Additionally, Soviet armor divisions were drastically undersupplied: units had only a fraction of the necessary radios, spare parts, ammunition, and general supplies. This lack of crew training was exacerbating by the lingering effects of the Stalinist purges, which had wiped out half of the armor divisions’ officer corps.
#SOVIET TANK FORCE JUNE 1941 ARMORED DRIVERS#
The tank crews were undertrained: often drivers had fewer than five hours of driving experience gunners had never fired a tank gun before and, some crews had not even seen the T-34 before the war broke out. The problem was the typical Soviet story. German field commanders reported “tank terror” among the troops, and Major General Mellenthin, Chief of Staff of the Panzer Corps, simply stated, “we had nothing comparable.” ĭespite the technical superiority of the T-34, improper implementation rendered the T-34 only marginally effective in the early fighting in Ukraine. But he drives staunchly through our lines like an impregnable prehistoric monster.” Similar sentiments were echoed by the high command. The German first-hand accounts are striking: “Half a dozen anti-tank guns fire at the T-34, which sound like a drum-roll. On a practical level, German troops who fought against T-34’s were dismayed to see their anti-tank rockets simply bounce off the sloped sides. On a sociological level, the German command was shocked that the “lesser” Slavs could create an equal, let alone, superior weapon. Despite the initially limited numbers, the T-34 made a sizable impact. The once tenuous fate of the T-34 tank drastically changed on June 22, 1941, when Hitler’s forces broke the non-aggression pack and launched “Operation Barbarossa,” the invasion of the Soviet Union.Īt the time of the German invasion, only 967 T-34 tanks were actually in Soviet operational units. Despite the engineering successes of the T-34, internal divisions within the Soviet leadership almost caused the tank to be scrapped.
The sloped armor deflected projectiles that struck in a perpendicular plane (as most rounds from other tanks and anti-tank rockets would). This seemingly minor design detail drastically reshaped the way future tanks were built, and gave the T-34 a distinct advantage on the battlefield. Created in response to the lessons of the Spanish Civil War, where WWI model Soviet tanks were easily bested by their more modern German counterparts, the T-34 had superior firepower, armor, and mobility to German tanks of the time. The first T-34 rolled of the assembly line in 1940. From its service to Russian during her era of dire need and its eventual dissemination to the Soviet bloc and other Soviet allies, the T-34 is an everlasting part of the Russian national memory and a symbol of Russia in the world. The tank was the primary tank of the North Korean army in the Korean War and was the primary armor unit for many east European nations for the subsequent decades. Additionally, the tank had a much longer life among Soviet allies around the globe. The T-34’s heyday in the Red Army was relatively short (from 1941-44, at which point it began to be phased out), yet it played an outsize role in the Russians’ victory in WWII. While other tanks eventual bridged the engineering gap, the T-34’s relative simplicity and economy of production allowed it to be the most produced tank of the war. At its inception, the T-34 was the fastest and most powerful tank in its class. The T-34 both fundamentally reshaped the model of the medium tank, and reshaped the war, turning the tide against the Nazi’s in the east.
There is a broad consensus among historians that the most influential tank in WWII, is not a member of the famed German panzer division nor one of the American tanks that liberated Western Europe, but, instead, it is a Russian tank: the T-34. “If I had known about the T-34, I would have delayed invading Russia” –Adolf Hitler
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