Spring isn’t too good in the Soviet Union either though…it’s the time of mud (there is a Soviet word for it that escapes me ATM). Also, it took them time to get everything together and into their jump off points, and by the time they were ready (and the roads were solid again) it was too late to go early.
Their biggest mistake, IMHO, was that they didn’t have a GoTH plan…they expected victory and didn’t plan for anything else. So, they had no logistics in place for what would happen to their soldiers if they were still in the field when winter came. Monumentally stupid and thousands and thousands of their best troops died because of it.
Human waves? Well, the Soviets lost about 10 million soldiers. Almost as much as all the other armies in the war combined…from both sides (including the Japanese and Germans). Doesn’t argue for a refined approach to warfare.
Also realize more technically advanced does not necessarily mean it is better. I could build a Rube Goldberg contraption to catch a mouse that is far more technically advanced than a simple mouse trap. Doesn’t mean it will work better than the simple mouse trap.
The T-34 was not more technically advanced than the Panzer IV (and I bet, all things considered, the Panzer III as well although they were probably close). The Panzer IV was a more refined machine. Thing is the T-34 was a very good design that was (relatively) easy to build and build cheaply (again relatively). Its more simple nature made it more reliable and easier to fix.
By the end of the war the Germans had the ME-262 which was a game changer. Fortunately it was a day late and a dollar short and Hitler used them stupidly but clearly the Germans were ahead of the game here. I do not know enough about the trucks to say which was better (thought the Soviets got most of their trucks from the US).
All-in-all the Germans were ahead of the Soviets on most counts from a technical stand point. Bully for the Soviets closing the gap as the war progressed.
The Germans had a flair for over-engineering the crap out of things thus making them more expensive to build, prone to breakdowns and harder to fix in the field. Hence the Panther was the T-34s equal in every way except reliability. The Tigers I and II were even worse. The Germans also seemed to over emphasize making shit really big too, even when not necessary.
Here is the wiki on the Panzer mk III…it was an older design. The Germans deliberately (and stupidly) allowed their development in tank design to lag, due to the fact that they thought the war would be over quickly. As a result they invaded the Soviet Union with an older design…and it came as quite a shock to them that their equipment was so bad. Luckily (for them) their tactics and unit training was so good (and conversely, the Soviets was so bad), otherwise they would have gotten their asses kicked.
I think the tank you are thinking of is the Panzer mk V…here is the link. This is when the Germans gained technical parity (at least in tanks) with the Soviets. Ironically, the tank was actually built using the German’s experience against the T-34’s, and actually incorporated a lot of the T-34’s design features into the tank.
Here’s the specs on the T-34. It really was technically superior to anything Germany had until late '42-'43.
(ETA: post was in response to Whack-A-Mole’s post)
The last time Israel fought a regular army was in 1982, during the opening stages of the Lebanon War:
*Israel’s publicly stated objective was to push PLO forces back 40 kilometers (25 mi) to the north. Israeli forces pushed in from Southern Lebanon. The first battle was at Beaufort Castle, where 6 Israeli soldiers and at least 4 PLO fighters were killed. Israeli troops took control of the castle. Israeli forces took the town of Jezzine, which was held by Syrian tanks and Infantry. One Syrian armored battalion was destroyed, with Israel losing 7 dead and 8 tanks. Operation Mole Cricket 19 was launched, with the Israeli air force winning a dramatic victory over Syrian aircraft, shooting down 29 Syrian planes and also destroying 17 Syrian anti-aircraft missile batteries, with no losses of its own. Israeli forces fought their way into the Syrian-held town of Sultan Yacoub, but became surrounded. They managed to escape, losing 30 dead. Sultan Yacoub was one of the few objectives the IDF decisively failed to take in the war. The Israelis soon reached Beirut but were determined to drive the PLO from southern Lebanon.[27] Tyre and Sidon (major cities in South Lebanon, still within the 40-kilometre (25 mi) limit) were heavily damaged, and the Lebanese capital Beirut was shelled for ten weeks, killing both PLO members and civilians.
The Israeli Air Force shot down 86 Syrian aircraft, with no air combat losses of its own. This was the largest combat of the jet age with 150 fighters from both sides.[28] It also performed ground attacks, notably destroying the majority of Syrian anti-aircraft batteries stationed in Lebanon. AH-1 Cobra helicopter gunships were used widely against Syrian armor and fortifications. The IAF Cobras destroyed dozens of Syrian armored fighting vehicles, including some of the modern Soviet T-72 main battle tanks.*
From Wikipedia.
Obviously not as large-scale as in 1973 - he last full-scale symmetrical war of the modern age - but certainly equal to what the Brits were doing in the Falklands around the same time.
Today, while most of the IDF’s activity is in counter-insurgency (as is the British military’s), it still sees conventional warfare as its primary objective. Its forces are equipped and organized to fight large-scale armored engagements in the Golan, the Sinai and elsewhere. Other than the U.S., I don’t think any other Western military thinks in such large terms; there’s a reason Israel has 8 times as many tanks as the UK.
There’s also a bit of a misconception regrading Israeli tanks. When the first Merkava tanks came out in the late 1970’s they were indeed significantly heavier and significantly slower than any other tank in the world; however, since then other Western tanks have grown bigger, while Israeli tanks have gotten better engines. As a result, the current Merkava Marks 3 and 4 tanks are more or less identical in terms of protection and mobility to modern tanks like the M1 Abrams or the Challenger 2.
The Merkava actually weighs slightly less than an Abrams. But the difference is the US has the transport to move something like the Abrams around in significant numbers, while Israel doesn’t. That’s fine, since Israel didn’t intend for the Merk’s to be deployed overseas.
It’s a really big tank though, and I don’t think even the mk IV’s have the same performance characteristics (i.e. range and speed) that a tank like the Abrams has…but I could be wrong there. I’m basing this off of a half remembered episode of Top 10 Greatest Tanks on the Military Channel, so I may be mis-remembering.
they certainly did lose a lot of soldiers… most of them when they were losing. You don’t win wars by having your own men killed. When the Soviets were most successful, they were killing more Germans than they were losing of their own men.
It’s not about whose trucks were better. It’s that trucks are better than horses. The primary means of transport for the German army was the horse. The primary means of transport for the Soviet army, at least inthe second half of the war, was the truck. What’s more advanced, trucks or horses? (And who cares where they got them?)
You can’t compare the theoretical limits of each side’s best weapon as a measure of the technological level of the army unless you also account for whether most of the soldiers even have the weapon. I’m sure German trucks worked fine but most German soldiers relied on horses to pull stuff. That’s a point for the Soviets. The Me-262 was a neat plane but they had few of them and most German pilots were still flying Me-109s at the end of the war, which were no better than their Soviet counterparts. German tanks were great if they worked, but they usually didn’t.
Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the second day of summer.
The Germans weren’t stupid; they had a variety of reasons to commence the invasion when they did. The war was not won or lost because of individual, easy-to-criticize decisions, but because of systematic differences in how the sides started and wages wars. The fact that Nazi Germany did not have a civilian cabinet has far more to do with its losing the war than differences in guns, planes or tanks.
Diogenes, you say you were in the military and that you ‘certainly didn’t work very hard’. I have to wonder what your MOS was. As an Infantryman I can say that we train a lot, and the difference between a well-trained unit and a poorly-trained unit is severe. I’ve seen poorly-trained soldiers(mostly cuz they weren’t in the Infnatry MOS but were trying to do the Infantry’s job) execute missions with all the tactical proficiency of a boy-scout troop and get slaughtered. Fortuneatly, this was in training. I’ve also seen poorly-trained troops go out on mission in Iraq and come back with more dead and wounded than any infantry unit would have. American soldiers with their superior technology but poor training get their asses handed to them every time.
Also, I would like to point out that during joint-training where infantry were armed with anti-tank missiles and were ‘fighting’ tanks, the infantry won every single time. Mobility and training wins wars.
Also, to whoever said NKs would defect if they saw life outside NK: part of an NK special forces soldier’s initiation is to infiltrate SK and bring back photographic evidence they have done so. We know this because those unable to get back - for whatever reason - will commit suicide and sometimes leave the photographs(depicting them shopping or eating at a fine restaraunt) behind. Brainwashing is brainwashing and NKs are extremely loyal.
According to this table, Israel has over 3,000 tanks, of which about 1,000 are state-of-the-art Merks III and IV, and the remainder are older (but still effective) Merks and upgraded M-60s.
How hard is it for them to do this? I assume they go undercover, dressed as civilians. Do they have to forge documents to get through checkpoints or something? Or are they able to sneak through the border?
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