Vern Etzel - Naa-ah, the 2 stories are different. The KV-1 tale is lots different than the "Fury" comic-made-into-a-film. One is a heroic last stand, the other is just US propaganda, and never would have happened.
The year 1965 arrives, the bodies of the KV-2s crew is discovered, just meters away where the tank they crewed was destroyed. All five were buried in a military graveyard in Raseiniai.
sick how just 3,8 axis personnel can encircle over 400 soviet soldiers... now i understand why so many people think the Wehrmacht was the best military force in the 20th century
Bazgoth Ar Who said they were super-soldiers? LOL did anyone ever say Tiger tanks with dozens of kills were crewed by super-soldiers? I guess they just hid in their tanks too going by your logic.
I am very picky and often over-critical. This is a great video as long as viewers remember the fog and chaos of war behind the block diagramed descriptions given by Jack of War. I send him my thanks for all his work building this series.
Awesome! I have never seen battles of WW2 described so exactly in any other Video or documentation. Great work! Since more than 10 years, I am interested in the course of action during WW2 and have read dozents of books. But it is often difficult, to reconstruct exactly what really happend on the battlefields. Where did you get all that detailed information?
You clearly put a lot of effort into this series. You have nice animations and relevant b-roll footage. Your historical knowledge is also impressive. With that said I can't understand why you wouldn't edit out the mistakes. They're just minor mistakes but they are distracting. Like when you say "four hundred" instead of four hundred thousand.
Great channel. Have you retired it for good? No new uploads in a full year? WW2 is making a huge comeback with it's 80 year anniversary maybe time to start uploading again?
8th Pz. Div had 118 Pz 38t, 30 Pz IV, 49 Pz II, 11 Pz I. with about 15 BefPz (Command Tanks). About 60 Armored Cars. Thats roughly 200 alone. Can you tell me your source? 6th Panzer had roughly the same numbers but I believe used Pz 35t ... and had similar number of Pz IV, and Pz II tanks.
6 and 8th Pz Divisions had czech light tanks Pz 35, 8th Pz 38.... only 1st had 71 Pz III/5cm short barrelled.... so that was the modern part of german tank divisions ..... soviets had twice as much of KV-1 i T-34 only...
The KV heavy tank was most useful in scaring the Germans into developing their own very wasteful heavy tanks, such as the Tiger and Panther and then later leading them into the false direction of developing even heavier designs (King Tiger). As history showed, the heavy tanks were not the way to go and even the Soviets abandoned the idea and only kept a handful heavies (KV 85, IS series of tanks) valuing the mobility, reliability and mass production of the T-34/85 more. Upgraded Panzer IVs with 50 mm and especially with 75 mm guns augmented by a few Stugs and AT guns + tank killer Stukas could deal with Soviet heavies and there was no need to develop the super heavy German tanks that lacked mobility, could not be mass produced and required too many resources.
Andras I would add it was known from the battle of France that the 37 wasn't strong enough so they up gun both the ATG and panzers to50s at the start of Barbarossa only 10% of the paks had been up gun and panzers had the lo verlosity 50s I agree because of their experience in Barbarossa it set the Germans down the road of wrong development of equipment & tactics I know year late to the party, but yours was/is an astute post
Hah that KV-2 was kinda like Titan in Warhammer 40k fighting the Tau. Tau thought that building something so stupid and wasteful as a Titan would be a realy stupid idea. That may be true, KV tanks were preaty much failures, but tell that do the people who need to kill that fucking thing :D
This Soviet’s squandered their tank division’s piecemeal. At this very early stage of the war, the Soviet’s had no concept of motorised warfare, their operational doctrine was one of positional warfare as Stalin had purged the Officer Corp of any theorist’s who dared to advocate the concept of motorised mobile warfare, how Grigory Zhukhov survived the purges was a miracle.
The modern view since the Soviet archives have been opened is the purge had far less influence then previously thought. TIK has a video on it, worth watching. The biggest problem that the Russian forces where facing was that the Russian Infantry divisions where more mobile then the motorized divisions because they at least had horses to move their equipment. The Motorized where that in name only, lacking often completely any trucks to be be motorized. This is why maneuver warfare worked so well for the Germans, most of the Russian Army severely lacked mobility. And tanks without infantry support are worthless.
I still wonder how someone as skilled and willing to question Stalin like Zhukov still survived the purges. Good thing he wasn't killed considering how skilled he was. Unfortunately the same can't be said for his many other peers.
NKVD Comrade Orion yeh, his survival was miraculous considering all his peers were sent to the Gulag or executed, maybe it was his peasant background that made him less suspicious to the authorities....
I remember reading that when Zhukov was called to Moscow for his eventual assignment to the Far East, he wished fairwell to his wife and family as he thought he was going to get killed. He was more than surprised to hear he was going to live.
1. Panzer Division had 145 panzers consisting of 43 Mark II, 71 Mark III, & 31 Mark IV 8. Panzer Division had 212 panzers consisting of 49 Mark II, 118 Model 38, & 45 Mark IV 6. Panzer Division had 245 panzers consisting of 47 Mark II, 155 Model 35, & 43 Mark IV Total of 602 panzers
Russian Air Fields were also being overrun by German mechanized and marching follow on Infantry making German Luftwaffe performance here all the more effective in point of fact. Leningrad still had very formidable defenses however and the thought that this would be an offensive that would take the former now known as Saint Petersburg again #interesting in a matter of just a few weeks very quickly dissipated after this Battle. Hitler had been very adamant that Leningrad must fall first before Moscow be taken...which would effectively be true once Germany linked up with Finland later on. Still Operation Taifun the Battle of Moscow was not something Hitler thought practicable when the time came for its consideration given Battles such as these, at Yelnia and later Rostov on Don. Still and even including the Battle of Moscow October, 1941 through to January 1942 saw truly staggering German gains in the form of captured military material and Red Army manpower all which was necessary for Germany to even have let alone sustain so massive a War Machine for to be effective for just 1941 alone let alone 1942.
I really like your video but there is one major issue I would like to adress: the "most of the soviet tanks were old light tanks" thing. first off light tanks were not ment for tank vs tank fighting and a light tank fro a raid or against infantry is better than no tanks at all. secondly: the vast majority of german tanks were py1 and py2 with the 20mm canon as maximum firepower.... the russian light tanks on the other hand had quite good tanks like the bt7 who was better than german py1 and 2 on every aspect, fire power, speed, armor and all terrain capabilities. so don't dismiss the light tanks so fast.
KV-1 only had 5 crew members. Where is the onther one going to sit? In the Tank's engine? KV-2 had 6 men. the extra one was replacement if someone got injured.
There is a great video by TIK about this idea of War winning tanks. We must remmeber that out of the almost 22thousand tanks the USSR had, 21k were light tanks.
Your figures for German tank strength are way off. 1st Panzer division had 145 tanks, 6th 235 tanks and 8th had 212. Every source I've ever seen on 4th Panzergruppe says this. So your figure of 240 is strange. AGN was the weakest army group and 4th Panzergruppe was the weakest gruppe too but there's no way they invaded with 240 tanks. They had almost 600 of the 3300 tanks in the invasion. Maybe only 240 of AGN tanks actually saw combat here?
but your absolutely right .... On commencement of Operation Barbarossa, the group was a part of Army Group North, and consisted of the XLI Panzer and LVI Army (motorized) Corps which comprised three panzer and two motorized infantry divisions respectively, altogether equipped with 631 tanks. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4th_Panzer_Army
It is a great video and I've enjoyed several of his videos on this fascinating subject. So I wasn't trying to knock him with my comment, it was just incorrect info on the tanks so I wanted to point it out. Also I hoped he'd reply and say where he got his info as he obviously found an incorrect source that he seemed very convinced by. But yes props to him on overall great work.
Personally, I don't believe the tale about the lone KV2..let's be realistic..a KV2 can have just 36 projectile on board..how did it manage to destroy all those guns, trucks and tanks? Even assuming it had extra ammunition its seems really sketchy to me. Probably there were more than 1 KV..maybe other troops, guns etc...maybe kills from other units are being awarded to this "hero" tank...after all, if it didn't have infantry support..how was German infantry not able to surround it? That thing takes forever to turn and it has only a hull machine gun to defend frontally...
@@zyrussthec0mmun1st_______s73 no man you don't get it..there's no SPACE ina KV 2 for extra ammo..in a KV1? Yeah..ina T34? Yeah..but a KV2 is already cramped, the shells are huge etc..there's no way you can load 2 or 3 times the number...personally I think that there was more than 1 KV or other guns/tanks or that the story is fabricated. The other story about 4-5 KV-1 holding off a German column..that's realistic. But 1 single KV2? Also when they say that they "turned around the turret to shoot at infantry flanking them..you know how much it takes to turn a KV2 turret? Also, it doesn't have machine guns int he turret I believe..only the bow machine gun...how is it?
@@freedomordeath89 12 trucks, 4 AA guns, and 1 larger AA guns is 17 shots, assume for every shot 1 missed, that's 34 shots, still less than the max ammo.... I don't get your point
That "story" is obvious Soviet propaganda about glorious KV-2 and its unlimited ammo storage, and stupid Germans couidn't even call one Stuka or use smoke grenades to get closer to it, true story.
It didn’t have unlimited ammunition, it was loaded at its max capacity and the Germans tried to use smoke grenades to get closer at night, but it was repelled by MG fire. This battle wasn’t fast paced it was very very slow, that is why the KV-2 held it so long. Quit being a gross wehraboo.
@@d-4073 Not sure about a full load-out. Almost no Soviet tank that far forward had a full rack. Many had less than a dozen rounds for their main guns.
the lone KV-2 would make a good sequel to the film, Fury
Vern Etzel
I would watch the shit outta that
someone should tweet that to Brad Pitt :)
Well it basically was
Vern Etzel - Naa-ah, the 2 stories are different. The KV-1 tale is lots different than the "Fury" comic-made-into-a-film. One is a heroic last stand, the other is just US propaganda, and never would have happened.
@@DavidSmith-ss1cg True, no way a Tiger I would ricochet from a Sherman
The year 1965 arrives, the bodies of the KV-2s crew is discovered, just meters away where the tank they crewed was destroyed.
All five were buried in a military graveyard in Raseiniai.
there where 6. besides that you are correct
Thanks. I didn’t know this
"Over 400 soviet soldiers..." Yeah you're right. It was over 400 soviet soldiers :)
Trimiant - Technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.
sick how just 3,8 axis personnel can encircle over 400 soviet soldiers... now i understand why so many people think the Wehrmacht was the best military force in the 20th century
47Mortuus hahaha not fair. No wonder they were no match.
All those 3.8 axis soldiers capturing 400 soviet soldiers :)))
that is the best depiction of the lone KV-2 battle, also shows that on a crew level the russians had some very competent soldiers
It was one tank crew hiding in a tank that was very heavily armored...
HugoTroop Same can be said for Tigers with a shit ton of kills against T-34s, your point?
The point is, it wasn't because these Russians that crewed the KV-2 were some super soldiers, it was because they could hide in a KV-2...
Bazgoth Ar Who said they were super-soldiers? LOL did anyone ever say Tiger tanks with dozens of kills were crewed by super-soldiers? I guess they just hid in their tanks too going by your logic.
That was KV-1
you did a fine job with this one. This will be the topic of my next video.
Great detail, I see this channel blowing up in the future!
I am very picky and often over-critical. This is a great video as long as viewers remember the fog and chaos of war behind the block diagramed descriptions given by Jack of War. I send him my thanks for all his work building this series.
Very well done and clearly detailed.
Hey bud this content is incredible
When your fridge can stop an entire panzer division
Thank you for the video.
word "Raseiniai" part "ei", is pronaunced like "ey" in word "beyond".
part "niai" is pronaunced very softly like cat saying "mew".
Great Video, keep going !
Excellent, thank you.
Awesome! I have never seen battles of WW2 described so exactly in any other Video or documentation. Great work! Since more than 10 years, I am interested in the course of action during WW2 and have read dozents of books. But it is often difficult, to reconstruct exactly what really happend on the battlefields. Where did you get all that detailed information?
Good job, thank you...
You clearly put a lot of effort into this series. You have nice animations and relevant b-roll footage. Your historical knowledge is also impressive. With that said I can't understand why you wouldn't edit out the mistakes. They're just minor mistakes but they are distracting. Like when you say "four hundred" instead of four hundred thousand.
Nice video.
1000 like from me. ;)
The story of the KV-2 was sad 😞
Anna Philip
At least they were burried with respect by their enemy
@Ajgleskorv wut
@Ajgleskorv you can literally see it at the burial site...
I love these videos, however I would love to know your sources and where u get this amount of detailed information.
That sad KV
Great channel. Have you retired it for good? No new uploads in a full year? WW2 is making a huge comeback with it's 80 year anniversary maybe time to start uploading again?
7:34 this made a strong impression on me. german soldiers honoring their russian counterparts who fought them courageously. Heroes on both sides here
nice job - but you're really massacring the pronunciation of Raseiniai - it's not "ra-zany-ai" - but ""raw-sign-eh " - keep up the good work !
this motivates me to drive my kv-2 more frequently in wot hahaha
Ive got 1,000's of battles in mine.
8th Pz. Div had 118 Pz 38t, 30 Pz IV, 49 Pz II, 11 Pz I. with about 15 BefPz (Command Tanks). About 60 Armored Cars. Thats roughly 200 alone. Can you tell me your source? 6th Panzer had roughly the same numbers but I believe used Pz 35t ... and had similar number of Pz IV, and Pz II tanks.
6 and 8th Pz Divisions had czech light tanks Pz 35, 8th Pz 38.... only 1st had 71 Pz III/5cm short barrelled.... so that was the modern part of german tank divisions ..... soviets had twice as much of KV-1 i T-34 only...
the monster of Raseiniai
German soldiers: *walk up to the KV-2*
Ivan, turning the 12.9 ton turret, which is turned by hand: *n y e t, h a n s*
Literally me holding the A point in my T-150 in War Thunder against some stuarts and PZ IIIs and PZ IVs
The KV heavy tank was most useful in scaring the Germans into developing their own very wasteful heavy tanks, such as the Tiger and Panther and then later leading them into the false direction of developing even heavier designs (King Tiger). As history showed, the heavy tanks were not the way to go and even the Soviets abandoned the idea and only kept a handful heavies (KV 85, IS series of tanks) valuing the mobility, reliability and mass production of the T-34/85 more. Upgraded Panzer IVs with 50 mm and especially with 75 mm guns augmented by a few Stugs and AT guns + tank killer Stukas could deal with Soviet heavies and there was no need to develop the super heavy German tanks that lacked mobility, could not be mass produced and required too many resources.
*P1000 Ratte*
Andras I would add it was known from the battle of France that the 37 wasn't strong enough so they up gun both the ATG and panzers to50s at the start of Barbarossa only 10% of the paks had been up gun and panzers had the lo verlosity 50s I agree because of their experience in Barbarossa it set the Germans down the road of wrong development of equipment & tactics I know year late to the party, but yours was/is an astute post
@ 0:17 you missed out on saying "...thousand..."
Hah that KV-2 was kinda like Titan in Warhammer 40k fighting the Tau. Tau thought that building something so stupid and wasteful as a Titan would be a realy stupid idea. That may be true, KV tanks were preaty much failures, but tell that do the people who need to kill that fucking thing :D
Yayayyayay im from Raseiniai
Me too
That was Lithuanian Crew in that tank ...
Surely there were more than the 400 Russian deaths reported in this video, but I have no idea of the accurate number.
KV-1 NOT kv-2
We don't actually know what tank it was.
the savage kv2
80 years ago
Березовые кресты немецких могилок только начались. Все впереди!
This Soviet’s squandered their tank division’s piecemeal. At this very early stage of the war, the Soviet’s had no concept of motorised warfare, their operational doctrine was one of positional warfare as Stalin had purged the Officer Corp of any theorist’s who dared to advocate the concept of motorised mobile warfare, how Grigory Zhukhov survived the purges was a miracle.
The modern view since the Soviet archives have been opened is the purge had far less influence then previously thought. TIK has a video on it, worth watching.
The biggest problem that the Russian forces where facing was that the Russian Infantry divisions where more mobile then the motorized divisions because they at least had horses to move their equipment. The Motorized where that in name only, lacking often completely any trucks to be be motorized.
This is why maneuver warfare worked so well for the Germans, most of the Russian Army severely lacked mobility. And tanks without infantry support are worthless.
Hopefully, the false notion of a peaceful and unprepared Soviet Union being tricked by Uncle Adolf will be exposed too.
I still wonder how someone as skilled and willing to question Stalin like Zhukov still survived the purges. Good thing he wasn't killed considering how skilled he was. Unfortunately the same can't be said for his many other peers.
NKVD Comrade Orion yeh, his survival was miraculous considering all his peers were sent to the Gulag or executed, maybe it was his peasant background that made him less suspicious to the authorities....
I remember reading that when Zhukov was called to Moscow for his eventual assignment to the Far East, he wished fairwell to his wife and family as he thought he was going to get killed. He was more than surprised to hear he was going to live.
1. Panzer Division had 145 panzers consisting of 43 Mark II, 71 Mark III, & 31 Mark IV
8. Panzer Division had 212 panzers consisting of 49 Mark II, 118 Model 38, & 45 Mark IV
6. Panzer Division had 245 panzers consisting of 47 Mark II, 155 Model 35, & 43 Mark IV
Total of 602 panzers
Mark? This ain't the British.
Mark as in Model, but would be better to use Panzer do to familiarity with the term.
*Adolfo why do i hear a refrigerator?*
Russian Air Fields were also being overrun by German mechanized and marching follow on Infantry making German Luftwaffe performance here all the more effective in point of fact. Leningrad still had very formidable defenses however and the thought that this would be an offensive that would take the former now known as Saint Petersburg again #interesting in a matter of just a few weeks very quickly dissipated after this Battle.
Hitler had been very adamant that Leningrad must fall first before Moscow be taken...which would effectively be true once Germany linked up with Finland later on.
Still Operation Taifun the Battle of Moscow was not something Hitler thought practicable when the time came for its consideration given Battles such as these, at Yelnia and later Rostov on Don.
Still and even including the Battle of Moscow October, 1941 through to January 1942 saw truly staggering German gains in the form of captured military material and Red Army manpower all which was necessary for Germany to even have let alone sustain so massive a War Machine for to be effective for just 1941 alone let alone 1942.
400 Soviet soldiers trapped by encirclement? Lol. It seems like they got off pretty easily.
I really like your video but there is one major issue I would like to adress: the "most of the soviet tanks were old light tanks" thing.
first off light tanks were not ment for tank vs tank fighting and a light tank fro a raid or against infantry is better than no tanks at all. secondly:
the vast majority of german tanks were py1 and py2 with the 20mm canon as maximum firepower....
the russian light tanks on the other hand had quite good tanks like the bt7 who was better than german py1 and 2 on every aspect, fire power, speed, armor and all terrain capabilities.
so don't dismiss the light tanks so fast.
IT was uncertain that it was a kV 2 it could have been a KV1
KV-1 only had 5 crew members. Where is the onther one going to sit? In the Tank's engine? KV-2 had 6 men. the extra one was replacement if someone got injured.
Tell me about it, but turn off the bass drum first, I can't concentrate on what you are saying. I have head phones.
when KV-2 still defeat modern tanks then russia will produce alot of this KV-2 but change skin and armor the shell is now more stronger
The 1st Panzer Division was elite?
Sorry, you lost me at "First Panzer Infantry Corps".
The real number is 401 soldiers
There is a great video by TIK about this idea of War winning tanks. We must remmeber that out of the almost 22thousand tanks the USSR had, 21k were light tanks.
the pronounciation :D
Your figures for German tank strength are way off.
1st Panzer division had 145 tanks, 6th 235 tanks and 8th had 212. Every source I've
ever seen on 4th Panzergruppe says this. So your figure of 240 is
strange. AGN was the weakest army group and 4th Panzergruppe was the
weakest gruppe too but there's no way they invaded with 240 tanks. They had almost 600 of the 3300 tanks in the invasion.
Maybe only 240 of AGN tanks actually saw combat here?
i agree with this comment @Ingur Lund but other then small mistakes this a great video
its alot of information he is putting into these videos so its easy to make small mistakes ..
but your absolutely right .... On commencement of Operation Barbarossa, the group was a part of Army Group North,
and consisted of the XLI Panzer and LVI Army (motorized) Corps which
comprised three panzer and two motorized infantry divisions
respectively, altogether equipped with 631 tanks.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4th_Panzer_Army
It is a great video and I've enjoyed several of his videos on this fascinating subject. So I wasn't trying to knock him with my comment, it was just incorrect info on the tanks so I wanted to point it out. Also I hoped he'd reply and say where he got his info as he obviously found an incorrect source that he seemed very convinced by.
But yes props to him on overall great work.
@@ingurlund9657 Are you German?
Good video, but atrocious pronunciation, in either of Russian, German, or in this case Lithuanian.
If soviet tanks were old modela What would you say about german tanks in 1941? Bt7 was Still better than pzkfw 1 & 2
But not to a Panzer 3.
@@boborson5536 it was faster than a Pz 3 doe
Which is the germans?
Red or black?
mk1 proto boi
Soviet is almost always associated with red.
😄👏👏👍.
It's hard to believe that German Panzer divisions fielded fewer than 100 panzers each...even at the dawn of Barbarossa.
I would repair the KV-2
Один танк воевал , двадцать танков бросили красноармейцы , поэтому проиграли
Personally, I don't believe the tale about the lone KV2..let's be realistic..a KV2 can have just 36 projectile on board..how did it manage to destroy all those guns, trucks and tanks? Even assuming it had extra ammunition its seems really sketchy to me.
Probably there were more than 1 KV..maybe other troops, guns etc...maybe kills from other units are being awarded to this "hero" tank...after all, if it didn't have infantry support..how was German infantry not able to surround it? That thing takes forever to turn and it has only a hull machine gun to defend frontally...
becouse of dis organisations field commanders commonly equip their units 2 or 3x more amo and fuel
@@zyrussthec0mmun1st_______s73 no man you don't get it..there's no SPACE ina KV 2 for extra ammo..in a KV1? Yeah..ina T34? Yeah..but a KV2 is already cramped, the shells are huge etc..there's no way you can load 2 or 3 times the number...personally I think that there was more than 1 KV or other guns/tanks or that the story is fabricated.
The other story about 4-5 KV-1 holding off a German column..that's realistic. But 1 single KV2?
Also when they say that they "turned around the turret to shoot at infantry flanking them..you know how much it takes to turn a KV2 turret? Also, it doesn't have machine guns int he turret I believe..only the bow machine gun...how is it?
@@freedomordeath89 It wasnt KV-2. We don't know, actually. Maybe its a KV-1.
@@shrekas2966 Yeah that's what I was saying...it could have been a Kv1...I was saying it couldn't possibly be just 1 KV2
@@freedomordeath89 12 trucks, 4 AA guns, and 1 larger AA guns is 17 shots, assume for every shot 1 missed, that's 34 shots, still less than the max ammo.... I don't get your point
USSR it's Great land
That "story" is obvious Soviet propaganda about glorious KV-2 and its unlimited ammo storage, and stupid Germans couidn't even call one Stuka or use smoke grenades to get closer to it, true story.
It didn’t have unlimited ammunition, it was loaded at its max capacity and the Germans tried to use smoke grenades to get closer at night, but it was repelled by MG fire. This battle wasn’t fast paced it was very very slow, that is why the KV-2 held it so long. Quit being a gross wehraboo.
Man, just got out of your mom's basement with that bs? The Germans themselves had record of it
@@d-4073 Not sure about a full load-out. Almost no Soviet tank that far forward had a full rack. Many had less than a dozen rounds for their main guns.
@@jefftheriault7260 yeah I was kind of a sovietboo when i posted that