*Aide rushes in* "Comrade Stalin, Comrade Stalin! The Fascists are using T-34´s!" *Stalin looks up* "So, they have captured few? Nothing to worry about." "No, these were made in Germany..." *Stalin filling his pipe* "WHAT DID YOU SAY!?" "Yes, they have copied it, and started to produce it...." "SECRETARY! Prepare to write down this message to that two-timing art dropout..." Dear mr. Hitler It has come to our attention that you infringing out patent on T-34. You hereby ordered to cease and desist, or we are forced to take legal action against you. If we do not recieve your answer in two weeks, we are forced to enforce our patent by other means. Sincerely Yours Josef Stalin Leader, USSR
that one was an extreme lucky find, I think about 100-300 pages of pages each with 5-20 documents listed, I am flipping through suddenly the title of the report BINGO!
Thats what originally got me so into his work. I dont just have to take his word for it, i can (and have on some more obscure points) checked it out myself. Hes exactly what a historian should be. "Heres what i found, where i found it and now what i think of it".
Japan was unable to produce some German weapons, even when they were given blueprints. It's not a perfect comparison, but you could imagine how much trouble you'll gonna have when you *don't* have blueprints.
@@TheFreaxTux That was immediately after the war, and having won it makes no difference in the stupendous amount of work involved. Unless you mean that the Soviets could and did take all the time in the world to produce the Tu-4. Well, they didn't: the prototype was flying in May 1947, a mere 2 years after the fall of Berlin. And production machines were in service by 1949. An astonishing feat by any standards, by a "victorious" but destroyed country which had lost 25M people, and was extremely overstretched in its gigantic reconstruction work!
@@javiergilvidal1558 yes, I should say I'm impressed, but they didn't need to mass produce T-34 anymore, that's what I mean. Actually, I bet they were able to use all the best engineers that were no longer needed to be at the factories...
Wikipedia says one Tiger in 1941 was worth 100 000 us$. One t-34 was worth roughly 260 000 Soviet rubbles and going under 200 000 rubles. Does anyone know the 1941 soviet rubble course for us $?
Copying is often derided as a simple low-skill task, but in reality it's one of the more complicated engineering feats because you basically have to reverse-engineer every component. Nobody's gonna tell you what the right heat treat temp was on that sprocket. Having the physical piece in your hand doesn't tell you anything about it's metallic composition either. Those are things you have to determine yourself, and it requires even more testing than if you just designed a piece from scratch. Copying is developing and manufacturing with extra steps, steps which Germany thoroughly lacked the time to take.
@ph0b0s Once again this is a case of, "it's not that simple." Even if some super spy managed to waltz out of a factory or design office with every single blueprint and all of them were properly translated, it isn't as easy as taking the blueprints to any factory and having them begin production. You now have to build the machinery (molds, stamps, jigs, etc.) to produce the parts, which is an engineering endeavor of it's own, and will require more blueprints.
@ph0b0s you totally missed his point. why go thru all the trouble of directly copying something if, as you said, they are capable of more "daunting" projects. they'd just design their own from scratch. plus even if they did copy it, what's stopping them from improving/making it more "complicated"? defeating the purpose of just copying.
@ph0b0s You still don't grasp what I'm saying. It doesn't matter that the Germans were working on more complicated things: they designed and built everything for those themselves. Without almost every blueprint, they would not be able to directly copy the T-34. It doesn't matter how advanced their technology was. As someone else said earlier, even with a whole tank to dissect and inspect, you can't really tell how parts were fabricated beyond the basic "it was cast/rolled/stamped". Again, without almost every single blueprint, including the blueprints for the machinery, Germany would have to go through R&D to build a similar tank. It isn't as simple as drawing up a tank and building it. I realize you aren't aware how engineering and/or manufacturing works, but it takes a *lot* of time and effort to develop a new tank.
@ph0b0s Ironic of you to say that when you equate developing advanced technology with being able to copy anything they wanted to. For the umpteenth time, that's not how it works! Period! I don't know why it's so hard for you to understand, other than utter ignorance of how engineering and manufacturing works. Based on your responses, it seems you have the common misunderstanding that engineering is some omnipotent process that allows one to do anything. Advanced engineering in certain fields does not automatically mean that they could build anything. Developing A-bombs and jets is nothing like reverse engineering a vehicle. It doesn't matter that you disagree, that's how it is. I'm not saying that they couldn't make something similar, I'm saying that exactly replicating, or even coming close to exactly replicating a T-34 would be so difficult and time consuming that they would be better off starting their own vehicle from scratch. And guess what? That's what the engineers themselves decided, too! Imagine that!
Why back in the 1970s I didn’t not buy a Mercedes while I was living in Germany. The initial cost was not high, but the maintenance costs were very high. Could get a cruder American car at same initial cost while using Affres garage for cheap maintenance. Finely machined toys are expensive.
That's not a humor but real thing by the way. Over-engineered, very complex and expensive German tanks and other equipment were not necessarily any better than simple and cheap to produce Soviet one. German tanks suffered with a lot of mechanical issues as did cheap and simple Russian tanks. In time of fast paced atrocious war cheap and simple weaponry wins. Regarding the quality, sure Russian tanks were lower quality than German ones but for a good reason though. Stalin knew that tanks usually won't last for 1 or 2 battles anyway. Hence no point to make them highest quality but rather in more numbers. Also quite often more simple weapons appeared to be more reliable. Good example - Russian submachine gun PPS-43 - genius simple, easy to produce and extremely reliable. Virtually nothing can go wrong with that gun.
I mean when you know the language those monster words wont seem so bad anymore. Example Finnish counterpart for a offensive tank is... Rynnäkköpanssarivaunu When you know the language its easy to break it into parts :D Rynnäkkö = Assault Panssari = Armor Vaunu= Cart
@@Trollman2K Well, if you weren't too moronic to realise that this is the complete technical designation in military language and not just some shortened alias... Then you would understand. But what can you expect from someone with your nickname?
Short answer: They did, but everyone knows that supreme german scientists overengineered it a bit and it ended up to be almost 200 t and unable to get over a small hill. (Yeah, I am talking about the Maus :D)
@@jamallabarge2665 its kind of hard to calculate exactly. But going by cost a single V2 cost about 100,000 reichmarcks. A Me 262 cost about 80,000 and Me 109s and Fw 190s cost about 50,000-60,000. Also StuGs cost about 80,000 and tigers cost 210,000 a PaK 40 cost 12,000 and the LeFH 18 cost 16,000. They made about 6,000 V2s and sucessfully launched 3,200 at allied targets. So yeah for the cost of all that they could have made many more planes tanks or guns.
@@partikelsmusic Under Merkel we live in peace. No nationalist world wars anymore and no right-wing populists like Donald Trump who fails in real crisis like Covid-19 totally: twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1285299379746811915
German soldiers: "Can we have some T-34s of our own?" Engineers: "Re-creating the T-34 would take about as much time as creating an equally good tank but without the flaws." Soldiers: "Okay, can we have an equally good tank but without the flaws?" Engineers: "Haha transmission go KRUNCH!"
the transmission was never a real issu on any german tank.... it was the final drive at the Panther, desinged for a 30to tank ending in a 45to tank and befor production started a smart ass office clerck though it would be a good idea to save some money by useing lower steel quality for the gearing. Later Panther were as reliable as all tanks of ww2. This realiablity problem is a Allied Prpaganda duck that even today is belived by youtube nerds... if the german tanks were so unreliable who the hell 3500 german tanks could kick ass of over 20.000 Red Army tanks in 1941... destroying 11.000 of them in 18 days and over 20.000 by end of 1941... fact is in 1941 the Red Army tanks were all unreliable crap with tonns of engine transmission problems that were sorted out later in the war.... half of the tank fleet was old and worne out the other half was badly build... ever wonder why there are pictures of 1941 t-34 leaving factory with a spare transmission already straped to the enginecover? Because the T-34 transmission in 1941 could hardly made it to the battlefield and back i.imgur.com/VdqUDIj.png
Actually the difference was one of the ways NATO caught and identified spies during the Cold War. Soviet dentistry was very crude. Western intelligence services recruited a lot of dentists and trained them to spot and identify the shitty Russian fillings, caps, bridges, and root canals and report their findings to state security. It sounds stupid as hell, but they actually caught Soviet deep cover spies this way. Suspected spies were often subjected to a dental exam to make final determination. Tom Clancy actually does a homage to this little known fact in his book "Red Storm Rising" where a captured Spetsnaz commando in West Germany is identified by his dental work. A German dentist remarks there is no way another German dentist could have done such poor dental work.
@@Edax_Royeaux t34 was not designed to last long, as the Soviets knew what kind of war they were fighting. When a tank runs longer than expected, things brake and jam on it.
@@ethanedwards422 The T-34 were also built to be robust and cover vast distances so it depends what you mean by "not designed to last long". The designer Mikhail Koshkin died of pneumonia driving the prototype 800 miles to Moscow to show it off to Stalin.
Excerpt from Stalinium a history “Stalinium are found in low quantities in lighter and medium vehicles of the Soviet Union and serve mostly as a morale booster to have Stalinium in your vehicle but heavier vehicles saw more Stalinium as part of the materials used to make them vehicles like the Object 252u but there is a vehicle that is completely different to others and that is the KV2. The KV2 however are a special case. Unlike its heavy tank comrades it is made of basic steel but also unlike its comrades it fires Stalinium shells which are highly effective yet inaccurate. No other country has been shown to be able to replicate Stalinium ( even Russia in the present )as it disappeared with the Soviet Union.”
Can you pretty please do a video on the Soviets moving it's industry east? It just sounds pretty crazy, I am curious how they did it and how impacted their production levels.
This video may help: czcams.com/video/N6xLMUifbxQ/video.html The section you are interested in starts at 26:20, although it discusses the manufacturing procedures of the Americans and Germans as well.
Just read an article in an older Shotgun News about the Barnaul ammo factory and how it was moved lock, stock and barrel to Siberia far east of Moscow. Everything was moved, including the workers. The machine was set back up and production resumed right out in the open until the factory structures could be built around the machinery. Tough people those Russians.
@@Cortesevasive Yes but in the case of the T-34 it was more of a "The red army needs a tank that can be slapped together quickly while also being cheap" kind of tank...You only have to look at the examples they have at Bovinton to see just how quickly they were churning them out, the mighy jingles did a top 5 tanks for the Bovington tank museum and there was a partial weld at the back of a T-34/T-34-85 that was nearly an inches worth of gap between the plates. Basically what I'm getting at in the T-34 was a tank that while crude, fit the job it was built for...The panther on the other hand was way too complex of a tank, esoecially at that stage of the war.
@@MegaRazorback On the other hand, given the drawings of the early Panther version in the video, the Panther may exactly be what you get when German industry tries to copy the T-34.
That's correct, the tank was built by the score when Stalin shifted production east of the Urals out of bombing range. Whilst the allied bombing on Germany created major problems on replacing or repairing German tanks. The capacity for large scale industrial production was crucial in deciding the war. A lesson not understood or ignored in the West today.
Exactly. "Quantity has a quality all its own." Sometimes its not about having 100 of the best quality, when you're up against 5000 of "good enough" quality.
I think that this channel has discussed that T34s were built with the intent of only operating for about 6 months because by then they would either be destroyed or the war would be over.
@@captainz9 the only problem was that Germany’s oil supply was already being pushed to the limit, so either Germany’s ally Italy needed to win North Africa and take the the oil fields to the east or capture Russia’s oil fields in order to sustain a massive bunch of ok tanks. Both of these endeavors failed
i am skeptical they could have simply changed the engine on the T-34 to a German one. The M4 was designed with a very large engine compartment because at the time only aircraft radial engines were available to power the M4. The T-34 was designed around the V-2-34 vee engine, which is a lot more compact.
@@reggiebuffat Actually the Germans didn't use Diesel engines, because producing Diesel engines wasn't something they were good at back then. Other than Marine Diesels for their U-boats that is. The reason the Russians used Diesel engines and still do is that Diesel fuel freezes at a lower temperature than petrol, most Diesel engines get better gas mileage and Diesel fuel is far harder to ignite. They're still harder to start in cold weather, but some additives keep the fuel from gumming up. I'm sure the Russians had those additives at the time. That or would've had them idling when not in use. One engine that wasn't mentioned in the video that was used on the Shermans was the Caterpillar D200A Diesel. This was developed during the war and was based on a 9-cylinder radial airplane engine. It has 450 hp.
If only they had World of tanks gamers to advise them in WW2, they are experts in tank production and design, fully qualified by moving a computer generated picture of a tank around on a screen while sitting in their bedroom .
Or fighting in it. As The Chieftain notes, the turret (at least on the T-34-85) had no basket, and the main ammunition stowage on the floor of the hull had no cover, so attempting to load the gun while the turret was traversing was an effort in steady footwork. Or maintain it either. Check the clutch at 10 hours of usage, clean the air filters at 25 hours (removing the armoured louvres over the radiator intake), and more things to do not long afterwards.
Hence why the Russians loved and appreciated the Shermans so much. They loved its ease of maintenance, a good gun in the 76mm, and above all, wet stowage that prevented ammo fires (ronson lighter? The T-34 was the TRUE Ronson lighter). In fact, many Russian Sherman crews absolutely refused a T-34 after they got one shot out from under them. They were ostracized after the war for refusing to say the Shermans were junk!
TLDR: They thought about it, started developing a copy, then being german they went all german and ended up with half a dozen over-engineered expensive variations and then lolMaus. the end.
Not really overengineered, except for the Ferdi. Just so far ahead of time that the infrastructure couldn't keep up. Most of the malfunctions of tanks happen because of bad driving conditions. The biggest problem for German (and Soviet) tanks was their weight. They bogged down quickly, but in terms of malfunctions they were pretty chill, apart from the very first prototypes. Remember, we are talking about tanks, not the newest model of sport cars. Tanks require a lot more tinkering than only the engine and the gun. Everything needs to be perfect if you want to run it. Every tank therefore will break down at one point, especially when fighting or when they go off-road. This was where the weight of the latest tanks proved a big hindrance, since infrastructure often didn't support these monsters; they couldn't easily be transported, especially with railroads being cut off. The strength of the Sherman, for instance, was that every part was maintainable. Repairs could be done quickly by anyone who knows the difference between a spanner and a screwdriver, and even heavily damaged tanks could potentially be repaired. Therefore, malfunctions were no biggie for the US Army. This might also explain why so many lost Shermans were lost due to fire; other damage often wasn't lethal, so those tanks that did get knocked out had suffered very critical damage. The engineering that went into these vehicles wasn't the main problem. It wasn't, as many people claim, a constant save check to see if your tank stopped working. Parts eventually will wear down, but they didn't magically wear down quicker in a Panzer. However, the weight of those tanks and the fact that laymen often couldn't repair any issues meant that these tanks had to be shipped around a lot more, which greatly strained the already damaged infrastructure.
@@the_tactician9858 The biggest problem was the germans being unable to adequitely modernize their industry, then doubling down with slave labour which actively sabotaged the machinery.
The Panther is a classic case of "feature creep", which increased its weight, cost, and complexity, which the German armaments industry found ever the more difficult to sustain. That and rushing production even though the WaffenAmt warned repeatedly that the design needed to be more thoroughly tested and "teething" problems resolved before it was placed into mass production and issued to tank units. Still, once MOST of those "bugs" were worked out, the availability of Panthers in a given tank battalion went up, though they still were worse off than Panzer IV units and even Tigers. That Germany produced over 6,000 of them, and their combat record indicates they were extremely effective, as long as they ran at all, indicates that the basics of what's tantamount to Germany's first MAIN BATTLE TANK, if not the world's, were correct. The Soviets already knew of the design defects in the T-34, but they themselves were rushing production in 1941. It's now know that they had offensive plans of their own, though the ability to meet what Vladmir Rezun (aka "Viktor Survorov") postulates in his works, i.e., that they were going to strike on July 6, 1941, is doubtful. If the Soviet plans had been to equip top-line tank divisions with the T-34, and at least give their crews some training, then likely they'd have delayed such an attack well into the autumn of '41. Not unlike what the Germans did re: Kursk in '43 re: the Panther. They did have a successor to the T-34, the T-43, which looks similar, but was slightly larger, had the three-man turret, along with correcting other flaws which impaired combat effectiveness. Although this tank was at first intended to sport the 76mm gun seen in later T-34s, it could take the D-5T 85 mm gun. Production of the D-5T had been reserved for the upcoming IS heavy tank (IS-85), but the appearance of the Tiger and then Panther caused the Soviets to up-gun their tanks to offset them. Furthermore, the role of the IS tanks was changed, as it was really intended to be a "break-through" tank, dealing mainly with enemy fortifications, and the job of taking on German armor, especially the "Big Cats", was left to tank destroyer units, in line with American practice. Hence why the IS-2 got the 122mm gun instead of the D-10T 100mm weapon. With the heavy losses in 1943, the Soviet Army was unwilling to halt production of the T-34 in order to re-tool for the T-43; it's often not realized how tenuous the military situation was until the late summer of 1944. An "ok" tank in huge numbers was better than NO or FEW "better" tanks. But they realized that most of the advantages of the T-43 with the 85mm gun were from its turret, which could be plopped onto the existing T-34 chassis, with relatively few modifications and operational flaws. The worst part of this marriage of the new turret with the old chassis was that the tank was nose-heavy, hard to steer, and could easily get stuck when traversing ditches and craters. But at least it gave them a main weapon that could deal with almost anything the Germans had at typical combat ranges, and kept most of the T-34s mobility. Hence the famed T-34/85, of which a FEW examples still serve, even TODAY!
I read a little bit about that The engine they wanted to put in the t34 would not fit and the gun they wanted to use also would not fit in its turret which led to them not copying it as well. Many memoir's I've read tank crews were always worried during battle while attempting to resupply they would be shot by their own guns lol. Pretty sure tons of T-34 running around on the German side would be quite an issue........
@@thomasbaagaard Germany was in no condition to start manufacturing and training enough crews for another type of tank that would open up additional logistical nightmares.
@@leonardwei3914 you are completely missing the point. He was arguing that "blue-on-blue" would be an issue. And Iam pointing out the obvious solution to that problem. Iam in no way arguing that they would have been able to actually do build new T34s.. or that they should have tried to do so. Oh, and I guess you don't realize that the Germans did use captured T34s... just like they used a good number of other captured tanks. (french tanks... British tanks in north africa, T34s and so on)
@@v4enthusiast541 Now you are just trolling. or being ignorant. They did so with other equipment. Including damaged tanks being returned to Germany for rebuilding, captured artillery being refurbished locally in some cases, but moved to Germany and reused in other cases. Some ended up in France... Captured french stuff moved to Russian and a lot of men from the east who ended up fighting in Normandy. PaK 36(r) where used in north africa in 1942... and used for the Marder III. So clearly the Germans was willing to move things around a lot... And as pointed out in the actual video.. that I guess you did not watch... producing a copy T34 in Germany (in stead of the panther) is one of the options mentioned. And moving that to x place would be the same as moving a panther.
Great facts? Check Good visuals? Check No annoying music? Check We seem to be missing something to make this great. What do we need? A great, thick but very discernible German accented narrator? BINGO!!!!! We got BINGO!!!!
I've always found it quite amazing the Russians were like, "O crap, here come the Germans. Time to move all of our factories!". It's just such a crazy logistical feat.
@@Shantykoff Help from the West, especially the industrial might of the US, was indeed a major help for the Soviets. Still, it was the insane sacrifices the Russian people made that defeated the Nazis in the east.
@@Jon.A.Scholt nobody is denying US help, I'm just saying it's overestimated. Also nobody remembers of the reverse land lease from the Soviets to US, also the help with Japan, when the Soviets demolished the Japanese land forces, forcing the capitulation
The Panther was better but they couldn't make them quickly enough, that was the problem. Bigger and better tanks aren't going to win you the conflict if you don't have enough of them. I was watching a video the other day about the Tiger 1's - the Germans sent the first 125 or so that were built to face up to the British in the Caen area of northern France after D-Day; apparently, they knocked out over 500 tanks and other vehicles between them but they were virtually all lost by the end of the escape down the Falaise corridor. The sheer number of tanks the allies and Russians could put in the field, plus of course their growing air superiority, did for German armour in the end.
@@Wally-H Even if the germans made more tanks they wouldn't have the men and oil to drive those tanks. Tik made a great video about germany's oil problem during ww2.
I think it's also easy to overrate the T-34 effectiveness when they greatly outnumbered German tanks. It was the most destroyed tank during the war. If you add all German production of Panzer IIs, Panzer IIIs, Panzer IVs, Mark V Panthers, Tiger Is, and Tiger IIs, you still end up with barely half the number of the T-34s that were LOST by the Soviets.
@@dself0808 They possibly could've done that but it would require them to put resources to doing that and ensuring the turret fit the turret ring of the tank as well as allowing the crew acceptable ergonomics to use the tank. Considering that adding new guns on the Panzer III and IV, which didn't need major redesigns to take these upgrades, neutralized one of the T-34s major advantage over the earlier war models it is debatable if the resource investment would've been worth it.
German soldiers ta the front: This tank is kicking our ass! German engineers at home: This tank is inferior to ours. German soldiers: Cognitive dissonansen 👁👃👁
@@IceWolfLoki German soldiers: now thousands of this inferior tanks kicking our ass! German Logistics Officer: You're r... (gets crushed by T34 tanks rushing through the wall)
@Tranhoang Long Yes and producing the T34 would not have changed the odds either (even theoretically more efficient tanks like the Tiger didn't change the odd, anyway).
@@herheartbeats5727 It would make everything even worse. Germans used some T-34 and they were horrible. Russians could not spot the difference between german crewed T-34 and russian crewed T-34. And same happen with germans, that caused some friendly-fire. Imagine what happen when there is TWO sides with MANY T-34.
@Mercb3ast The Wehrmacht began experiencing manpower shortages as early as (late) 1942. It is true that the Axis initially had a numerical advantage during Barbarossa, but the Soviets immediately began to mobilize their 14 million reservists, and by 1942 the Germans were outnumbered on many sectors of the front. "the total manpower of the Axis powers was significantly larger than the entirety of the Soviets until into 1944 due to the occupation of Ukraine/Belarus" Manpower in occupied territories did not benefit the Wehrmacht, they could not recruit the millions of military aged men in occupied territories. While it is true that the Wehrmacht continued to experience a growth in personnel from 1941 to 1944, it must be noted that the Red Army was exponentially increasing at the same time, and by 1943 had gained a significant numerical advantage over the Wehrmacht.
@@rifekimler3309 It was the only sensible thing Germany could do at that point. They had no oil to fuel many tanks, they had very few trained crews, they didn't have the industrial base for spawning thousands of crude tanks. But what they DID have were good engineers and craftsmen to produce a low number of very sophisticated tanks. So they did that.
This guy is legit - I've never seen a youtuber use citations like this - must have gone through some school. Also, appreciate not focusing on aspects of history without primary sources and instead focusing the video on the information you do have.
The lack of radio equipment would likely be another issue the germans would have. As it's already cramped in a T-34 and the lack of a turret basket would mean adding one would be difficult. And one major advantage the germans had throughout the war against the russians was the ability to communicate between tanks. As for the engine, yes they could add one of their own engines but that would require a new transmission unless you they had a engine that produces the equal or greater horsepower at similar RPM otherwise you would need a new transmission as well with different gear ratios.
If you'd wanted to, you could do the same thing the British did with the M3 - put a bustle on the back of the turret and put the radio in it, which the Loader operates (as per the Stug). Likewise, the engine problem is solvable - if you want to. Alternatively, you can build a completely new tank from scratch, and do it right. It might be available by July 1943, and the transmission issues might be fixed by 1947 or so.
Care to elaborate on the lack of radio equipment? T-34s were equipped with radios since 1940, just very few of them. But that was due to the lack of radio supplies, not due to the lack of space or tech difficulties with installation.
@@sergeychmelev5270 You are right. But the German engineering establishment did not want to swallow their pride and build a T-34, even if it had German radios and German optics and sights.
@@ianwhitchurch864 no doubt in that. I'm just curious why "lack of radio" was listed as one of the reasons not to copy T-34, since it definitely did have that capability, and Germans were not planning on copying equipment like radios anyway.
There were also czech T-24/25 projects. But germans called them obsolete completly ignoring the fact that it was the best that czech factories of the time could have mass produced and it would have still ended up being leagues above older pre-war LT vz.35 and 38. Instead they continued production of SPGs that were limited by older chassis and suspension and later on when things got worse, started production of Hetzer, inspired by Maresal and sabotaged during testing by its head designer, who was a russian immigrant. Hetzer also fully reaped the results of abusing the old obsolete chassis and units(suspension, transmission, engine) of old pre-war tanks instead of being SPG/tank destroyer on newer chassis of T-24/25 tanks. German logic: It's smaller then Panther that is a heavy tank in Allied eyes? Then it's bad! Don't mind us ourselves still producing last Pz.II's on german factories...
@@TheArklyte the Hetzer was produced in Czechoslovakia because the alkett factory who made the StuGs was destroyed. And the factory who produced the hetzer (forgot the name) had no equipment for vehicles over 16 tons
Actually that's not a joke but actual fact. Pseudonym Stalin is formed from Russian word staly, which means steel. Germany had not enough steel for industry.
The part of installing german engine into T-34's body was passed rather quickly. I could be wrong, so have this with plenty of salt, but I remember reading that the T-34's engine compartment was very cramped and therefore it would have required major structucal changes in the body to accommondate a different engine altogether. It's in direct contrast to Sherman, which was rather spacy and straightforward all around, allowing lots of upgrades over the years with rather minor changes to the body.
@@Radbot776 A) Sherman's were still in service in some South American countries, at least as reserves, until 2018. B) That says a lot more about the poverty of the country operating them than the quality of the tank.
Phillip Mishkov The same could be said about many old small arms, namely the PPSh, STG-44, M1 Garand, and others that have been found in the Middle East. Just because a weapon system is still in service does not mean it’s good
This is true. T-34 has a tight V12 engine, making for a narrow + tall + long engine compartment. M4 on the other hand was designed initially for an air cooled radial, making for a wide + tall + not long engine compartment.. BUT when M4A2/A3/A4 came along, they kept the wide + tall dimensions and just lengthened the rear of the tank to make a huge engine compartment that made maintenance a breeze (especially on the A3 with its tight V-8 engine). Germany had plenty of gasoline V engines it could have put in a German T-34 copy, just no diesels (but why would Heinz Guderian even mention diesels, all German tanks were Maybach petrol powered already) as their diesels of equivalent power were the inline opposing piston design of the Junkers Jumo 205 series which I do not believe could fit.
I watch quite a bit of military history. This mans research and analytical skills I think are exceptional. Back to source on tje ground information that looks at strategy tactics logistics the whole box. Keep it up!
Picking just one of their existing designs,upgrading it,and mass producing the ass out of it would've been enough. PzKw IV already had it's teething problems ironed out by then. PzKw III production could've been turned over to the IV,even before a 'total war' mass production. Considering USSR had only roughly 1,000 T34s operational as of 22nd June 41,enough IVs could've been fielded to meet the threat.
Also, that right there is the Soviet doctrine - to overwhelm the enemy with numbers. It worked for them, since they had the resources to put it into practice - a huge population, a lot of iron and a lot of fuel - and didn't have the resources to do anything else effectively - like capable tactical commanders or trained tank crews (not as many as the Germans, at least). The German doctrine, much more adapted to the German situation, was to destroy the enemy with quality - and so mass producing tanks would just make them play a game at which the Soviets were far better and far more adapted. Just like go2mikerenzi pointed out - sure, you can mass produce tanks. The Luftwaffe had a ton of planes and pilots. But so what, if they had no gasoline, to a point where the most reasonable thing was to send pilots into infantry units? What will you do then - spread the fuel so thinly that the armored divisions can't even reach regimental HQs? What's the point of having tanks in the first place then?
As a follow-up question I'd be interested to hear your take on the design of what would become the Panther tank, in particular the decisions made to produce the MAN design rather than the VK 3001 (DB) or VK 3002 (DB). I'm quite fond of those DB designs, not least because the VK 3001(DB) is one of my favourite tanks in World of Tanks.
The Germans IIRC had several “meta” considerations going against a straight copy. First, as war progressed badly they tried to develop uber-tanks like the Tiger 2 so they wanted to win by superiority not numbers (probably partially due to lack of manpower/partially to belief in their cleverness). Second, even on their own weapon systems they were always tinkering and sucked at standardization, whereas US w M4 and USSR w T34 had a mindset to simplicity w mass volume that the Germans just didn’t prioritize. Add to that core issues like the 4 man vs 5 man doctrine, mentioned in this video, and you end up with Panthers. The 75mm long German guns also seemed better than 76mm T34 IIRC. So I bet this idea sounded more appealing to front line grunts dying in 41 than to home front decision makers. Past 42 they had better 1on1 tanks, so less emergency, even if that didn’t actually make it into a winnable war.
USA and USSR had a Lot of standardized beds and tank models... Something Germans lacked or refused to do Mass Produce on weapons... Like we see Pz Kpfwg Ausf G, C,A, J... Look How many variants. this had to complicate the LINE of production somehow... So instead of making a mass produced and standardized modelo of a tank... They had plenty of models each one with their own specification. Apart from USA Shermans that other variants were made and dispatched to Very specific elite tank plattoons that showed prowess in battle.of course these New variants had better equipment and better specs overall.
@@Terraqueo22 Well Germany kinda got the Production game right with the StuG. Sticking with a singular design after '42 and only adding minor upgrades that barely affected production. They kinda figured out they needed more, not more advanced Pz. IVs in '45, but by then it was too late. Germany had the capability to play the production game, but they never took advantage of it.
@@rebelgaming1.5.14 Yes I couldnt agree more... Germany had the potential to maintain a war machine for more 7 years... But they literally wasted their production efforts into little things... Like reinforcing the rear armor of the Konigstiger or changing the turret design of the Panzer IV...
Oh, oh, I know the answer to this one! Because completely changing up your factory's production lines to produce something completely different takes a lot of time and resources. Also probably they didn't like the lack of good vision and radios. Well, time to watch the video and see if I got it right.
@@pexxajohannes1506 Yeah, because when you're inside a tank with its engine running it's so easy to hear a few guys outside yelling. Seriously, not sure if you're joking or not. The T34's poor visibility issues were very well known.
@@Shenaldrac soviet tanks in general suffered from poor ergonomics and crew management. The crew compartments were cramped, badly ventilated and noisy, handling the instruments/controls required excessive force form time to time (there's the joke about driving a T-34 with a hammer) and the optics were bad. If i recall correctly, the Germans themselves established that russian guns had similar accuracy to their own, but the bad optics meant the crew couldn't aim them as well as germans could
Care to elaborate on the lack of radios? T-34s were equipped with radios since 1940, just very few of them. But that was due to the lack of radio supplies, not due to the lack of space or tech difficulties with installation.
I saw a T-34 back when the Ordnance Museum was at Aberdeen MD. It was surprisingly small. I believe this placed restrictions on the size of the personnel who could be assigned to them. Likely this mad a direct copy unattractive, and scaling up would add time to the production deveopment. It would also potentially creat problems with things like trying to drop a Geman engine into it.
@@idiocrat3744 прикол в том что воевавшие в реальной войне люди не играли в ворд оф танкс и не смотрели американские боевики. Поэтому они по глупости думали что неуязвимых танков нет и три дешевых гробика спасут куда больше жизней чем одна дорогущая убервафля.
Similar circumstance when a British delegation approached Republic Aircraft to build licensed copies of the P-40 Tomahawk. Republic convinced the Brits that for little more effort they could build a clean sheet design that addressed some of the P-40’s shortcomings - and thus the P-51 Mustang was born.
@@foozer_warrior8035 actually, Tiger was started being produced in 1942, Panther was started being produced in 1943, it has a lower number because it was smaller than tiger
I think "good enough" is a good way to describe USSR design mentality. Instead of trying to perfect something before putting it in production they made it 'good enough' for it's intended purpose and went ham at producing them, and it's always way better to have a lot of 'good enough' things than just a few 'really good things'.
Why not? Because no German could let something that is merely adequate, roll off the production line, adequate is an alien concept. German engineers would *Have* to improved it to the point where the T34 would take too long to produce.
What a crock of shit. Germany produced hundreds of somua S35 and Lt38 tanks in occupied factories regardless of the task theyre orignally designed to fufill
@@Dan-wt7jx Blame is a different kettle of fish altogether. But if given a viable design, they will always improve upon it. It is not a negative really, except in a war of industrial might where it is a bit of achilles heel. Hence why most us drive BMW's, Mercs, Audi's, VW's. My street is all German or Japanese cars.
"Copying" doesn't seem smart, but incorporating the design philosophy would have been smart - good gun, sloped armor, reasonable reliability of all components (rather than one component able to last a lifetime, with another key component that breaks down quickly), and able to build quickly with minimum of highly experienced labor. Use existing components shared with other tanks where possible.
The T34 grew out of the design and production mindset loosely termed "Fordism". "Fordism" also relies on the availability of excess amounts of natural resources and massive industrial capacity to produce product in huge numbers. If USSR produced ten tanks and they went out and destroyed one panzer but "lost" eight tanks doing it, that was fine, especially if the Soviets held the battlefield afterwards. If five of the "lost" tanks could then be sent back to Stalingrad for quick turnaround major repairs that was even better. Somebody once said "Quantity has a quality all its own".
T5rux Lee Indeed. The story of the Soviets actually deciding AGAINST a series of improvement to the T-34 because retooling/adjusting the factories would have halted/slowed production adds to this thought process.
To be fair, you need only to look at the hell that were german logistics to realize the flaws in the "New tank every year" design. The Soviets correctly picked a design worthy of a World War and stuck with it until they had halted the Wehrmacht.
And then having lots of tanks gives another advantage above the obvious avalanche with which even the worst commander could win. Soviets could afford to sent tank patrols to guard unimportant roads and paths. From time to time it actually happened that Germans were trying to sneak through those, and a single unexpected Soviet tank could delay them for many hours and report to command or destroy the whole raiding party.
The T-34 was a hastily designed and produced tank , to be a "meat shield" until a better version is ready. They never made a better version, because they had to keep the production rolling.
In which particular regard ware Pazners I-IV better? Armament, armor, maneuverability, engine power? T-34s were killed by German field artillery, not German tanks - and not because T-34 had construction flaws but because there were used irrationally. The break-trough came with Panthers, but then again these tanks came mid-1943 and weighed 45 tons vs. T-34's 27 tons so it is fair to compare those cats to KV/IS series of Soviet heavy tanks, not mid-size T-34s.
@@gimmeabreak4435 the Shermans was Good Tanks but in The German Fields they underplates stucks often and many of them fall out of Service the German Tank Crews Understand fast that the Sherman Tanks are Good Tanks but they dont Can Rebuild it so they Have Take a Lot of Shermann Comanders And paintet the USA Tribal over with an German Tribal and use them with German Tank Crews and a Captured American Commander Driver Gunner or Reloader and Make them For Thier own ways Work some Shermans Get A Rebuild from The German they Have Make The Tank a bit Less Higher And make the Under tank Better for the fields many Of Shermans Falllen in German hands Why isnt Rlly Known But The Most Of Times The Shermans do Great Thats why a Sherman only Where a 4:1 To a Tiger Tank also the Guns of Shermans with Higher Pen then the Russian T34 and Also More Damage Per Shoot (PS I LOVE TANKS FROM EVERYWHERE BUT THE TIGER LOOKS DAYUM NICE) 😎
Soviets: Finally a T-34 tank from red army has arrived to save us from the Nazi occupation. But why do I see an iron cross on the side of the turret and why has it got a German ‘gelbbraune Hinterhalt’ (Camouflage)?
We have also to remember that T-34 was a different tank, meant to be used by a different army, with different doctrine and tactics, different philosophy on expendability of men and gear. Germans focused on highly trained crews and protecting them, whereas Soviets bashed Lend-Lease resources (another argument) together, put some Ivans inside and sent them to general direction of the enemy, overwhelmed by rain of 152mm shells and katyusha rockets.
In very short: -They sorta couldn't(that part about the engine(that was designed a bomber engine at first) is very true. Even the Soviet Union was forced to replace the Al-Si-alloy with plain pig iron for a time during the war due to aluminium shortages. Germany had the resources shortages problems from the get go and throughout the war.) -They sorta did. Especially the Panther obviously employed a lot of ideas taken from the T-34. It's way more logical to insert some successful details from other development into the own instead of just copying it.
Mate, can you do a Video on why didn't the Germans develop a Gun Stabilizer? Germans tanks were eccentric AF with their tanks not Having a Stabilizer like the USA sounds weird
I think the reason why is because most of the time the Germans were defending they always try to ambush instead of attacking so shooting with a Cannon while stationary isn't as bad as shooting while driving. At least that's how I thought about it don't know if it's real or not.
@@RagingDong Yeah but a Stabilizers in ww2 weren't useful at high speeds so if you stopped it would take less time but it would still be better than not having anything.
Very well researched video. I'm new here but am liking and subbing. I am a big fan of WW2 history. Especially the vehicles and gear used by both sides.
@ The Russian's are part of the European family. They are Aryan, they are part of the same race. The war was not against the Russian people, nor was there any issue against them, the war was against the Communism, against the Soviet Union and the threat against Europe, the Soviet Union attacked many European countries along the border in less then 12 months. Almost every European country along the border was attacked or threatened. The T-34 at this stage was not that good a tank, but it had a very practical combination of speed, mobility and armour protection. In fact it was really a piece of shit in comparison to the German tanks, but the practical benefits of the wide tracks, sloping armour, combined with the T-34's speed and ability to operate in the Eastern conditions was very appealing. Over time the tanks were greatly improved, receiving US radio technology and other various upgrades, making them a much more formidable opponent. In the hands of those tough Russian tank crews and in great numbers, despite build quality they posed more danger and inflicted more damage then most of the many tanks faced else where in the war, that were developed in the West.
@@alexandermelbaus2351 as far as i know according to their ideeology they werent just look at what they did to polish people because they considered them to be lesser
Actually, since you had to pull out the armoured louvres from the radiator intake after just 25 hours of operation, it wasn't terribly reliable either.
The Soviets sent a T-34 to the USA, which went to Bell labs, which analyzed it and sent back recommendations. This is in the history of Bell Labs. Pretty well documented. The book is; The Idea Factory: Bell Labs And The Great Age Of American Innovation by Jon Gertner. The book has other interesting stories about WW2 weaponary.
I think the answer is pretty straight forward as you say, T-34 has quite a few issues. But beyond that, why not study it and build a vehicle to be superior to it. That's pretty much what Panther was. Take some notes and then build a tank to outclass it. I'd also point out that this had the side benefit of meeting T-34 was the impetus to make equipment that could handle Sherman.
Except the Panther was a flop. Had they stuck to their plan of making a 35t medium tank it could have outclassed the T-34 because of better ergonomics and optics. But no one would ever claim the Panther was a more successful WEAPON OF WAR than the T-34.
@@T4nkcommander A good tank isn't overweight, underpowered, unreliable, unmassable and hard to maintain and repair. The original design was meant to be a 35 t medium tank. Hitler meddled with it and turned it into an overweight 45 t heavy tank with the engine and transmission of a 35 t medium. He delayed his Citadel offensive 6 months to get this wunderwaffe rushed into service. It ended up flopping as the Soviets had ample time to prepare and the Panther broke down in mass and was dead on arrival. That's a flop. The nazis were the original wehraboos. Propaganda in equipment superiority making up for numbers after all is what kept them fighting so well for so long despite clearly losing the war.
I remember reading about this exact thing in the amazing book "Weapons and Warfare of the 20th Century", which is pretty much a book describing the weapons and technology of the early 20th century.
I Read in a book years ago that Mercedes indeed basically came up with a copy of the T34 with some changes. But the idea was shelved after fears that Hitler would have flipped out if they had presented him with a German copy of the T34. Instead going with the Panther and Tiger series of Tanks . They also stuck with using Petrol engines unlike the Russians using diesel engines , another problem when it came to fuel shortages towards the end of WW2.
The story of German engineering: Perfect is the enemy of good. Mikhail Kalashnikov said: "Kakoj-to durak mozhet legko privnosit' slozhnost'. Sdelat' vsyo prosto, jeto genij." (Any fool can make something complicated. Making something simple takes genius.) I have some HK guns and I have a few Russian guns. The German firearms are works of art and engineering, made to the highest degrees of quality. Every detail belabored, every spot of polish applied. They cost 4x what my Russian ones did. But they aren't 4x better. They can also be finnicky, and dealing with even something so simple as a magazine or spring issue can be a nightmare, like shipping it back to Germany kind of nightmare. I can't just get them dealt with here, no no. My Russian guns? I can do it myself with a tutorial. The two absolute best value guns I have are my Mosin 91/30 ($200 after tax) and my M57 (Serb extrapolation on the Russian TT33 (also $200 after tax)).
I can well imagine that German tank commanders would have overestimated the power of the early T-34 from their experience. They would have experienced their shots bouncing off its sloped armour, as well as seen how fast it is compared to their Panzer IIIs and IVs. What they would not have seen is how awful situational awareness the T-34 tank commander has, or what crap sights and optics he needs to work with.
There was a case of a T-34 being hit 70ish times my some panzer IIIs. This is often used by people showing the vast superiority of the T-34 Dover the German tanks. My question is why the hell was the T-34 shot 70 something time before it was disabled and not destroy the tanks shooting it.
@@nikoclesceri2267 Ironically, the angled armor could be counted as a flaw too, since the angling was made at the detriment of the crew by reducing interior space. which you have to add the relatively small size of the T-34 and the bigger gun compared to a PzIII. People will probably laugh at the idea of "crew comfort" in a tank, but yeah, good luck reloading the gun in a cramped turret.
How important is peripheral vision even important in tank warfare anyways? Couldn't they just use radios to ask their infantry if anything was not in front of them? I thought nearly every German tank had a radio.
Halo meine freund! I love your content! Thank you so much for producing your content in English, as I am from Australia. Greetings from “down under” btw! I learnt German in high school, unfortunately however was too immature to have a passion to learn it properly - but I did pick up a lot of words and minor basic grammar. Since then, I have tried not to forget any of it, and have only developed a keen interest in Germany 🇩🇪 and everything about it, and your people, and culture. I hope one day to visit your country, and do your language the respect it deserves, by properly learning to speak and write it. I am a huge WWII buff and very much interested in the focus of your content and beyond. Such a huge commentary on us as humans and our society can be derived from these events, and it is evident that the world, as well as Germany as a nation, have only strived to learn from the past and become even greater than ever before. Again, thank you so much for your content, and I apologise that I can not Schreibe to you in Deutsche. I wanted to let you know also, that typically, I have not seen the word “Hazzle” and that it is only ever spelt as “Hassle” The word “Hazel” refers to hazel nut, but no use of Hazle or Hazzle have I ever seen in all my years as an English speaking Australian. Unless there is a recent change in American English, from “Hassle” to “Hazzle”. Again, thank you so much for your informative, and entertaining content. Goodluck in all your life my friend.
Let's see--when Germany took over Czech factories the Germans kept producing Czech tanks. Germany didn't capture Soviet tank factories (mortars are easy and tanks complex) and Germany didn't have Soviet tank factory workers. Stalingrad had a tank factory--when did German troops have time to round up workers and supply the factories with raw materials? French factories were taken over, staffed with French workers, and produced much war material for Germany.
@@brandonjacobsen3153 Not in 1938! Post 1945 the Czechs had T-34 tanks (after WW2 when Germany had surrendered and was split into four occupation zones) but not in 1938. Germany took over Czechoslovakia from 1938 with the annexation of the Sudetenland and full occupation in 1939. There were elements of the Red Army composed of Czech nationals that did operate T-34 tanks--as part of the USSR's military machine starting in 1943--Russian-made T-34 tanks. By the way, even the Russians didn't have the T-34 until 1940: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_occupation_of_Czechoslovakia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-34 And, of course, after World War Two the East German Army used Russian and Polish made T-34 tanks. tankandafvnews.com/tag/t34-nva/
@Alan Cranford That's in fact incorrect. The factory in Kharkov was captured more or less intact. But AFAIK it was only used for refurbishing captured tanks, not producing new ones. The Stalingrad factory was totally destroyed while capturing it, though.
In fact national socialist Germany ended the war without understand to build a tank who respect the 5 qualities of any good tank. Thick armour, Sloped armour, heavy gun, diesel engine, gearbox mounted on engine. Tiger 2 had a petrol engine as major minus. Is very high, heavy, complicated, for each tank you will need a solid maintenance team. In 1945, Germany was at list one year behind what you call a good tank. Meanwhile KV2 respect this demands(5) in 1941 September. The first modern tank can be considered IS 3, a development of IS 1 and IS 2.
Its interesting how the Panther and Tiger's transmission problems are constantly brought up while many of the T-34s flaws are glossed over. You have to wonder how much being on the winning side plays into people's impressions.
@TheBendablespoons It was not. It was supposed to be 1930`s panther. But every corner was cut in 1941 and it turn out to be easy to produce, if you remove some `not needed` things like radio, good periscopes or seats. Also replacing good performance but complicated parts with easy to make shit work great, and here we go, myth about "T-34 was build for numbers".
@@OffWorldTradeCorp Centurian - Stood up to a atomic bomb. (Needed a Re-paint) And a squadron drove up to the top of Holland, before the Soviet Army arrived.
The strength of this tank were his numbers and reliability. Wasnt the best at anything but always got the job done and were like 35000 of them unlike the 8000 pz IV and above for Germany
@@Stallion386 the version with the 3 member turret coudl mount the 85 mm gun that could pen even a Tiger at 800-1000 meters. It was realiable I dont knwo what you talking about. In the first year of the eastern front the crew were rather inexpert thanks to Stalin's purge.
@@Stallion386 well, T34 was crude, it had it's own issues, but it was easy to made (even recently moved factories with low-skilled workers could produce lots of them, althouth of a quality you'd expect from a low-skilled workers) and it was, well, reliable enough to get the job done )
@@gregorykappo229 Its more about quality of inspection then about ''easy to make''. Soviet inspectors allowed A LOT of wrong and very wrong things. Some tanks were even sent back from frontlines because they were so bad, but allowed to even leave the factory!
the T-34 diesel engine was made of aluminium, wich made it very light considering the horsepower output... replacing that with a german gasoline engine of comperable power-output would have made the tank considerable heavier...
The Germans made almost no consideration for weight. Just look at how they completely ignored the issues that caused for the Ferdinand despite the problem being well-known.
No, because of much larger displacement and higher necessary compression in diesel engine. And weight of an ICE is insignificant in non-flying vehicles anyway.
Even with it, it'd be extremely difficult to defeat a far larger and more resource-rich enemy with the exact same weapons that they're using. At that point you're putting all your hopes in having vastly superior tactics, and making every correct guess on the battlefield.
From my understanding, a T-34(76) was unlikely to penetrate itself at a medium to far range. If the Germans put the L43/48 75mm (which I assume was able to penetrate) on the T-34 they would have had superior tactics and superior weaponry, with the same armor.
There’s a good quote in the film “Battle of Britain” where Goering was asking his squadron commanders why the operation was failing and what did they need for success? The German fighter ace Adolf Galland replied “Give me a squadron of Spitfires”
Quantity has a Quality of its own - Russian meme. The Germans could never had produced this many T-34 as the USSR could. So they tried to build better weapons instead of not enough „good enough“ weapons. After the defeat at the Gates of Moscow in 1941, the war was lost. Almost the same as the CSA wasn’t able to conquer Washington in the early days of the American Civil War. Win on the wings of patriotism and speed, or do not win at all.
Also dont forget unification. You generally want at least some parts of your old equipment to be useful as a source of spare part for newer one. It also helps to produce faster.
This question is largely irrelevant because the Soviets ultimately did not win due to having better tanks (yes, T34-76 had a lot of issues from small crew space to the lack of radios), but having superior industry, resources and manpower. There was no way for Germany to produce 80.000 tanks, no way to provide the needed fuel or enough crews.
As if AH would his Aryan army to ride in a Slavic design. Even if he did they would have "improved" it up to 60 tons and burned out engines and transmissions anyway.
I believe one huge advantage of T-34 over German tanks was that it was easier to mass produce and service in front-line conditions... I missed discussing this aspect in your otherwise great lecture, as it is way better to have plenty of pretty good machines than just a handful of really great ones...
could propaganda play a role too? Knowing that Hitler would like to pretend that the Soviets were inferior, wouldn't copying a Russian tank give off wrong 'signals'?
@@neumann2550 That was the 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' system. At that time Germany needed Russia ..or at least a strong ally and at that point in time there was no open hate against Russia ..e.g. it was just politics/
Patent infringement was a serious thing back then. Mr Stalin would have written a VERY strongly worded letter to Mr Hitler to stop.
😂😂😂😂
*Aide rushes in*
"Comrade Stalin, Comrade Stalin! The Fascists are using T-34´s!"
*Stalin looks up*
"So, they have captured few? Nothing to worry about."
"No, these were made in Germany..."
*Stalin filling his pipe*
"WHAT DID YOU SAY!?"
"Yes, they have copied it, and started to produce it...."
"SECRETARY! Prepare to write down this message to that two-timing art dropout..."
Dear mr. Hitler
It has come to our attention that you infringing out patent on T-34. You hereby ordered to cease and desist, or we are forced to take legal action against you. If we do not recieve your answer in two weeks, we are forced to enforce our patent by other means.
Sincerely Yours
Josef Stalin
Leader, USSR
Hitler showed tenacity. And in 1945, bailiffs arrived in Berlin in T-34 tanks. Hitler became nervous and shot himself.
Does the letter come in the form of a few army groups/fronts?
@Cleetus Farragamo Better to have Morons the Commies tho
It never ceases to be impressive how MHV finds obscure documents and gives us direct quotes.
that one was an extreme lucky find, I think about 100-300 pages of pages each with 5-20 documents listed, I am flipping through suddenly the title of the report BINGO!
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized you're the man, man
I know that feel. Love flexing on professors with obscure but interesting reports in the bibliography
Thats what originally got me so into his work. I dont just have to take his word for it, i can (and have on some more obscure points) checked it out myself. Hes exactly what a historian should be. "Heres what i found, where i found it and now what i think of it".
Agreed, continually top notch content
Japan was unable to produce some German weapons, even when they were given blueprints. It's not a perfect comparison, but you could imagine how much trouble you'll gonna have when you *don't* have blueprints.
The Soviets copied the B-29 with no blueprints. And did a great job of it
@@javiergilvidal1558 That happened *after* the WW2, and Soviet was one of the nations that won the war.
@@TheFreaxTux That was immediately after the war, and having won it makes no difference in the stupendous amount of work involved. Unless you mean that the Soviets could and did take all the time in the world to produce the Tu-4. Well, they didn't: the prototype was flying in May 1947, a mere 2 years after the fall of Berlin. And production machines were in service by 1949. An astonishing feat by any standards, by a "victorious" but destroyed country which had lost 25M people, and was extremely overstretched in its gigantic reconstruction work!
@@javiergilvidal1558 yes, I should say I'm impressed, but they didn't need to mass produce T-34 anymore, that's what I mean. Actually, I bet they were able to use all the best engineers that were no longer needed to be at the factories...
They did try to copy the M-1Rifle with some success.
After Tiger and Panther, we now introduce the Kopierkatze!
@Yaldabaoth **T-34 comes out with a 88mm and IS-2 comes out with 152mm brumbar cannon**
@@themaus3847 German IS-2 loader: Are you fucking kidding me
Kv2 with a 765mm
Wikipedia says one Tiger in 1941 was worth 100 000 us$.
One t-34 was worth roughly 260 000 Soviet rubbles and going under 200 000 rubles.
Does anyone know the 1941 soviet rubble course for us $?
Very nice. Hopefully everyone got the joke.
Copying is often derided as a simple low-skill task, but in reality it's one of the more complicated engineering feats because you basically have to reverse-engineer every component. Nobody's gonna tell you what the right heat treat temp was on that sprocket. Having the physical piece in your hand doesn't tell you anything about it's metallic composition either. Those are things you have to determine yourself, and it requires even more testing than if you just designed a piece from scratch.
Copying is developing and manufacturing with extra steps, steps which Germany thoroughly lacked the time to take.
@ph0b0s Once again this is a case of, "it's not that simple." Even if some super spy managed to waltz out of a factory or design office with every single blueprint and all of them were properly translated, it isn't as easy as taking the blueprints to any factory and having them begin production. You now have to build the machinery (molds, stamps, jigs, etc.) to produce the parts, which is an engineering endeavor of it's own, and will require more blueprints.
Took years for the Russians to copy the B29 even though they had a bunch "interned" during the war.
@ph0b0s you totally missed his point. why go thru all the trouble of directly copying something if, as you said, they are capable of more "daunting" projects. they'd just design their own from scratch.
plus even if they did copy it, what's stopping them from improving/making it more "complicated"? defeating the purpose of just copying.
@ph0b0s You still don't grasp what I'm saying. It doesn't matter that the Germans were working on more complicated things: they designed and built everything for those themselves. Without almost every blueprint, they would not be able to directly copy the T-34. It doesn't matter how advanced their technology was. As someone else said earlier, even with a whole tank to dissect and inspect, you can't really tell how parts were fabricated beyond the basic "it was cast/rolled/stamped". Again, without almost every single blueprint, including the blueprints for the machinery, Germany would have to go through R&D to build a similar tank. It isn't as simple as drawing up a tank and building it. I realize you aren't aware how engineering and/or manufacturing works, but it takes a *lot* of time and effort to develop a new tank.
@ph0b0s Ironic of you to say that when you equate developing advanced technology with being able to copy anything they wanted to. For the umpteenth time, that's not how it works! Period! I don't know why it's so hard for you to understand, other than utter ignorance of how engineering and manufacturing works. Based on your responses, it seems you have the common misunderstanding that engineering is some omnipotent process that allows one to do anything. Advanced engineering in certain fields does not automatically mean that they could build anything. Developing A-bombs and jets is nothing like reverse engineering a vehicle. It doesn't matter that you disagree, that's how it is. I'm not saying that they couldn't make something similar, I'm saying that exactly replicating, or even coming close to exactly replicating a T-34 would be so difficult and time consuming that they would be better off starting their own vehicle from scratch. And guess what? That's what the engineers themselves decided, too! Imagine that!
"No Hans, the T-34 is not good enough for german steel."
- Factory owner minutes before he gets bombed.
On point: (Exemplary {respected} [comment]
@@rogerfournier3284 “(Exemplary{respected}[comment]”
Looks like some python code that’s gonna give an error
7:39 "As you all know, Germans tend to complicate things."
Now that's some prime dry humor there.
Why back in the 1970s I didn’t not buy a Mercedes while I was living in Germany. The initial cost was not high, but the maintenance costs were very high. Could get a cruder American car at same initial cost while using Affres garage for cheap maintenance. Finely machined toys are expensive.
It's a German Humor
It's a serious business
That's not a humor but real thing by the way. Over-engineered, very complex and expensive German tanks and other equipment were not necessarily any better than simple and cheap to produce Soviet one. German tanks suffered with a lot of mechanical issues as did cheap and simple Russian tanks. In time of fast paced atrocious war cheap and simple weaponry wins. Regarding the quality, sure Russian tanks were lower quality than German ones but for a good reason though. Stalin knew that tanks usually won't last for 1 or 2 battles anyway. Hence no point to make them highest quality but rather in more numbers. Also quite often more simple weapons appeared to be more reliable. Good example - Russian submachine gun PPS-43 - genius simple, easy to produce and extremely reliable. Virtually nothing can go wrong with that gun.
@@victorrumyantsev3718 , have you not heard the phrase "It's funny because it's true" before?
@@Xerxes17 No, I haven't, sorry.
When T-34 fall into German's hand, it become:
*MITTLERER PANZERKAMPFWAGEN 747 (R) - RUSS. T-34*
They even made the name overcomplicated lol
Comradez it's only overcomplicated if you don't understand the language. Which is in fact rather easy to understand. Not to speak, but understand.
@@Leon_der_Luftige so "MITTLERER PANZERKAMPFWAGEN 747 (R) - RUSS. T-34" isn't more complicated than just t-34? suure...
I mean when you know the language those monster words wont seem so bad anymore.
Example Finnish counterpart for a offensive tank is...
Rynnäkköpanssarivaunu
When you know the language its easy to break it into parts :D
Rynnäkkö = Assault
Panssari = Armor
Vaunu= Cart
@@Trollman2K Well, if you weren't too moronic to realise that this is the complete technical designation in military language and not just some shortened alias... Then you would understand.
But what can you expect from someone with your nickname?
Short answer: They did, but everyone knows that supreme german scientists overengineered it a bit and it ended up to be almost 200 t and unable to get over a small hill. (Yeah, I am talking about the Maus :D)
they cant build russian bias
@@racelkatyusha403 the USSR had all their tanks built by wargaming and gaijin
I was told by a WW2 Vet that each V2 missile consumed the equivalent resources of a fighter plane. He was probably correct.
@@jamallabarge2665 surprisingly cheap
@@jamallabarge2665 its kind of hard to calculate exactly. But going by cost a single V2 cost about 100,000 reichmarcks. A Me 262 cost about 80,000 and Me 109s and Fw 190s cost about 50,000-60,000. Also StuGs cost about 80,000 and tigers cost 210,000 a PaK 40 cost 12,000 and the LeFH 18 cost 16,000. They made about 6,000 V2s and sucessfully launched 3,200 at allied targets. So yeah for the cost of all that they could have made many more planes tanks or guns.
They didn't have enough communism to build them.
now under merkel, we have it.
they need stalinium
@@partikelsmusic Under Merkel we live in peace. No nationalist world wars anymore and no right-wing populists like Donald Trump who fails in real crisis like Covid-19 totally:
twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1285299379746811915
There was more than enough communism in POW, labor, and death camps to be used as forced la-
Oh, that's not what you meant, was it.
German engineer: Can you build tanks like those Russians do?
German labourers: Impossible; we have food.
You can't just copy someone else's tank, or CZcams will stick adverts on it.
🤣🤣🤣
I think you mean demonetize it....
(Copyright problems)
Why didnt the germans copy the t 34
My reaction: copyright of course
Exactly. They had the right to copy, right?
How can you make that comment when the VERY top comment with 4400 likes ( as of 15/2/21) is a better worded version of the same joke ?
@@CFox.7 no it has 46
@@CFox.7 also the comment above mine isnt even a joke
@@amixedbag5964 Ok, so YT stacks comments differently for different viewers. Apologies. Carry on.
German soldiers: "Can we have some T-34s of our own?"
Engineers: "Re-creating the T-34 would take about as much time as creating an equally good tank but without the flaws."
Soldiers: "Okay, can we have an equally good tank but without the flaws?"
Engineers: "Haha transmission go KRUNCH!"
German quality...¿
@@ulfpe that's a myth, in fact, pz V and VI suffered a lot of mechanical problems, not to mention the Ferdinand...
@@innerarts4091The king itself.
the transmission was never a real issu on any german tank.... it was the final drive at the Panther, desinged for a 30to tank ending in a 45to tank and befor production started a smart ass office clerck though it would be a good idea to save some money by useing lower steel quality for the gearing. Later Panther were as reliable as all tanks of ww2. This realiablity problem is a Allied Prpaganda duck that even today is belived by youtube nerds... if the german tanks were so unreliable who the hell 3500 german tanks could kick ass of over 20.000 Red Army tanks in 1941... destroying 11.000 of them in 18 days and over 20.000 by end of 1941... fact is in 1941 the Red Army tanks were all unreliable crap with tonns of engine transmission problems that were sorted out later in the war.... half of the tank fleet was old and worne out the other half was badly build... ever wonder why there are pictures of 1941 t-34 leaving factory with a spare transmission already straped to the enginecover? Because the T-34 transmission in 1941 could hardly made it to the battlefield and back i.imgur.com/VdqUDIj.png
@@nagmashot its almost like the german tanks were on the defensive which gave them a natural advantage against the soviet tanks
Or is it just me
To a German engineer "inferior quality" = not complicated enough.
Understatement des Jahres!
Actually the difference was one of the ways NATO caught and identified spies during the Cold War. Soviet dentistry was very crude. Western intelligence services recruited a lot of dentists and trained them to spot and identify the shitty Russian fillings, caps, bridges, and root canals and report their findings to state security. It sounds stupid as hell, but they actually caught Soviet deep cover spies this way. Suspected spies were often subjected to a dental exam to make final determination. Tom Clancy actually does a homage to this little known fact in his book "Red Storm Rising" where a captured Spetsnaz commando in West Germany is identified by his dental work. A German dentist remarks there is no way another German dentist could have done such poor dental work.
@@gurumagoo The Soviets are like that meme: "Hey, as long as it works..."
@@podemosurss8316 throw it against the wall, smash it to the ground. It looks ugly like before, but still works...
@@max8286 czcams.com/video/w4KXCuliGok/video.html
german soldiers: we want the t34
german engineer: we have better tanks at home
german tanks at ho... oh the transmisson is broken
You mean of the sovjet tanks, right? :)
@@derkaiser7968 he means extremely poor quality of the later German tanks, the Panther and Tiger 2
Wasn't a sledgehammer standard issue in a T-34 so you could change gear?
@@Edax_Royeaux t34 was not designed to last long, as the Soviets knew what kind of war they were fighting. When a tank runs longer than expected, things brake and jam on it.
@@ethanedwards422 The T-34 were also built to be robust and cover vast distances so it depends what you mean by "not designed to last long". The designer Mikhail Koshkin died of pneumonia driving the prototype 800 miles to Moscow to show it off to Stalin.
They missing the main material to create T-34 : Stalinium
War Thunder: would like to know your location
On the other hand, they have a superior material: KRUPPSTAHL
Stalinium got penetrated by 3.7 mm gun
Excerpt from Stalinium a history
“Stalinium are found in low quantities in lighter and medium vehicles of the Soviet Union and serve mostly as a morale booster to have Stalinium in your vehicle but heavier vehicles saw more Stalinium as part of the materials used to make them vehicles like the Object 252u but there is a vehicle that is completely different to others and that is the KV2. The KV2 however are a special case. Unlike its heavy tank comrades it is made of basic steel but also unlike its comrades it fires Stalinium shells which are highly effective yet inaccurate.
No other country has been shown to be able to replicate Stalinium ( even Russia in the present )as it disappeared with the Soviet Union.”
Not funny
Can you pretty please do a video on the Soviets moving it's industry east? It just sounds pretty crazy, I am curious how they did it and how impacted their production levels.
This video may help: czcams.com/video/N6xLMUifbxQ/video.html The section you are interested in starts at 26:20, although it discusses the manufacturing procedures of the Americans and Germans as well.
yeah
They move the industrial to the Urales mountains was a great effort.In year 1942 they were produce 2,000 tanks per month.
Then you will be truly fascinated by what the Chinese did to eventually wind up in Chunking.
Just read an article in an older Shotgun News about the Barnaul ammo factory and how it was moved lock, stock and barrel to Siberia far east of Moscow. Everything was moved, including the workers. The machine was set back up and production resumed right out in the open until the factory structures could be built around the machinery. Tough people those Russians.
Answer: They instead made the Panther.
Which was an over complicated mess of a tank much like the tiger...Over engineered in areas that didn't even NEED the complexity in the first place.
Vk projects
@@MegaRazorback t34 at the begining was crap as well, it takes lots of field trials to perfect the tank.
@@Cortesevasive Yes but in the case of the T-34 it was more of a "The red army needs a tank that can be slapped together quickly while also being cheap" kind of tank...You only have to look at the examples they have at Bovinton to see just how quickly they were churning them out, the mighy jingles did a top 5 tanks for the Bovington tank museum and there was a partial weld at the back of a T-34/T-34-85 that was nearly an inches worth of gap between the plates.
Basically what I'm getting at in the T-34 was a tank that while crude, fit the job it was built for...The panther on the other hand was way too complex of a tank, esoecially at that stage of the war.
@@MegaRazorback On the other hand, given the drawings of the early Panther version in the video, the Panther may exactly be what you get when German industry tries to copy the T-34.
It wasn't that the T34 was so good,it was that the T34 was good enough and there were thousands of them.
That's correct, the tank was built by the score when Stalin shifted production east of the Urals out of bombing range. Whilst the allied bombing on Germany created major problems on replacing or repairing German tanks. The capacity for large scale industrial production was crucial in deciding the war. A lesson not understood or ignored in the West today.
The Soviet tanks were also not as complicated as the German tanks to repair.
Exactly. "Quantity has a quality all its own." Sometimes its not about having 100 of the best quality, when you're up against 5000 of "good enough" quality.
I think that this channel has discussed that T34s were built with the intent of only operating for about 6 months because by then they would either be destroyed or the war would be over.
@@captainz9 the only problem was that Germany’s oil supply was already being pushed to the limit, so either Germany’s ally Italy needed to win North Africa and take the the oil fields to the east or capture Russia’s oil fields in order to sustain a massive bunch of ok tanks. Both of these endeavors failed
i am skeptical they could have simply changed the engine on the T-34 to a German one. The M4 was designed with a very large engine compartment because at the time only aircraft radial engines were available to power the M4.
The T-34 was designed around the V-2-34 vee engine, which is a lot more compact.
I was wondering about that too.
The Germans used Maybach V-12 gas engines, while the Russians used diesel.
@@austinm.9832 use of gas rather than diesel in potentially very cold environment seems to be a good thing to me?
@@reggiebuffat Actually the Germans didn't use Diesel engines, because producing Diesel engines wasn't something they were good at back then. Other than Marine Diesels for their U-boats that is. The reason the Russians used Diesel engines and still do is that Diesel fuel freezes at a lower temperature than petrol, most Diesel engines get better gas mileage and Diesel fuel is far harder to ignite. They're still harder to start in cold weather, but some additives keep the fuel from gumming up. I'm sure the Russians had those additives at the time. That or would've had them idling when not in use. One engine that wasn't mentioned in the video that was used on the Shermans was the Caterpillar D200A Diesel. This was developed during the war and was based on a 9-cylinder radial airplane engine. It has 450 hp.
Bad Drivers of Moose Jaw The Jumo company made a living out of aircraft Diesel engines before they switched to gas turbines...
If only they had World of tanks gamers to advise them in WW2, they are experts in tank production and design, fully qualified by moving a computer generated picture of a tank around on a screen while sitting in their bedroom .
Don't forget the War Thunder gamers. They know better.
@@jared.p240 I hear War Thunder gamers are so good, they know that the R3T20 was a great design and should've been mass produced
Just load Gold Ammo, spam, and move on to the next sap.
@@officialromanhours And they might even atom-bomb both Washington and New-York with an He-177...
@@officialromanhours In fact the only good news happening to that R3T20 armour looks like the 20 mm Oerlikon auto-cannon...
As my grandma used to say, it's easy to admire the T-34 when you are not the one driving it.
:)))))))
@Mialisus And when the turret turns Boris has to do gymnastics over the ammunition to avoid getting hit by the gun
Or fighting in it. As The Chieftain notes, the turret (at least on the T-34-85) had no basket, and the main ammunition stowage on the floor of the hull had no cover, so attempting to load the gun while the turret was traversing was an effort in steady footwork. Or maintain it either. Check the clutch at 10 hours of usage, clean the air filters at 25 hours (removing the armoured louvres over the radiator intake), and more things to do not long afterwards.
Hence why the Russians loved and appreciated the Shermans so much. They loved its ease of maintenance, a good gun in the 76mm, and above all, wet stowage that prevented ammo fires (ronson lighter? The T-34 was the TRUE Ronson lighter). In fact, many Russian Sherman crews absolutely refused a T-34 after they got one shot out from under them. They were ostracized after the war for refusing to say the Shermans were junk!
My father loved driving those bastards, but he was also a short muscular guy in his 20's.
The greatest design feature of the T-34 is not the tank itself, but the cost-efficient manufacturing process
Yes Magnitogorsk had on emilion slave workers ! Ready to supply 8000 tanks in one shift ! A Crazy number ?
As a russian speaking person i should say that i was very interested while listening this familliar facts with those german accent >_
Russian soldiers pushing into Germany quickly learned a couple phrases: "Deutschland ist kaput!" and "Fraulein, kommt hier!"
@@capmidnite the were only few Russian divisions in WWII : SS РОА, Wehrmacht division РОНА, and SS division Russland
@@maxlyubov3895 I was talking about the Red Army.
@@capmidnite red army had no russian division not did it have russian front
@@capmidnite к сожалению русским солдатам были запрещены некоторые приятные для солдат на чужой земле вещи...
TLDR: They thought about it, started developing a copy, then being german they went all german and ended up with half a dozen over-engineered expensive variations and then lolMaus. the end.
Thank you very much! Just what I was looking for in this comment section.
Ty
Not really overengineered, except for the Ferdi. Just so far ahead of time that the infrastructure couldn't keep up. Most of the malfunctions of tanks happen because of bad driving conditions. The biggest problem for German (and Soviet) tanks was their weight. They bogged down quickly, but in terms of malfunctions they were pretty chill, apart from the very first prototypes.
Remember, we are talking about tanks, not the newest model of sport cars. Tanks require a lot more tinkering than only the engine and the gun. Everything needs to be perfect if you want to run it. Every tank therefore will break down at one point, especially when fighting or when they go off-road. This was where the weight of the latest tanks proved a big hindrance, since infrastructure often didn't support these monsters; they couldn't easily be transported, especially with railroads being cut off.
The strength of the Sherman, for instance, was that every part was maintainable. Repairs could be done quickly by anyone who knows the difference between a spanner and a screwdriver, and even heavily damaged tanks could potentially be repaired. Therefore, malfunctions were no biggie for the US Army. This might also explain why so many lost Shermans were lost due to fire; other damage often wasn't lethal, so those tanks that did get knocked out had suffered very critical damage.
The engineering that went into these vehicles wasn't the main problem. It wasn't, as many people claim, a constant save check to see if your tank stopped working. Parts eventually will wear down, but they didn't magically wear down quicker in a Panzer. However, the weight of those tanks and the fact that laymen often couldn't repair any issues meant that these tanks had to be shipped around a lot more, which greatly strained the already damaged infrastructure.
@@the_tactician9858 The biggest problem was the germans being unable to adequitely modernize their industry, then doubling down with slave labour which actively sabotaged the machinery.
The Panther is a classic case of "feature creep", which increased its weight, cost, and complexity, which the German armaments industry found ever the more difficult to sustain. That and rushing production even though the WaffenAmt warned repeatedly that the design needed to be more thoroughly tested and "teething" problems resolved before it was placed into mass production and issued to tank units. Still, once MOST of those "bugs" were worked out, the availability of Panthers in a given tank battalion went up, though they still were worse off than Panzer IV units and even Tigers. That Germany produced over 6,000 of them, and their combat record indicates they were extremely effective, as long as they ran at all, indicates that the basics of what's tantamount to Germany's first MAIN BATTLE TANK, if not the world's, were correct.
The Soviets already knew of the design defects in the T-34, but they themselves were rushing production in 1941. It's now know that they had offensive plans of their own, though the ability to meet what Vladmir Rezun (aka "Viktor Survorov") postulates in his works, i.e., that they were going to strike on July 6, 1941, is doubtful. If the Soviet plans had been to equip top-line tank divisions with the T-34, and at least give their crews some training, then likely they'd have delayed such an attack well into the autumn of '41. Not unlike what the Germans did re: Kursk in '43 re: the Panther. They did have a successor to the T-34, the T-43, which looks similar, but was slightly larger, had the three-man turret, along with correcting other flaws which impaired combat effectiveness. Although this tank was at first intended to sport the 76mm gun seen in later T-34s, it could take the D-5T 85 mm gun. Production of the D-5T had been reserved for the upcoming IS heavy tank (IS-85), but the appearance of the Tiger and then Panther caused the Soviets to up-gun their tanks to offset them. Furthermore, the role of the IS tanks was changed, as it was really intended to be a "break-through" tank, dealing mainly with enemy fortifications, and the job of taking on German armor, especially the "Big Cats", was left to tank destroyer units, in line with American practice. Hence why the IS-2 got the 122mm gun instead of the D-10T 100mm weapon. With the heavy losses in 1943, the Soviet Army was unwilling to halt production of the T-34 in order to re-tool for the T-43; it's often not realized how tenuous the military situation was until the late summer of 1944. An "ok" tank in huge numbers was better than NO or FEW "better" tanks. But they realized that most of the advantages of the T-43 with the 85mm gun were from its turret, which could be plopped onto the existing T-34 chassis, with relatively few modifications and operational flaws. The worst part of this marriage of the new turret with the old chassis was that the tank was nose-heavy, hard to steer, and could easily get stuck when traversing ditches and craters. But at least it gave them a main weapon that could deal with almost anything the Germans had at typical combat ranges, and kept most of the T-34s mobility. Hence the famed T-34/85, of which a FEW examples still serve, even TODAY!
I read a little bit about that The engine they wanted to put in the t34 would not fit and the gun they wanted to use also would not fit in its turret which led to them not copying it as well.
Many memoir's I've read tank crews were always worried during battle while attempting to resupply they would be shot by their own guns lol. Pretty sure tons of T-34 running around on the German side would be quite an issue........
Could have been solved by only using them on other fronts. And stick to PZ4s and tigers on the eastern front...
@@thomasbaagaard Germany was in no condition to start manufacturing and training enough crews for another type of tank that would open up additional logistical nightmares.
@@leonardwei3914 you are completely missing the point.
He was arguing that "blue-on-blue" would be an issue. And Iam pointing out the obvious solution to that problem.
Iam in no way arguing that they would have been able to actually do build new T34s.. or that they should have tried to do so.
Oh, and I guess you don't realize that the Germans did use captured T34s... just like they used a good number of other captured tanks. (french tanks... British tanks in north africa, T34s and so on)
Thomas Aagaard- Yeah, just ship it 2,500km to go fight the West.
@@v4enthusiast541 Now you are just trolling. or being ignorant.
They did so with other equipment. Including damaged tanks being returned to Germany for rebuilding, captured artillery being refurbished locally in some cases, but moved to Germany and reused in other cases. Some ended up in France...
Captured french stuff moved to Russian and a lot of men from the east who ended up fighting in Normandy.
PaK 36(r) where used in north africa in 1942... and used for the Marder III.
So clearly the Germans was willing to move things around a lot...
And as pointed out in the actual video.. that I guess you did not watch... producing a copy T34 in Germany (in stead of the panther) is one of the options mentioned.
And moving that to x place would be the same as moving a panther.
Great facts? Check
Good visuals? Check
No annoying music? Check
We seem to be missing something to make this great. What do we need?
A great, thick but very discernible German accented narrator? BINGO!!!!! We got BINGO!!!!
I've always found it quite amazing the Russians were like, "O crap, here come the Germans. Time to move all of our factories!". It's just such a crazy logistical feat.
Soviet economy was flexible af. No shit they build that many tanks even after loosing their main lands,
They did get a lot of material help form the Western Allies, including planes and tanks, to keep fighting.
@@scratchy996 mainly after 1943, when the Germans were already loosing
@@Shantykoff Help from the West, especially the industrial might of the US, was indeed a major help for the Soviets. Still, it was the insane sacrifices the Russian people made that defeated the Nazis in the east.
@@Jon.A.Scholt nobody is denying US help, I'm just saying it's overestimated. Also nobody remembers of the reverse land lease from the Soviets to US, also the help with Japan, when the Soviets demolished the Japanese land forces, forcing the capitulation
"The grass is always greener on the other side" WHEN THEY'RE SHOOTING AT YOU FROM THAT GRASS!
when you in the receiving end of a bullet, the grass is indeed greener
Thats why you dig for victory when you encounter hostile grass.
There is no point in producing the T34 when you need something that can beat the T34.
A really good point!
Yes! The Germans had a superb 88mm gun and the better tank for them was one that could effectively accommodate it. Not a T-34 with its cramped turret.
The Panther was better but they couldn't make them quickly enough, that was the problem. Bigger and better tanks aren't going to win you the conflict if you don't have enough of them. I was watching a video the other day about the Tiger 1's - the Germans sent the first 125 or so that were built to face up to the British in the Caen area of northern France after D-Day; apparently, they knocked out over 500 tanks and other vehicles between them but they were virtually all lost by the end of the escape down the Falaise corridor. The sheer number of tanks the allies and Russians could put in the field, plus of course their growing air superiority, did for German armour in the end.
@@Wally-H Even if the germans made more tanks they wouldn't have the men and oil to drive those tanks. Tik made a great video about germany's oil problem during ww2.
I think it's also easy to overrate the T-34 effectiveness when they greatly outnumbered German tanks. It was the most destroyed tank during the war. If you add all German production of Panzer IIs, Panzer IIIs, Panzer IVs, Mark V Panthers, Tiger Is, and Tiger IIs, you still end up with barely half the number of the T-34s that were LOST by the Soviets.
I think German AT gunners would not have been amused...
Hans: Ours?
Fritz: uhm
Hans: OURS?!?
Fritz: not sure
Hans: *OURS?!?*
Fritz: lemme phone HQ...
That's right, the risk of friendly fire. Hard to identify. So much of a risk of easly mistaken that the tiger ended up looking like a block.
They could if painted it a certain color and put a nazi simble on it
@@dself0808 more easy to identify from a distance by its obvious unique shape then nazi symbols and colours I suppose.
GO N Maybe they could of modified it with a long barrel 75 and a new turret design that could of been a way
@@dself0808 They possibly could've done that but it would require them to put resources to doing that and ensuring the turret fit the turret ring of the tank as well as allowing the crew acceptable ergonomics to use the tank. Considering that adding new guns on the Panzer III and IV, which didn't need major redesigns to take these upgrades, neutralized one of the T-34s major advantage over the earlier war models it is debatable if the resource investment would've been worth it.
"Grass is always geener in the other side". .. Perfect descrption, then you capture equipment... And ir was not that awsome ..
There is a reason why the grass is greener on the other side - Its always raining and everything is covered in shit. You still want to go?
@@csjrogerson2377
Alas, I cannot.
Damn the electric fence!
@@csjrogerson2377 I have already been to Wisconsin. Won't phase me.
@@germanvisitor2 Farside fan
@@stephenlitten1789
Well not a fan but I like it.
German soldiers ta the front: This tank is kicking our ass!
German engineers at home: This tank is inferior to ours.
German soldiers: Cognitive dissonansen 👁👃👁
German Logistics Officer: You're both right, it is inferior but it's kicking our arse because they have 4 of them to 1 of ours.
@@IceWolfLoki German soldiers: now thousands of this inferior tanks kicking our ass!
German Logistics Officer: You're r... (gets crushed by T34 tanks rushing through the wall)
@Tranhoang Long Yes and producing the T34 would not have changed the odds either (even theoretically more efficient tanks like the Tiger didn't change the odd, anyway).
@@herheartbeats5727 It would make everything even worse. Germans used some T-34 and they were horrible. Russians could not spot the difference between german crewed T-34 and russian crewed T-34. And same happen with germans, that caused some friendly-fire. Imagine what happen when there is TWO sides with MANY T-34.
Building smaller numbers of more refined machines makes sense when you're running into serious personnel shortages too.
More like oil shortage
@@Gleichtritt
*trained* personal and oil were more or less equally stressing issues in 1941-1945 for the Germans.
@Mercb3ast The Wehrmacht began experiencing manpower shortages as early as (late) 1942. It is true that the Axis initially had a numerical advantage during Barbarossa, but the Soviets immediately began to mobilize their 14 million reservists, and by 1942 the Germans were outnumbered on many sectors of the front. "the total manpower of the Axis powers was significantly larger than the entirety of the Soviets until into 1944 due to the occupation of Ukraine/Belarus" Manpower in occupied territories did not benefit the Wehrmacht, they could not recruit the millions of military aged men in occupied territories. While it is true that the Wehrmacht continued to experience a growth in personnel from 1941 to 1944, it must be noted that the Red Army was exponentially increasing at the same time, and by 1943 had gained a significant numerical advantage over the Wehrmacht.
yeah, that worked out really well for the Wehrmacht
@@rifekimler3309
It was the only sensible thing Germany could do at that point. They had no oil to fuel many tanks, they had very few trained crews, they didn't have the industrial base for spawning thousands of crude tanks.
But what they DID have were good engineers and craftsmen to produce a low number of very sophisticated tanks.
So they did that.
"Because we dont want to be like china lol"
-Germany 1945
@J Burke Tesla did it first.
@J Burke Bruh momment
@LORD VJ SENPAI actually,Europeans did it 1000 years ago
German machinery stands for *Originality* and excellent quality, so the opposite of China lmao
@@soos1885 "Excellent quality"
Yes i'm looking at you, clutch from Panthers.
This guy is legit - I've never seen a youtuber use citations like this - must have gone through some school. Also, appreciate not focusing on aspects of history without primary sources and instead focusing the video on the information you do have.
The lack of radio equipment would likely be another issue the germans would have. As it's already cramped in a T-34 and the lack of a turret basket would mean adding one would be difficult. And one major advantage the germans had throughout the war against the russians was the ability to communicate between tanks.
As for the engine, yes they could add one of their own engines but that would require a new transmission unless you they had a engine that produces the equal or greater horsepower at similar RPM otherwise you would need a new transmission as well with different gear ratios.
If you'd wanted to, you could do the same thing the British did with the M3 - put a bustle on the back of the turret and put the radio in it, which the Loader operates (as per the Stug). Likewise, the engine problem is solvable - if you want to. Alternatively, you can build a completely new tank from scratch, and do it right. It might be available by July 1943, and the transmission issues might be fixed by 1947 or so.
That's why T-34 mod 42 and T-34/85 were made
Care to elaborate on the lack of radio equipment? T-34s were equipped with radios since 1940, just very few of them. But that was due to the lack of radio supplies, not due to the lack of space or tech difficulties with installation.
@@sergeychmelev5270 You are right. But the German engineering establishment did not want to swallow their pride and build a T-34, even if it had German radios and German optics and sights.
@@ianwhitchurch864 no doubt in that. I'm just curious why "lack of radio" was listed as one of the reasons not to copy T-34, since it definitely did have that capability, and Germans were not planning on copying equipment like radios anyway.
Daimler also had a prototype for the panther. It looked like a T 34 and was also designed with the T 34 in mind
There were also czech T-24/25 projects. But germans called them obsolete completly ignoring the fact that it was the best that czech factories of the time could have mass produced and it would have still ended up being leagues above older pre-war LT vz.35 and 38. Instead they continued production of SPGs that were limited by older chassis and suspension and later on when things got worse, started production of Hetzer, inspired by Maresal and sabotaged during testing by its head designer, who was a russian immigrant. Hetzer also fully reaped the results of abusing the old obsolete chassis and units(suspension, transmission, engine) of old pre-war tanks instead of being SPG/tank destroyer on newer chassis of T-24/25 tanks.
German logic: It's smaller then Panther that is a heavy tank in Allied eyes? Then it's bad! Don't mind us ourselves still producing last Pz.II's on german factories...
he showed it in the video
@@TheArklyte the Hetzer was produced in Czechoslovakia because the alkett factory who made the StuGs was destroyed. And the factory who produced the hetzer (forgot the name) had no equipment for vehicles over 16 tons
How would you get a monster like the T-34 on top of the glass of a xerox machine ??
underated comment
It has tracks, it could be driven on top of the xerox. Although you might loose guarantee on it.
They didnt have enought Stalinium 😂😂😂
Actually that's not a joke but actual fact. Pseudonym Stalin is formed from Russian word staly, which means steel. Germany had not enough steel for industry.
@@Imaxxd22 Sweden willingly helped with this problem. 60% German metal from Swedish ore
@@Imaxxd22 And Russian word Stal' comes from German word Stahl.
@@Askhat08 Talk about the irony. Get it? IRONy? I'll see myself out...
@@sobolanul96 I got "I'll see myself out..."
The part of installing german engine into T-34's body was passed rather quickly. I could be wrong, so have this with plenty of salt, but I remember reading that the T-34's engine compartment was very cramped and therefore it would have required major structucal changes in the body to accommondate a different engine altogether. It's in direct contrast to Sherman, which was rather spacy and straightforward all around, allowing lots of upgrades over the years with rather minor changes to the body.
Yea the t34 is still fighting wars and in service in 2020 while Sherman’s are just history
@@Radbot776
A) Sherman's were still in service in some South American countries, at least as reserves, until 2018.
B) That says a lot more about the poverty of the country operating them than the quality of the tank.
Phillip Mishkov
The same could be said about many old small arms, namely the PPSh, STG-44, M1 Garand, and others that have been found in the Middle East. Just because a weapon system is still in service does not mean it’s good
This is true.
T-34 has a tight V12 engine, making for a narrow + tall + long engine compartment.
M4 on the other hand was designed initially for an air cooled radial, making for a wide + tall + not long engine compartment.. BUT when M4A2/A3/A4 came along, they kept the wide + tall dimensions and just lengthened the rear of the tank to make a huge engine compartment that made maintenance a breeze (especially on the A3 with its tight V-8 engine).
Germany had plenty of gasoline V engines it could have put in a German T-34 copy, just no diesels (but why would Heinz Guderian even mention diesels, all German tanks were Maybach petrol powered already) as their diesels of equivalent power were the inline opposing piston design of the Junkers Jumo 205 series which I do not believe could fit.
@@Radbot776 In Third world country armies, for sure. And mainly for use in possible uprisings by their own people.
I watch quite a bit of military history. This mans research and analytical skills I think are exceptional. Back to source on tje ground information that looks at strategy tactics logistics the whole box. Keep it up!
"Germans complicate things" I'm in awe at the wisdom of this statement.
last time i was this early the Germans were copying the ČKD LT vz. 38
@Mks Last time I was this early, the Germans were luring Roman soldiers into the Teutoberg Forest.
Last time I was this early these jokes didn’t exist
@uncle joe Last time you were this early, your girlfriend had to clean the sheets and had a seriously unsatisified look on her face.
@@42ouncesofPAIN Last time I was this early, Mammoooth whee hole me eat big MEAT dirkng blod ungaaa
I love watching your vids. They’re always very well researched and very informative. Keep up the good work.
Picking just one of their existing designs,upgrading it,and mass producing the ass out of it would've been enough.
PzKw IV already had it's teething problems ironed out by then.
PzKw III production could've been turned over to the IV,even before a 'total war' mass production.
Considering USSR had only roughly 1,000 T34s operational as of 22nd June 41,enough IVs could've been fielded to meet the threat.
It didn't matter how good or how many tanks they had. Germany didn't have the oil needed.
Also, that right there is the Soviet doctrine - to overwhelm the enemy with numbers. It worked for them, since they had the resources to put it into practice - a huge population, a lot of iron and a lot of fuel - and didn't have the resources to do anything else effectively - like capable tactical commanders or trained tank crews (not as many as the Germans, at least). The German doctrine, much more adapted to the German situation, was to destroy the enemy with quality - and so mass producing tanks would just make them play a game at which the Soviets were far better and far more adapted. Just like go2mikerenzi pointed out - sure, you can mass produce tanks. The Luftwaffe had a ton of planes and pilots. But so what, if they had no gasoline, to a point where the most reasonable thing was to send pilots into infantry units? What will you do then - spread the fuel so thinly that the armored divisions can't even reach regimental HQs? What's the point of having tanks in the first place then?
@@buckplug2423 german steel quality was shit
@@mengxiangxuan6552 only towards the end of the war.
@@thunberbolttwo3953 german steel was always shit
Waffenprüf? Wasn't that one of the houses at Hochwarzen, the SS School of Sorcery along with SSlytherin, Angreifendorf und Panzergrabenklauzen?
SS school of Skorzeny
You like the comedy, dont you?
As a follow-up question I'd be interested to hear your take on the design of what would become the Panther tank, in particular the decisions made to produce the MAN design rather than the VK 3001 (DB) or VK 3002 (DB). I'm quite fond of those DB designs, not least because the VK 3001(DB) is one of my favourite tanks in World of Tanks.
The Germans IIRC had several “meta” considerations going against a straight copy. First, as war progressed badly they tried to develop uber-tanks like the Tiger 2 so they wanted to win by superiority not numbers (probably partially due to lack of manpower/partially to belief in their cleverness). Second, even on their own weapon systems they were always tinkering and sucked at standardization, whereas US w M4 and USSR w T34 had a mindset to simplicity w mass volume that the Germans just didn’t prioritize.
Add to that core issues like the 4 man vs 5 man doctrine, mentioned in this video, and you end up with Panthers. The 75mm long German guns also seemed better than 76mm T34 IIRC.
So I bet this idea sounded more appealing to front line grunts dying in 41 than to home front decision makers. Past 42 they had better 1on1 tanks, so less emergency, even if that didn’t actually make it into a winnable war.
USA and USSR had a Lot of standardized beds and tank models... Something Germans lacked or refused to do Mass Produce on weapons...
Like we see Pz Kpfwg Ausf G, C,A, J... Look How many variants. this had to complicate the LINE of production somehow... So instead of making a mass produced and standardized modelo of a tank... They had plenty of models each one with their own specification. Apart from USA Shermans that other variants were made and dispatched to Very specific elite tank plattoons that showed prowess in battle.of course these New variants had better equipment and better specs overall.
@@Terraqueo22 Well Germany kinda got the Production game right with the StuG. Sticking with a singular design after '42 and only adding minor upgrades that barely affected production. They kinda figured out they needed more, not more advanced Pz. IVs in '45, but by then it was too late. Germany had the capability to play the production game, but they never took advantage of it.
@@rebelgaming1.5.14 Yes I couldnt agree more... Germany had the potential to maintain a war machine for more 7 years... But they literally wasted their production efforts into little things... Like reinforcing the rear armor of the Konigstiger or changing the turret design of the Panzer IV...
The battle of Quantity and Quality
Luckily for the Germans, they instead chose to develop the excellent Panther tank. Had they not done this, they would've lost the war.
lol
It's worth noting that the Germans DID manage to reverse engineer a decent copy of the SVT rifle.
Talking G43 or something else? That's the only german rifle I can think of that looks similar to the SVT
@@TheBanzaiCharge G41/43 is rifle system of its own. They are similar only because they are semi-auto rifles build in 1940`s.
Even if they decided to copy it, they would inevitably "improve it" enough to make it a mechanic's nightmare anyway.
My experience of owning a BMW proves it's true.
Oh, oh, I know the answer to this one! Because completely changing up your factory's production lines to produce something completely different takes a lot of time and resources. Also probably they didn't like the lack of good vision and radios. Well, time to watch the video and see if I got it right.
Daaamn, nailed it.
Poor visibility? Every T-34 came with 6 or 8 infantry soldiers haning on to metal rails etc.
@@pexxajohannes1506 Yeah, because when you're inside a tank with its engine running it's so easy to hear a few guys outside yelling.
Seriously, not sure if you're joking or not. The T34's poor visibility issues were very well known.
@@Shenaldrac soviet tanks in general suffered from poor ergonomics and crew management. The crew compartments were cramped, badly ventilated and noisy, handling the instruments/controls required excessive force form time to time (there's the joke about driving a T-34 with a hammer) and the optics were bad. If i recall correctly, the Germans themselves established that russian guns had similar accuracy to their own, but the bad optics meant the crew couldn't aim them as well as germans could
Care to elaborate on the lack of radios? T-34s were equipped with radios since 1940, just very few of them. But that was due to the lack of radio supplies, not due to the lack of space or tech difficulties with installation.
I saw a T-34 back when the Ordnance Museum was at Aberdeen MD. It was surprisingly small. I believe this placed restrictions on the size of the personnel who could be assigned to them. Likely this mad a direct copy unattractive, and scaling up would add time to the production deveopment. It would also potentially creat problems with things like trying to drop a Geman engine into it.
Kudos for the constant reference to the sources and, as appropriate, the assessment of their reliability.
"Why copy it when you can learn from it?"
Try to explain this to the frontline officers as an engineer.
@@heyhoe168 Прикол то в том что инженеры нихрена не выучили с примера 34ки и просто продолжили клепать дешёвые гробики на колёсах
@@heyhoe168 Wut of ez Is this engineer is so ez
@@idiocrat3744 прикол в том что воевавшие в реальной войне люди не играли в ворд оф танкс и не смотрели американские боевики. Поэтому они по глупости думали что неуязвимых танков нет и три дешевых гробика спасут куда больше жизней чем одна дорогущая убервафля.
@@heyhoe168 Так их и не было. Кстати, они всё таки могли можифицировать тигр по тем же самым ИС последние версии которых были построены на базе тигров
Similar circumstance when a British delegation approached Republic Aircraft to build licensed copies of the P-40 Tomahawk. Republic convinced the Brits that for little more effort they could build a clean sheet design that addressed some of the P-40’s shortcomings - and thus the P-51 Mustang was born.
First the Tiger, then the Panther. And after that? The majestic and fiercely COPYCAT! :D
damn that was amazing
kopierkatze
@@MCAroon09 panther was before tiger.
Panzer V Panther
Panzer VI Tiger
@@foozer_warrior8035 actually, Tiger was started being produced in 1942, Panther was started being produced in 1943, it has a lower number because it was smaller than tiger
I love your CZcams channel!! I still learn alot from your videos!! I am glad that I am a subscriber!! Keep up the great work!!
I think "good enough" is a good way to describe USSR design mentality. Instead of trying to perfect something before putting it in production they made it 'good enough' for it's intended purpose and went ham at producing them, and it's always way better to have a lot of 'good enough' things than just a few 'really good things'.
The Soviets could afford to do both ie yak 3 and yak 9 fighters
That’s not how they operated lol
Excellent video!
didnt expect you're here
Why not? Because no German could let something that is merely adequate, roll off the production line, adequate is an alien concept. German engineers would *Have* to improved it to the point where the T34 would take too long to produce.
If only the German Engineers were worse.....
What a crock of shit. Germany produced hundreds of somua S35 and Lt38 tanks in occupied factories regardless of the task theyre orignally designed to fufill
@@mikhailzavarov4958 You mean the factories that were already making those tanks and were captured? Not quite the same.
@@Dan-wt7jx Blame is a different kettle of fish altogether. But if given a viable design, they will always improve upon it. It is not a negative really, except in a war of industrial might where it is a bit of achilles heel. Hence why most us drive BMW's, Mercs, Audi's, VW's. My street is all German or Japanese cars.
Why not? Maybe because just about anything can kill T-34 frontally by 1942?
"Copying" doesn't seem smart, but incorporating the design philosophy would have been smart - good gun, sloped armor, reasonable reliability of all components (rather than one component able to last a lifetime, with another key component that breaks down quickly), and able to build quickly with minimum of highly experienced labor. Use existing components shared with other tanks where possible.
The T34 grew out of the design and production mindset loosely termed "Fordism". "Fordism" also relies on the availability of excess amounts of natural resources and massive industrial capacity to produce product in huge numbers. If USSR produced ten tanks and they went out and destroyed one panzer but "lost" eight tanks doing it, that was fine, especially if the Soviets held the battlefield afterwards. If five of the "lost" tanks could then be sent back to Stalingrad for quick turnaround major repairs that was even better. Somebody once said "Quantity has a quality all its own".
T5rux Lee Indeed. The story of the Soviets actually deciding AGAINST a series of improvement to the T-34 because retooling/adjusting the factories would have halted/slowed production adds to this thought process.
To be fair, you need only to look at the hell that were german logistics to realize the flaws in the "New tank every year" design. The Soviets correctly picked a design worthy of a World War and stuck with it until they had halted the Wehrmacht.
And then having lots of tanks gives another advantage above the obvious avalanche with which even the worst commander could win. Soviets could afford to sent tank patrols to guard unimportant roads and paths. From time to time it actually happened that Germans were trying to sneak through those, and a single unexpected Soviet tank could delay them for many hours and report to command or destroy the whole raiding party.
The T-34 was a hastily designed and produced tank , to be a "meat shield" until a better version is ready. They never made a better version, because they had to keep the production rolling.
In which particular regard ware Pazners I-IV better? Armament, armor, maneuverability, engine power?
T-34s were killed by German field artillery, not German tanks - and not because T-34 had construction flaws but because there were used irrationally.
The break-trough came with Panthers, but then again these tanks came mid-1943 and weighed 45 tons vs. T-34's 27 tons so it is fair to compare those cats to KV/IS series of Soviet heavy tanks, not mid-size T-34s.
Soldiers: "This tank has good armour and a good gun, what do we do?"
Control C + Control V: Allow us to introduce ourselves
German Tiger Tank Soliders Press Alt +F4 50Times 😂😎💪
PsychoCrafterHD German engineering at its finest. I heard somewhere, quoted by an Allied tank commander that 1 Tiger was worth at least 4 Shermans.
@@gimmeabreak4435 the Shermans was Good Tanks but in The German Fields they underplates stucks often and many of them fall out of Service the German Tank Crews Understand fast that the Sherman Tanks are Good Tanks but they dont Can Rebuild it so they Have Take a Lot of Shermann Comanders And paintet the USA Tribal over with an German Tribal and use them with German Tank Crews and a Captured American Commander Driver Gunner or Reloader and Make them For Thier own ways Work some Shermans Get A Rebuild from The German they Have Make The Tank a bit Less Higher And make the Under tank Better for the fields many Of Shermans Falllen in German hands Why isnt Rlly Known But The Most Of Times The Shermans do Great Thats why a Sherman only Where a 4:1 To a Tiger Tank also the Guns of Shermans with Higher Pen then the Russian T34 and Also More Damage Per Shoot (PS I LOVE TANKS FROM EVERYWHERE BUT THE TIGER LOOKS DAYUM NICE) 😎
Soviets: Finally a T-34 tank from red army has arrived to save us from the Nazi occupation.
But why do I see an iron cross on the side of the turret and why has it got a German ‘gelbbraune Hinterhalt’ (Camouflage)?
Must have been fun to watch...
@@enthouendhut wym?
@@leoastner888 Fun to watch what you said.
Kinda happened. German T-34 breaked down and they were observing russian tanks drive by ignoring them.
I'm brand new to the channel and this answered a question I always wondered about. Thanks for covering this topic!
“Why are you homeless??? Just buy a house!”
Why don't flooded areas just send the water to deserts?
We have also to remember that T-34 was a different tank, meant to be used by a different army, with different doctrine and tactics, different philosophy on expendability of men and gear. Germans focused on highly trained crews and protecting them, whereas Soviets bashed Lend-Lease resources (another argument) together, put some Ivans inside and sent them to general direction of the enemy, overwhelmed by rain of 152mm shells and katyusha rockets.
In very short:
-They sorta couldn't(that part about the engine(that was designed a bomber engine at first) is very true. Even the Soviet Union was forced to replace the Al-Si-alloy with plain pig iron for a time during the war due to aluminium shortages. Germany had the resources shortages problems from the get go and throughout the war.)
-They sorta did. Especially the Panther obviously employed a lot of ideas taken from the T-34. It's way more logical to insert some successful details from other development into the own instead of just copying it.
Mate, can you do a Video on why didn't the Germans develop a Gun Stabilizer? Germans tanks were eccentric AF with their tanks not Having a Stabilizer like the USA sounds weird
I think the reason why is because most of the time the Germans were defending they always try to ambush instead of attacking so shooting with a Cannon while stationary isn't as bad as shooting while driving.
At least that's how I thought about it don't know if it's real or not.
@@RagingDong Yeah but a Stabilizers in ww2 weren't useful at high speeds so if you stopped it would take less time but it would still be better than not having anything.
@@peoplesrepublicofliberland5606 They did develop gun stabilizers. For warships AA guns.
Very well researched video. I'm new here but am liking and subbing. I am a big fan of WW2 history. Especially the vehicles and gear used by both sides.
It wasn't complex, unreliable and nightmarish to maintain enough for their engineers' tastes.
Yep that was the TRUE reason (also undermine der 'superior' race claim)
@ The Russian's are part of the European family. They are Aryan, they are part of the same race. The war was not against the Russian people, nor was there any issue against them, the war was against the Communism, against the Soviet Union and the threat against Europe, the Soviet Union attacked many European countries along the border in less then 12 months. Almost every European country along the border was attacked or threatened.
The T-34 at this stage was not that good a tank, but it had a very practical combination of speed, mobility and armour protection. In fact it was really a piece of shit in comparison to the German tanks, but the practical benefits of the wide tracks, sloping armour, combined with the T-34's speed and ability to operate in the Eastern conditions was very appealing. Over time the tanks were greatly improved, receiving US radio technology and other various upgrades, making them a much more formidable opponent. In the hands of those tough Russian tank crews and in great numbers, despite build quality they posed more danger and inflicted more damage then most of the many tanks faced else where in the war, that were developed in the West.
@@alexandermelbaus2351 as far as i know according to their ideeology they werent just look at what they did to polish people because they considered them to be lesser
Actually, since you had to pull out the armoured louvres from the radiator intake after just 25 hours of operation, it wasn't terribly reliable either.
Nah, it was an ugly unreliable mess. Russia only managed to produce okay stuff because of allied support and Intel they stole from the Germans.
When pro photographers are asked - which is the "best camera", the answer is always - the camera you have in your pocket (or bag).
The Soviets sent a T-34 to the USA, which went to Bell labs, which analyzed it and sent back recommendations. This is in the history of Bell Labs. Pretty well documented. The book is; The Idea Factory: Bell Labs And The Great Age Of American Innovation by Jon Gertner. The book has other interesting stories about WW2 weaponary.
Damn, and just last night I had a dream about putting a Panther turret on a T-34 chassis!
Isn't that just a worse Panther?
You monster..
@@stankgangsta4105 nah, it'll be fine!
That's one weird dream
wouldnt fit... T34/76 turret ring is actually smaller than turret ring on Panzer III...
“The combat power of the T-34 is reduced by poor sights, rate of fire, and accuracy”
War thunder: lol
Wot: yeah thats about right
Heroes and generals: lol
Yeah there’s no Russian bias in a Russian game.
Pit Friend ya ever angle your armor as a tiger and die more frequently doing it? :D
@@PitFriend1 im not saying there isnt
t34 there is just quite shit
Because you can't request license production from someone you're at war with duh...
I think the answer is pretty straight forward as you say, T-34 has quite a few issues. But beyond that, why not study it and build a vehicle to be superior to it.
That's pretty much what Panther was. Take some notes and then build a tank to outclass it.
I'd also point out that this had the side benefit of meeting T-34 was the impetus to make equipment that could handle Sherman.
As Joe Stalin famously said, Quantity has a quality all its own.
Except the Panther was a flop. Had they stuck to their plan of making a 35t medium tank it could have outclassed the T-34 because of better ergonomics and optics. But no one would ever claim the Panther was a more successful WEAPON OF WAR than the T-34.
@@majungasaurusaaaa Uh, what? Many people consider the Panther the best tank of the war...
@@T4nkcommander It's one of these myths along with Shermans being bad.
@@T4nkcommander A good tank isn't overweight, underpowered, unreliable, unmassable and hard to maintain and repair. The original design was meant to be a 35 t medium tank. Hitler meddled with it and turned it into an overweight 45 t heavy tank with the engine and transmission of a 35 t medium. He delayed his Citadel offensive 6 months to get this wunderwaffe rushed into service. It ended up flopping as the Soviets had ample time to prepare and the Panther broke down in mass and was dead on arrival. That's a flop. The nazis were the original wehraboos. Propaganda in equipment superiority making up for numbers after all is what kept them fighting so well for so long despite clearly losing the war.
I remember reading about this exact thing in the amazing book "Weapons and Warfare of the 20th Century", which is pretty much a book describing the weapons and technology of the early 20th century.
I Read in a book years ago that Mercedes indeed basically came up with a copy of the T34 with some changes.
But the idea was shelved after fears that Hitler would have flipped out if they had presented him with a German copy of the T34.
Instead going with the Panther and Tiger series of Tanks .
They also stuck with using Petrol engines unlike the Russians using diesel engines , another problem when it came to fuel shortages towards the end of WW2.
They tried: That became the Panther, because the Germans wanted something "Better"
The story of German engineering: Perfect is the enemy of good.
Mikhail Kalashnikov said: "Kakoj-to durak mozhet legko privnosit' slozhnost'. Sdelat' vsyo prosto, jeto genij." (Any fool can make something complicated. Making something simple takes genius.)
I have some HK guns and I have a few Russian guns. The German firearms are works of art and engineering, made to the highest degrees of quality. Every detail belabored, every spot of polish applied. They cost 4x what my Russian ones did. But they aren't 4x better. They can also be finnicky, and dealing with even something so simple as a magazine or spring issue can be a nightmare, like shipping it back to Germany kind of nightmare. I can't just get them dealt with here, no no. My Russian guns? I can do it myself with a tutorial. The two absolute best value guns I have are my Mosin 91/30 ($200 after tax) and my M57 (Serb extrapolation on the Russian TT33 (also $200 after tax)).
Their aircraft radars were the painstakingly perfected forms from ideas that were years too old.
It was much better, wdym? Or you prefer to die with chance of about 90% from hit by common AT weapon (pak40).
I can well imagine that German tank commanders would have overestimated the power of the early T-34 from their experience. They would have experienced their shots bouncing off its sloped armour, as well as seen how fast it is compared to their Panzer IIIs and IVs. What they would not have seen is how awful situational awareness the T-34 tank commander has, or what crap sights and optics he needs to work with.
There was a case of a T-34 being hit 70ish times my some panzer IIIs. This is often used by people showing the vast superiority of the T-34 Dover the German tanks. My question is why the hell was the T-34 shot 70 something time before it was disabled and not destroy the tanks shooting it.
@@nikoclesceri2267 Ironically, the angled armor could be counted as a flaw too, since the angling was made at the detriment of the crew by reducing interior space. which you have to add the relatively small size of the T-34 and the bigger gun compared to a PzIII.
People will probably laugh at the idea of "crew comfort" in a tank, but yeah, good luck reloading the gun in a cramped turret.
@@LtAlguien Yeah the angled sides also limited the amount of room in the tank for things like fuel tanks and ammo further exacerbating the problem
How important is peripheral vision even important in tank warfare anyways? Couldn't they just use radios to ask their infantry if anything was not in front of them? I thought nearly every German tank had a radio.
@@alex_zetsu the problem with that is the T-34 had no room for a radio in it.
Halo meine freund! I love your content! Thank you so much for producing your content in English, as I am from Australia. Greetings from “down under” btw!
I learnt German in high school, unfortunately however was too immature to have a passion to learn it properly - but I did pick up a lot of words and minor basic grammar.
Since then, I have tried not to forget any of it, and have only developed a keen interest in Germany 🇩🇪 and everything about it, and your people, and culture.
I hope one day to visit your country, and do your language the respect it deserves, by properly learning to speak and write it.
I am a huge WWII buff and very much interested in the focus of your content and beyond. Such a huge commentary on us as humans and our society can be derived from these events, and it is evident that the world, as well as Germany as a nation, have only strived to learn from the past and become even greater than ever before.
Again, thank you so much for your content, and I apologise that I can not Schreibe to you in Deutsche.
I wanted to let you know also, that typically, I have not seen the word “Hazzle” and that it is only ever spelt as “Hassle”
The word “Hazel” refers to hazel nut, but no use of Hazle or Hazzle have I ever seen in all my years as an English speaking Australian.
Unless there is a recent change in American English, from “Hassle” to “Hazzle”.
Again, thank you so much for your informative, and entertaining content.
Goodluck in all your life my friend.
Let's see--when Germany took over Czech factories the Germans kept producing Czech tanks. Germany didn't capture Soviet tank factories (mortars are easy and tanks complex) and Germany didn't have Soviet tank factory workers. Stalingrad had a tank factory--when did German troops have time to round up workers and supply the factories with raw materials? French factories were taken over, staffed with French workers, and produced much war material for Germany.
I was waiting for that..because the czech also have the t34..
@@brandonjacobsen3153
Not in 1938! Post 1945 the Czechs had T-34 tanks (after WW2 when Germany had surrendered and was split into four occupation zones) but not in 1938. Germany took over Czechoslovakia from 1938 with the annexation of the Sudetenland and full occupation in 1939. There were elements of the Red Army composed of Czech nationals that did operate T-34 tanks--as part of the USSR's military machine starting in 1943--Russian-made T-34 tanks. By the way, even the Russians didn't have the T-34 until 1940:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_occupation_of_Czechoslovakia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-34
And, of course, after World War Two the East German Army used Russian and Polish made T-34 tanks.
tankandafvnews.com/tag/t34-nva/
The 5 Tonne tanks with 20mm MG ? Skoda Type. A "fantastic" tank with 16 mm armour and 16 Km/h
@Alan Cranford
That's in fact incorrect. The factory in Kharkov was captured more or less intact. But AFAIK it was only used for refurbishing captured tanks, not producing new ones. The Stalingrad factory was totally destroyed while capturing it, though.
In fact national socialist Germany ended the war without understand to build a tank who respect the 5 qualities of any good tank. Thick armour, Sloped armour, heavy gun, diesel engine, gearbox mounted on engine. Tiger 2 had a petrol engine as major minus. Is very high, heavy, complicated, for each tank you will need a solid maintenance team. In 1945, Germany was at list one year behind what you call a good tank. Meanwhile KV2 respect this demands(5) in 1941 September. The first modern tank can be considered IS 3, a development of IS 1 and IS 2.
Its interesting how the Panther and Tiger's transmission problems are constantly brought up while many of the T-34s flaws are glossed over.
You have to wonder how much being on the winning side plays into people's impressions.
@TheBendablespoons It was not. It was supposed to be 1930`s panther. But every corner was cut in 1941 and it turn out to be easy to produce, if you remove some `not needed` things like radio, good periscopes or seats. Also replacing good performance but complicated parts with easy to make shit work great, and here we go, myth about "T-34 was build for numbers".
I'm glad they didn't. Now we have the sexiest tank in the world: The Panther.
No it’s the brumbar
transmission: broken down
mechanic: on suicide watch
commander: exposed
tank: out of commission
yeah, it's panther time
@@OffWorldTradeCorp Centurian - Stood up to a atomic bomb. (Needed a Re-paint)
And a squadron drove up to the top of Holland, before the Soviet Army arrived.
... and the most unreliable.
@@vladimirpetrov8918 That is a stretch. The T-34 was notoriously shit at traveling.
The strength of this tank were his numbers and reliability. Wasnt the best at anything but always got the job done and were like 35000 of them unlike the 8000 pz IV and above for Germany
It was not reliable at all but you are right about its simplicity.
@@Stallion386 the version with the 3 member turret coudl mount the 85 mm gun that could pen even a Tiger at 800-1000 meters. It was realiable I dont knwo what you talking about. In the first year of the eastern front the crew were rather inexpert thanks to Stalin's purge.
@@Stallion386 well, T34 was crude, it had it's own issues, but it was easy to made (even recently moved factories with low-skilled workers could produce lots of them, althouth of a quality you'd expect from a low-skilled workers) and it was, well, reliable enough to get the job done )
@@gregorykappo229 Its more about quality of inspection then about ''easy to make''. Soviet inspectors allowed A LOT of wrong and very wrong things. Some tanks were even sent back from frontlines because they were so bad, but allowed to even leave the factory!
the T-34 diesel engine was made of aluminium, wich made it very light considering the horsepower output...
replacing that with a german gasoline engine of comperable power-output would have made the tank considerable heavier...
Mate, but that is exactly the german way isn't it ?
The Germans made almost no consideration for weight. Just look at how they completely ignored the issues that caused for the Ferdinand despite the problem being well-known.
No, because of much larger displacement and higher necessary compression in diesel engine. And weight of an ICE is insignificant in non-flying vehicles anyway.
Love having a channel that you know is going to pronounce everything correctly
Even with it, it'd be extremely difficult to defeat a far larger and more resource-rich enemy with the exact same weapons that they're using. At that point you're putting all your hopes in having vastly superior tactics, and making every correct guess on the battlefield.
From my understanding, a T-34(76) was unlikely to penetrate itself at a medium to far range. If the Germans put the L43/48 75mm (which I assume was able to penetrate) on the T-34 they would have had superior tactics and superior weaponry, with the same armor.
@@ICCUWANSIUT Simple answer to this topic: Germans did not copy T-34 because it was shit. And they already have better tank called Panzer 4.
"Make it complicated.de"
Nice jab.
There’s a good quote in the film “Battle of Britain” where Goering was asking his squadron commanders why the operation was failing and what did they need for success? The German fighter ace Adolf Galland replied “Give me a squadron of Spitfires”
1:00
Haven't they copied copied parts SVT-40 to make G43 too?
Yes, they copied the gas system to make the very shitty G41 into the less shitty G43.
Quantity has a Quality of its own - Russian meme.
The Germans could never had produced this many T-34 as the USSR could. So they tried to build better weapons instead of not enough „good enough“ weapons. After the defeat at the Gates of Moscow in 1941, the war was lost.
Almost the same as the CSA wasn’t able to conquer Washington in the early days of the American Civil War. Win on the wings of patriotism and speed, or do not win at all.
Also dont forget unification. You generally want at least some parts of your old equipment to be useful as a source of spare part for newer one. It also helps to produce faster.
This question is largely irrelevant because the Soviets ultimately did not win due to having better tanks (yes, T34-76 had a lot of issues from small crew space to the lack of radios), but having superior industry, resources and manpower. There was no way for Germany to produce 80.000 tanks, no way to provide the needed fuel or enough crews.
As if AH would his Aryan army to ride in a Slavic design. Even if he did they would have "improved" it up to 60 tons and burned out engines and transmissions anyway.
aha
@Grenzer 23 As if the germans were foreign to the concept of training and supplying companies using completely random tank designs.
They didn't have Stalinium to build them
I believe one huge advantage of T-34 over German tanks was that it was easier to mass produce and service in front-line conditions... I missed discussing this aspect in your otherwise great lecture, as it is way better to have plenty of pretty good machines than just a handful of really great ones...
could propaganda play a role too? Knowing that Hitler would like to pretend that the Soviets were inferior, wouldn't copying a Russian tank give off wrong 'signals'?
Ribentropp-Molotov pact gave enough bad signs.
@@neumann2550 That was the 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' system. At that time Germany needed Russia ..or at least a strong ally and at that point in time there was no open hate against Russia ..e.g. it was just politics/
@@robertx8020 explain that to young nazis of that time.
@@neumann2550 it is hard enough to explain to modern nazis.