. Save vehicle different purpose.
Same kind of story goes for the SU-152. They made a driving bunker buster just to realise in late 1942 that they were the only tanks that could break the Tigers armor/knock out their crew (from the front at least).
A StuG is a gun on tracks, for the simple reason once you have fired you have given your position away. So static close support guns became obsolete after WW 2 and during WW 2 they were already showing their age. A tank is an offensive weapon and a StuG with something like an 75mm L42 gun a defensive one.
@@CharlesvanDijk-ir6bl That is not accurate. The StuG was an offensive weapon (ie; *assault gun*). It was not just a "gun on tracks" but also heavily armored. It was designed to lead infantry against prepared defenses. it was only after Germany was on the defensive did it become used primarily as anti-tank guns.
I'd love to get my hands on some 7.92cm machine guns.
Imagine the cost per round, though.
Read the pinned comment 😳
Maybe if you look under your pants
Can you imagine an MG42 7.92cm machine gun. The barrel would melt in ten seconds! Sorry Indy, couldn't help it.
Spoilers:
They'll see some action in 1946, With new model Ausf. E Wolf-tanks deployed during Operation Algenblute, the German Invasion of Scotland.
The Soviet also fielded some Kv-2 (unknown number), T-35 (58 on June 1 1941 (wikipedia)) and t-28 (411 at the beginning listed on Wikipedia)
There is slight issue in the conversion at 2:42, it should say '0.31in' not '3.1in'.
EDIT: there are multiple instances of this issue.
And 7.92 mm, not cm.
Yes, it's in regard to the armament on the Panzer Mk I, it was equipped with 7.92 mm machine guns, it's misprinted on the slide as 7.92 cm.
Came to the comments to say this.
Well maybe it’s a very rare 7,92 cm MG that noone ever heard of 🤔
Read the pinned comment 😳
Man the fact that this content is available on youtube(for free) puts History channel to shame!!!!
I will support this work as soon I can get a job after this curent crysis.
Thank you! We look forward to welcoming you into the TimeGhost Army.
2:44 is should be 7,92 mm (.31") instead of cm :) With double 7,9 cm autocannons it would be indeed a death star like tankette ;)
Agreed.
Beat me to it! :-)
Similarly, although 3.7cm is accurate, all metric gun bores are described in mm, so: 37mm would be the correct designation.
Read the pinned comment 😳
@@30Mauser not really in German case. They described all big bore guns in centemeters. So you have 7,9 mm MG 15 machine gun and 2 cm MG151/20 autocannon. 8.8 Flak, 8.8 Kwk, 7.5 Pak, 10.5 LeFH howitzer etc.
About the BT-7 and sloped armor: the tank which had sloped armour was the M version of the BT-7 tank. They were several versions of the BT tank, most prominently the normal BT-7, which had a standart 20k 45mm gun, the BT-7M which had a 20k 45mm gun and sloped armour and the BT-7A (A standing for "Artillery"), which had a short-barreled 76mm field gun. All of them were considered as "glass cannons" by the soldiers: they weren't well armoured but they packed a really good punch at the time, and they were freaking fast.
“This video is sponsored by world of tanks.”
War Thunder is better
@@EggyJeff2725 let people enjoy what they enjoy, better is subjective
@@basicpigeonbee I agree that which game is better depends on the person, but I was just simply stating an opinion
@@EggyJeff2725 N O
@@EggyJeff2725 too many x-s in ur names
Where is The Chieftain though? I need my 30 minute rant on tanks by the man with the Cavalry hat!
@Chris_Wooden_Eye As far as I remember it was just the H35 tank.
Oh, I think they’re allowed give it a go on their own channel. I’ll be doing a Soviet doctrine video in a couple of weeks, anyway.
The_Chieftain Looking forward to it!
id imagine hed find the turret of the kv 2 quite roomy.
and the 20mm pointer
We get really obsessed with tank v tank performance when the main point of a tank is to support infantry.
Wot generation VS rts generation
But they don’t have our tanks like the Type 63, they wish they did
They have food for their soldiers, so there's that.....
@@Raskolnikov70 dumbass, all food should go for the Great Dear Leader
Hey so what’s the word with your sis?
Kim Jong un, i thought you were dead!
@@jakartagamer6188 Behold the power of Juche!!!!!
The Panzers III and IV were the workhorses of the German army during the war. Majority of the tank at Kursk I believe were IIIs and IVs
"well I'm glad you asked" jajajajaj great sense of humor you got Indy, you've become one of the things I eagerly await weekly.
Great to know! Glad you appreciate our content :)
First logistics and now tanks. This makes me happy. :)
Glad to hear it.
It's interesting to take note of the different ideas on how tanks are to be used and made. To many comparisons boil it down to stats of the individual tanks. Good on you guys for talking about the production and tactics that both nations have towards their tank forces.
Important to note as well that throughout the war most tank kills were made by stationary AT guns, so you can get the wrong image when you just look at which tanks could kill the opposing tanks.
Czechoslovak tanks (Panzer 35 (t) and 38 (t)) will constitute an important part of the tanks employed by the Germans and Romanians against the USSR. They were very good against Soviet light tanks.
@Chris_Wooden_Eye They were used during invasion of France as well so I guess that was some karma for French for not holding up their treaty with Czechoslovakia lol
7th Panzer under Erwin Rommel in France (the Ghost Division/ Division Fantome) was primarily equipped with the Czech tanks.
@Chris_Wooden_Eye The Versaille treaty had cut off German sympathetic populations in countries where they were unhappy, in Czechoslovakia it had resulted in civil disorder and a couple of massacres of German citizens.
there was a general feeling that there had been errors by all the militarists in the Versailles treaty that nice liberal people ought to correct.
Basically every time theres a treaty that draws up borders a generation later theres a dispute about the border because populations have moved and so have political alliances and theres a new generation of keen young people who want to redraw those borders without the mistakes the last generation made.
See - Poland in 1939, Syria currently, any nation with a dispute in Africa, the pig war and a thousand other examples.
Chamberlain didnt have the military or politcal backing to oppose the Germans over what many people in his own government thought was a legitimate grievance, they definitely didnt want to start a new war over it, the French probably had the same problem
@@voiceofraisin3778 For your info Borders between Czechoslovakia and Germany was not changed it was the same borders that Austria- Hungary had with Germany Historically.
@@voiceofraisin3778 Bullshit. Germans were attackingCzechoslovak soldiers, they had right to open fire on them.
I`ve always enjoyed playing with my Czech 34T and 38T tanks in microarmor games....I have tons and tons of French, Soviet, British, Italian, American, and German WW2 armor and other vehicles (representing from very early war to end of war), as well as some Japanese ACVs.....ah the sound of an 88L 76...good times of the miniatures tabletop war gaming...T U for another great show Indy and guys!! I always enjoy your stuff. I have replayed many scenarios from the initial German advance into Belgium (vs. French Somuas etc.), Stalingrad to Rostov and Karkov etc...and this episode brought back many fun memories of great gaming at conventions etc...T U.
Given your description of German tanks in this episode and your previous special about the logistics of Barbarossa, I am amazed that the Germans managed to be as successful in the initial stages as they were. A lot of what you are describing seems to be setting the Germans up for failure so it will be interesting to see why they were so successful at first.
Two nearly failed states start throwing punches to compensate for poor economic and ethical decisions, but one gets in a sucker punch after shaking hands with the other.
That's basically what happened.
As a ww2 nerd this is the one of the best videos I've ever nerded out to on RUclips. Everyone loves the eastern front, esp, barbarossa and, everyone loves talking about panzers
That's great to hear! We'll be publishing more content for you to nerd out to
It would be cool if they could colab with Mark Felton Productions if they do another of these for DDay
Why haven't I watched these Specials earlier? These are great, and a great overview on the subject. One small issue, the Pz IV was not an infantry support tank. Stugs were for infantry support. Pz IV's were a tank support tank, since the Pz III never had a decent HE round until the N model, which had the same gun as the early Pz IV's.
Nick Thanks for that info
Your videos are amazingly accurate and well informed , thank you for these masterpieces 👌🏻
You are very welcome! Thank you for watching
There are some mistakes were made. They are technical but important.
I really thankful you guys adding subtitles. As a non native english speaker im having hard time to understand english speaking but subtitles helping me
Everyone Gangsta till the KV-1 appear in the front
Everyone having KV-1 gangsta until they realize they have no fuel, no radio and the gun isn't bore-sighted
KV-1 is still badass 4 KV-1 killed 43 German Tanks without losing single loss. With one KV-1 having been shot 156 times
KV-2
KV-8 for bright Soviet Flame.
@@SoundAndFuryy when the enemy troops start to call thier AT tanks Army-door-nockker-machine because the rounds bounds of your armour, I think you have at least some reason to be happy. However tinitus would have been killing
much more useful video than any 30~60 min TV programs. respect :)
10:18 that's not Red Square, that's Palace Square in St Petersburg
Still terrifying 80 years later to see a soviet tank on my Riga's old railroad bridge at 09:25.
Hi Indy and crew. I love all your shows and have been watching for a while now, i had a question maybe for out of the foxholes. Was Carl Mannerheim a knight of the Mannerheim cross himself?
He wasn't a knight, he was the king of it ;)
He was awarded it in October 1941, and was one of the only two people to receive the 1st-class Mannerheim cross (the other being general Heinrichs).
Mannerheim thought it was odd to carry a cross named after himself, but accepted it from president Ryti after all the previous awardees requested that he be awarded it.
Thanks
Pretty easy answer here: yes!
Not worth doing a whole OOTF on this but we will most definitely do a bio on Mannerheim when the right time comes.
Great coverage, content & commentary. Well done sir. Thank you
You are very welcome. Thanks for watching.
11:23 More specifically: The T-26 up to the model M and the earlier BTs up to the model BT-7 didn't have radios. So only a third of the Soviet tanks at this point have radios.
But does this account for all the tanks designed with radios but not built with them? A lot of soviet tanks were supplied with western lend-lease radios because of radio shortages in the USSR. Before those western radios were supplied and more wartime manufacturing in the Urals kicked on a lot of tanks designed with radios didn't have them.
Plus the initial radio sets installed on Soviet tanks (71-TK-3) was complicated to use and far inferior to the german ones
As I understand it. Only the platoon leader had a radio, when available, so one of five and they were fragile and of very limited range.
15,822 vehicle radios to USSR under Lend Lease page 35
www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/LL-Ship/LL-Ship-5.html
@@auguststorm2037Training memo, 8th Mechanised Corp 15th Tank Division January 1941. "All of the 30th Tank Regiments TK Radios have been put into store the 1st year radio operators have only begun lessons on listening to radio messages, the 2nd year radio operators aren't working on radios and so unable to practise how to pickup or transmit using a telegraph key. Moreover in other units the radio operators have an unacceptably low proficiency, were unable to master equipment that was too complicated for them and as a result of unskilled usage the radios quickly broke, even cases of deliberate sabotage by tankers to hide their technical illiteracy."
@@watcherzero5256 now THAT is bad workmen blaming their tools
Thanks for the good extra vid I usually only watch the news but this is great👍
Glad you liked it!
There are still too many Tiger fan boys and such out there. I'll just show them this amazing video when next discussing Operation Barbarossa.
BuT tHe CorNer!
@@simonkimberly6956 but the T H I C C sexy smexy boxy twigwer twank uwu
Tigers didn't enter the war until Germany was already losing it. All of their big successful campaigns from 1939 to 1942, no Tigers.
@@RandomDudeOne I must agree. Even though it's not so black and white. By the time Tigers entered service the war was by no means lost yet. Not like with Tiger II etc. It all came down to Germany's industrial capacity compared to the allies. No single technology can change that.
@@Sharnoy1 The war was lost before it began. It just took several years for everyone to realise.
I was expecting the Chieftain but you did a really good job Indi
Thanks! There will be more Chieftain collabs in the future :)
I don’t know why but I feel like Soviet Union going to lose against Germany, even though I know that Germany lost against the Soviet Union
It's ok, you share the opinion of everyone who was alive at that time.
Most of the world thought the same, while on the surface, the Red Army appeared to be a disorganized mess with a mostly inexperienced officer Corp and this was true, everyone underestimated the Soviet Unions ability to take horrific losses and continue fighting. It was just as much a sleeping giant as the US in my opinion.
Say every nations invading Russia ever
You forgot that the German Empire in world war 1 kick Russia ass and etc
Most of the world didn't expect the germans to give the soviets the resolve to fight that hard by being so ruthless with the pows and civillians
The problem with the Soviet t-26'es and other tanks was that NONE of them were equipped with Armor Piercing shells. Prior to 1941 the Soviet Union did not have a production line for Armor piercing shells. They made few here and there but over 90% of shells made for Tank guns were high explosive anti infantry shells.
Anti tank shells were made for artillery and field guns, since the Soviets tank doctrine were completely different than the german's and did not expect to fight tank on tank. However this changed in 41 when the 10 000 light tanks were indeed destroyed by other tanks.
The KV was truly a technological hiatus between Germany and Russia in 1941. No German AT Gun could get through its armor until the appearance of the PAK 40 in 1942. In 1941 Germans had to rely on the Flak 36 to do the job.
Contrary to the earlier versions of the T-34, which had many flaws in terms of vision ports and turret size given the fact it was a rushed into action tank, the KV, on the other hand, was a better conceived tank. It had more proper outside vision for the crew, the turret was big enough to fit three men inside.
While theoretically it was still feasible for a Panzer III with the short 50mm barrel to fight an early version of the T-34 if it managed to close the distance with it, which was not a difficult thing to do, yet, I think neither the short 50mm nor the longer L60 50mm of it would be able to get through the KV armor, even at blank ranges. I have never seen so far a comparison between the KV-1 and the Panzer III L60 fighting against each other. It would be very interesting to see that.
The KV-1 was quite much responsible for saving the city of Leningrad, stopping many units from Army Group North and delaying them.
Even if you can't penetrate the armour, there are a number of ways you can disable a tank, targeting and damaging the tracks being one of them.
@@Grondorn certainly, but a tank without tracks can still fire!
@@TheStugbit That is indeed correct, but at this stage, in part due to the severe lack of training of the Soviet tank crews, and in part due to the effective German infantry anti-tank tactics, most tanks rendered immobile were sitting ducks.
@@Grondorn the one in Raseiniai still gave quite of a headache for the "duck hunters", you know. And it wasn't the only one. The KVs effectively delayed Army Group North to the point Leningrad's defenses were properly set. Not all Soviet units were incompetent and since the KV factory was in the North, there were more of them there.
Well, all this changed when the PAK 40 appeared. The KV from an imminent threat it became a big and slow target. The T-34 surpassed it as the best Soviet tank. But in 41 the KV was best.
Outstanding episode !
Thanks!
French "trophy" tanks like the Char B? As I understand it. USSR had no more than 400 operational T34's at the time. Even though the USSR had one of the lowest ratios of paved roads to area it was one of the largest, if not the largest, producer of armored cars before 1942. Developed from the Ford AA two wheel drive truck produced under license (this seems to be a thing with some) the BA-3, BA-6 and BA-10 had a 45mm gun.
Captured & converted French vehicles in German service
www.axishistory.com/books/138-equipment/equipment/4260-captured-a-converted-french-vehicles-in-german-service
There was an article about russian logistics divisions, making wooden roads from nothing so that supplies can be delivered by trucks
Every episode is extremely enlightening and informative. I honestly watched some episodes and I didn't think they would be good but they were keep up the great work guys
Thank you - glad we didn’t disappoint - but mght we be so bold and ask why you expected to be disappointed? It’s always good to try to understand how we can be better at projecting the right expectations.
9:13 "Betushka" means "little BT"...
lol
In 6 months I hope you guys do a episode like this on American and Japanese aircraft carriers and aircraft. You could also do an episode on various aircraft used.
There will be plenty of PH harbour content when the time comes.
Saying that the Panzer 1 was made only for training is perhaps an overstatement, it was used as a training tank and to develope doctrine but it was also built to go into combat.
That said, keep up the good work and stay safe!
One of the most impressive things about WW2 is the amazingly fast evolution of tanks.
Hi Indy and team!
Concerning your statement towards the fact, that the Wehrmacht had no tank mounted weapon that could penetrate a KV tank. That is not completely true. The independent tank destroyer battalion 521, subordinated to Army Group Center, Panzergruppe 2, XXIV. motorized korps in support of 3rd Panzer Division, had two "Dicker Max" prototypes. They fielded a 10,5cm K18 artillery gun on a Panzer-IV-chassis with 50mm of frontal armour. It was deployed as a heavy tank destroyer and infantry support gun. This gun could penetrate the KV's 90mm of armour at a range of more than 2.000m (111mm at 2.000m, 155mm at 500m).
Well yes, there were only two of them at all and one was destroyed just four days into the campaign, but your strickt thesis is not correct.
Additionally, the Wehrmacht fielded the Panzerjäger I, which was a czech 4,7cm gun on a late Panzer-I-chassis. They had a armour piercing capability comparable to the newest Panzer III (up to 59mm at 500m, 41mm at 1.000m),but no armour whatsoever. They were organized in independent tank destroyer battalions (like the mentioned 521). 202 Panzerjägers were built in total, I have yet to find a number of vehicles in June '41. As you mentioned the StuG III, of which - by this point - only around 400 were built in total (and some lost in France), it is only fair to mention its little brother, that was employed in the same manner.
In all other respects this was a very enjoyable episode! Well done
I'm going to use this comment in an Across the Airwaves episode, a format where i read the most interesting and enlightening comments we've got. We're just getting it going, but that should come out in August or early September.
Big thanks for that!
This "channel" is the best that I've run across in regards to history. Thank you!
Thanks Brian!
Oh, I love me some eastern front. Operation barbarossa coming right up.OH, GOODY GOODY GUM DROPS
I love you Indy!!!!
You make the Best content ive ever seen on YT
We're glad to! Thanks!
Missing the captured british and French tanks which were used, sigh ^^ (The Germans made use of a few A10/13s on the eastern front too.
beutepanzer.ru is a good site for documenting Allied vehicles in Axis units. Folk seem to forget all the British and Polish vehicles which served with the German army in the Soviet Union.
I enjoyed the normal approach to this special rather than having someone else talk about it like was done before.
Lightning McQueen must have been inspired by the blitzkrieg
The Germans are speed
And on speed
You can’t sprint forever
@@dongiovanni4331 The original War On Drugs
Robert Gough you can with pre-workout Pervetin!
Great video. You've forgot about soviet KV-2 and t-35 that were at the battlefield too in June 1941.
10:21 those probably will be three 7.62*mm* machineguns, not cm :)
But a 7.62cm machine gun sounds awesome....
Read the pinned comment 😳
8:06 That vehicle in the center has what looks like a manual transmission diagram painted on the back. I thought that all vehicles back then were manual? Am I mistaken in what that painted icon is, or is there a reason that they would externally mark the vehicle as MT?
10:19 / 13:15 it's not Red Square, it's Leningrad. The tanks are leaving the Uritskogo square (now Palace square). Google KV-1 Leningrad, you'll see this photo.
So instructive, but the more you reveal the different tanks secrets, the more they become intimidating!
1941 Barbarossa in a nutshell:
Germany: We have superior tanks and tactics
USSR: Laughs in sloped armour and 76 mm gun
In the distance a 88mm flak guns just smiles.. .
USSR:We have more manpower than you have bullets.
USSR: We have land. Lots of land. Lots and lots of land. Come and take it.
French laughed with their sloped armored FMC 36 before the the Soviets
@@Raskolnikov70 Germany: *[Lebensraum intensifies]*
Tanks a lot Indy and Time Ghost Crew!
You are very welcome.
Yes! I was looking forward to this special!
YOU GOT THERE FIRST BUT I WAS NOT FAR BEHIND L.O.L...............
We hope you weren't disappointed!
@@WorldWarTwo Not in the slightest! I am amazed with the amount of research you guys did. Keep up the great work!
Barbarossa in 5 days! Finally the most important and interesting part of WW2 on this channel!
Now this is pretty interesting. I did not know the Soviets already had so many tanks at the start of the invasion, but their logistical and personnel shortcomings rendered them ineffective or outright useless. That's very cool.
Tanks dont fight, tankers do, and that proved to be the big issue, along with lack of proper coordination and cooperation between units and branches.
you may find a youtube video with hitler telling mannerheim number of soviet tanks they captured
he couldn't believe any country can produce that much
@@viktorpetukhov727 It's hard to speculate whether Hitler really was so misinformed about Soviet armor strength, or whether he was just trying to excuse his own spectacular mistake. He was a delusional, self-aggrandizing sociopath and an ideological fanatic, after all.
What's interesting is that - during that same conversation - he actually inflates the number of Soviet front-line tanks to be over 35.000, instead of the actual 23.000 -- This was obviously a bald-faced lie, but he stated it with so much confidence that everyone around him just nodded and went "yes, 35.000 tanks... that's correct". Which is pretty illustrative of the entire war.
@@runi5413 The German intelligence was notoriously bad prior to the invasion, so its pretty safe to assume that they were all grossly misinformed. And his inflated number might be an high estimate from his own command, which was embroiled in the largest invasion in history. Just about no one had exact numbers during the conflict.
They were in the middle of a massive reorganisation, and Stalin was *really* hoping that the Germans wouldn't invade until the Red Army was ready in 1942/43, in spite of the massive evidence and reports he received daily to the contrary.
So many world of tanks memories of pz 38t,kv 1,t 34
A 7.92 cm machine gun, 3.1", wouldn't be a machine gun any longer...
(It's in mm.)
No, it would be a REALLY AWESOME machine gun :D
Read the pinned comment 😳
The 20mm. L.55 KwK. 30 had received an ammunition upgrade with Pzgr.40 APCR shot (52mm. @ 0 degrees @ 100 metres) being available, alongside the more common PzGr.39 APCBC (40mm. @ 0 degrees @ 100 metres) by 1941.
Was Japan at this point in planning for the operation ever considered for the invasion of the Soviet Union?
The battle of Khalkhin-gol river showed them that USSR is not an easy target. Japanese did not have that many tanks and aircrafts. Second they really needed oil after USA established an embargo. They could get this oil only on Southeast Asia, not in Soviet Union.
I was wondering if the Germans coordinating Japan to invade Russia. If the USSR had to find a war on 2 fronts would have made it difficult to fight the Nazis.
No, after the Japanese defeat at Khalkin Gol in 1939 they realised that fighting the soviet union would be alot harder then they thought, additionally they were in a huge war with china, one that wasnt ending as quickly as expected. They even signed a non agression pact with the soviets in april of '41 without even talking to the Germans before hand. Just another example really of how the Japanese and the Germans were only allies in name and not in action.
Even if they did (which I doubt) I don't see how Japan would be able to wage a war against China, USA (from December 1941) and USSR.
They are busy with China.
9:25 picture taken in Riga, Latvia on railway bridge
Odd that you specify that Pzkw1 was "meant to be a training vehicle" when MHV has claimed that it is utterly false in one of his more recent videos. Indy, Sparty, care to comment?
I was going to mention the same thing.
It was purely designed as a training tank to develop armoured doctrine and tactics. Many are confused by the Pz2 though thinking that was supposed to be a training tank that was pressed into combat service too when it was always intended to be a frontline unit.
@KOBRA Military History Visualized
If it were never intended for combat, as Jentz put it, why would they have made it of the best armor quality steel that they could?
@@TheChieftainsHatch Three points, Firstly It was designed to be resistant only to rifles with 14mm armour, the C variant doubled this. Second the Germans never used their best armour in tanks, they used homogenised steel and in some cases Einsatzhärtung (Treated or Case Hardened) which rather than being heated and quenched to make true hardened armour only heated it gently with flames. The only German tank that used Face Hardened steel of the same quality used by the German navy was the Maus. Thirdly the only Panzer 1 which received Einsatzhärtung were those that were intended to be retrofitted into other uses such as SPG at a later time, about 264. The Pz3 when introduced only had a bolt on plate of Einsatzhärtung on the turret face with bolt on plates being added to the glacis and superstructure in 1941.
Crazy that a 7 year old tank was obsolete in 1941, right now a 7 year old tank would be state of the art, military technology sure did go fast back then.
The T-26 was the best tank of the Spanish Civil War, but obsolete by the time of Barbarossa. Yes, tank technology did advance very quickly. Same with aircraft.
Ok, before I begin, this idea I'm putting out isn't completely my own. First RUclipsr to bring it up was Chieftain. This is purely a situation where we should NEVER stop questioning things in history.
These two phrases are a huge pet peeve of mine: "The Panzer I was DESIGNED as a training tank." and "The Panzer I / II were 'stop gap' tanks."
We will start with the later, it is easier to dismiss. There is no such thing as a stop gap tank. It was an evolutionary advancement from previous models. ALL tanks could be considered stop gap tanks. That is like saying the M60 was a stop gap until the US Army got the M1 Abrams. You could argue that the M3 LEE was a stop gap, since there was problems fitting the 76 mm in a turret. Yet, we can all agree that the M3 was a bad idea all around.
As for the Panzer I being DESIGNED as a training tank. Chieftain had some harsh words for this, purely on the logistics standpoint. Even a nation that isn't thin on resources like Germany isn't going to devote time, money, or material to develop a "training tank." They are going to create a tank and then train soldiers to use that tank IN that tank. If the tank in question wasn't ready, they could be trained in other vehicles that are far cheaper to make, which the Germans did. You are also not going to design a "training tank" with armor and weapons as if it is going to fulfill a combat role.
I think that a lot of our misconceptions that have become common knowledge about the Panzer I comes from looking at it from the end of the war. People find it hard to believe that a nation that was building KING TIGERS could start with something so small as the Panzer i. It has to have been something more than a combat vehicle. So we came up with this idea it was a "training tank" and now everyone just dismisses this as a known variable. It isn't, find me one German Army specification for the development and production of a "training tank." There isn't one.
Matter of fact, the specifications for the Panzer I was for a vehicle comparable. with OTHER vehicles of the time. What was the Panzer I's competition in 1934? Well, the biggest was the ubiquitous Vickers 6 ton. Most of the tanks of the period copied that vehicle, including the Russian T26 still in use at Barbarossa. Yet, that was an iteration of the Type B, which was a groundbreaking innovation for the time. The Type A was armed with two machine guns, just like the Panzer I. It had better armor by a few millimetres but was a larger and slower tank. All in all, the Panzer I compared well to the BEST of the era. What else was it going against? Well, the Italians had their little tankettes, like the L3 / 35. That thing was horrible, but was still being fielded in large numbers in 1941. No one ever says it was a "training tank." I mean, they call it a lot of things, but that isn't one of them.
Anyway, the point is, we should always fight against conformity in the field of history. Always question what we know, because sometimes it is wrong.
Another thing to add are the early Marders, and Jagdpanzers that hardly ever get mentioned in the early stages. These were invaluable to many divisions by giving them essentially a AT gun on treads to deal with targets the regular panzers couldn't.
@@comraderoffel why did they keep using them? Why did Italy still use the tankette? Why did any nation still use tanks that were obsolete? Because they couldn't build enough of the modern ones to keep pace with demand. It had nothing to do with them being "training vehicles." They were a design that was good for the time they were created and for lack of anything else they stayed in service.
@@comraderoffel No other option available. Switching manufacturing mid war was impossible.
8:48
How many different T-26 models do you want to make?
Yes!
"No serious threat in Europe by land will then [when the soviets are defeated] remain. The armaments industry can be diverted to the Navy and Air Force" - That alone says a lot about how stupid or badly considered attacking the Soviet Union was. Sure in Europe yes, but then you would have to fight on several fronts in Asia. There would be so much more land to cover and so many directions to be attacked. Supply trucks alone would have had to be produced in numbers beyond the capability existing land armaments industry, nevermind freeing up capacity.
what do you mean? if the Soviet union would have been crushed there would have been no competition left on the european continent. Hitlers goal of making Germany the most dominant power in Europe would have been archieved. there was no need to expand any further then that. the UK would have capitulated shortly after the fall of the Soviets because then there would be no hope at all for the UK. even if the UK stays and gets joined by the USA later there would not have been a single chance of landing on the european mainland when Germany isn,t fighting a multiple front war and has all the raw materials it could ever need from the captured soviet oil fields.
Germany would have been bombed into submission. Berlin would have been destroyed by atomic weapons forcing a surrender
They really did think it would be a walkover, didn't they?
@@JesterEric How are you going to drop nuclear bombs without air supremacy above europe? this argument is pointless anyway because the americans would have never found a point in fighting the war once the USSR collapses. forcing the UK into a ceasefire.
Next episode is gonna be siiiick boiis.
This may sound crazy, but I predict that the Soviet Union will actually win. It may be a hard fight, though.
T-34 and KV hadn't AP shells at the beginning of the war, there was a production issue with 76mm AP
Not exactly true. They had them, just in much less numbers in western military district.
Comments from gamer armchair generals who think they know about tanks: Loading...
I don't have anything against computer games per se.. but there WAS a time when you could research a tank, a gun or an aircraft etc. without having to sift through tons of computer game nonesense before actually getting to the real, legitimate stuff.
World of Tanks is a curse.
See also: "swords beat spears".
I play WOT, but was reading about and tabletop gaming armoured warfare in 1972
I quite agree, as a game it teaches fuck all about historical machines or tactics
That time was also the time when you could hardly get any info at all. People seem to have forgotten what it's like pre internet.
I should also be said, that the primary purpose of tanks is not to fight other tanks. That's what anti-tank guns are for, as they are much cheaper than a tank and can be more easily concealed. They were not as mobile tho, as most of them were not self-propelled.
Romanian tanks:What is a tank
Just a joke but still I don't have manny tanks
Excellent Episode Indeed , hope you will be doing an episode on the Legendary German Acht Acht - 88 mm multiple purpose gun in the near future.
Really puts paid to the notion that German armor was key to success in ANY of their campaigns...
Against Poland, the advance was relatively slow...and the coup de grace was administered by the Soviet invasion. The primary advantage the German army had over the Polish army was artillery firepower.
Against France, the Germans were heavily outnumbered in tanks...and had poorer tanks in general (the Somua 35 and the R series were superior to the Pzw1 and Pzw2, and even the Pzw3s in existence in 1940). The German advantage in the west in 1940 was that the French and British high command simply bungled the fight entirely. This is especially galling when you consider that the French army ALONE had superior firepower to the German army.
Against the Soviet Union, it would be the experience of the officer corps and NCOs, coupled with all the doctrinal 'this is how we work together' know how that would be so deadly to the Soviet Army. You can have all the superior equipment in the world, but if you don't have a functioning system to maintain said equipment, nor knowledgeable staff to use it...nor leaders experienced in directing the equipment....a more poorly equipped enemy is going to defeat you tactically.
@@georgedoolittle7574, lol.
No.
You miss my point. The tank specifications are much less important than knowing how to use them. The overall tank numbers are less important than having tanks in the right location.
Germany's tank designs are much less interesting and relevant to victory than Germany's land warfare doctrines and officer and NCO corps competencies.
Both France and the Soviet Union jad superior armored equipment. France even had 'superior' armored doctrine...in that they actually planned to use armored divisions to Fuller's ideals.
...but those things alone do not win campaigns.
German combat success, as far as I can tell, is primarily driven by having the most experienced and competent officer corps of their enemies.
Your analysis while very much right on many points seems to assume that superiority of one tank force against another in combat is the main thing that decides overall combat effectiveness of tank forces. This is not the case. 90% of the time what tanks are are mobile artilery fighting infantry. As long as tank force can cooperate efficiently with infantry that accompanies them (most sane militaries had in some form motorized infantry part of Tank forces on pretty much all levels) they'll do fine even if the other side's tanks are superior in most common paper stats.
Tanks were quite important, if not to the overblown level pop history makes them to be. But they were important not as fighting other tanks but to bring superior mobile and protected firepower down on the enemy opposition. The combination of concentration of firepower (each tank is an artilery piece and several machineguns all protected by a mobile bunker) to overwhelm infantry and mobility to exploit such created opening is what makes mechanized forces important. In fact during the war, even the Germans kinda preffered not to have pure tank on tank engagements and preffered to lead the enemy to attack combined tank/infantry forces which can have much more heavier guns following them.
Early in the war tanks were also kinda superior to the infantry more than later due to the numerical lack of effective anti tank weaponry. And if infantry on the opposing side doesn't ahve anything heavier than a HMG and tank is effectively invulnerable and can pretty much roll over any position and drive straight for enemy rear.
@@Blazo_Djurovic, exactly. Im mostly ranting about the pop history version of ww2.
@@georgedoolittle7574, the French ALSO had wireless radio. But their doctrine didn't allow for as much flexibility in the use of firepower as the German army did. So those wireless sets were of limited use.
The point remains, it was less technological innovation and more doctrinal innovation that made the German army as fearsome as it was.
@@georgedoolittle7574, see battle at Hannut.
Quite a large tank battle and shows that your assertion that the French didnt try to fight the German armor is incorrect...
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hannut
just for information. The L number is the barrel length in calibers. So a 50mm L42 is 50mmx42 = 2100mm or 210cm. Any gun with the designation kwk is design for an armoured platform, Kampfwagenkanone literally 'assault wagon (vehicle) cannon'. apologies if this has been posted or mentioned elsewhere
10:37 Germans WERE AWARE of the T34 threat because soviets used them in the winter war, germans just ignored that fact because they thought soviets dont have a lot of them
German tankers were pretty surprized seing the t-34s and KVs in battle for the first time, as described in many memoirs.
@@peterstatsenko9866 There is a difference between what HQ knows and what troopers are told the enemy has. Germans might have gotten reports on these tanks, but they didn't expect many of them to be available (which is where they were right given the disastrously low state of readiness of pretty much all of the formations) or thought Finns were exagerating it.
Hence both might be right.
@@Blazo_Djurovic HQ didnt know either, as is very clearly seen in war diaries of senior German officers.
02:57 There were actually, 337 PzKw Is in total, 152 with the Panzer regiments and 185 with the Pioneers. 03:58 There were 743 PzKw IIs in the Pz. regts. 05:15 There were 625 PzKw 35(t). 06:13 There were 259x37mm armed PzKw IIIs and 707x50mm L/42, 966 total. 06:35 Regarding StuG IIIs, there were 11 assault gun battalions, 5 independent assault brigades and one battery (of 7 StuGs) to each of the SS Reich, SS Totenkopf, LSSAH, Grossdeutschland and 900th Lehr motorized regts/brigades, 301 assault guns in total. 07:02 There were 439 PzKw IVs. 07:07 There were also 186 Pz.Bef.Wg unarmed command tanks and 3 independent Flamm-Panzer battalions with an assortment of 103 tanks, (Pz.II, Pz.III & Char B2) bringing the total of German tanks on 22nd. June 1941 to 3,855 tanks.
T-26 and T-34 / KV-1 comments incoming... 😂
At 6:40 when talking about the Panzer IV , it's said they were designed for "close infantry support" however in The_Chieftan's video "Inside the Chieftain's Hatch: Panzer IV, Pt 1" with Hilary Doyle it's said the Panzer IV was a support tank providing close-in artillery fire for PANZER Units. Was there a role change?