The Germans in 1941 were initially taken aback by the power and effectiveness of the T-34, and they promptly realized the need to gear up and meet the challenges poised by the Soviet tank. The wide tracks proved particularly crucial in traversing the vast stretches of the Motherland with its few, comparatively primitive roads that often became little more than “canals of mud” in the rasputitsa, or the weeks-long wet periods in the fall and spring. The T-34 was equipped with characteristics that the German tankers would come to envy: thicker armor that was sloped to further help deflect enemy fire, a robust V-12 diesel engine, a low profile, and wide tracks that made movement across snow and mud comparatively easy. The fire doesn’t seem to bother the tanks in the least,” added the astonished gunner in describing the T-34 and Russia’s heavier, less nimble KV’s ability to ward off German firepower. “Each shot seems to be a direct hit,” one German antitank gunner said early in the June 1941 invasion. They had learned their Panzer III and IV medium tanks, which had successfully spearheaded the French and Polish campaigns, were simply no match for the powerful and new turret-forward, sloped-armored tanks sent against them.

The Germans had encountered the sturdy T-34s a few months earlier in their invasion of the Soviet Union.

Some historians credit the T-34 tank as being responsible for the Allied victory over the Germans. A Red Army tank crew studies maps on the hull of their tank as a line of T-34s passes to their rear. The invaders were pushed back between 60 and 150 miles before General Walther Model managed to rally his forces and stop the back peddling in the face of the T-34s. The unrelenting Russians-fortified with additional tanks and equipment and bolstered by freshly arrived Siberian troops-charged into the German salients north and south of Moscow and kept pressing forward.įor days the Germans staggered backward from the determined and unrelenting Soviet attacks. I thought: ‘I am going to die here, 21 years old, in the snow before Moscow.’” There was an explosion near him and he “felt a searing pain in my right thigh. Landser Linsen was momentarily befuddled as well. A lone officer stood against this desperate mass he gesticulated, tried to pull out his pistol and then simply let it pass.” “Out of the snowstorm soldiers were running back, scattering in all directions like a panic-stricken herd of animals. Initially, infantryman Albrecht Linsen could not believe his eyes with the rapid onrush of Soviet tanks and men. Winter played a hand, with the -30 degrees C temperature freezing the German lubricants while the Russian equipment performed fine, especially the T-34 tanks with their specially designed compressed air starters. The ax fell the very next day as the Soviets launched a massive surprise assault that “caught the Germans almost literally frozen in their positions,” as historian Max Hastings aptly describes it. (Read more about the armored vehicles and engineering marvels that turned the tide of the Second World War inside WWII Historymagazine.) They had never tasted defeat at that point, and a December 4 intelligence report stated flatly that the Soviets were simply not capable of “conducting a counter-offensive without significant reserves.” Unfortunately for the Germans, they had the Soviet T-34 tank to contend with, and they underestimated their opponent. Poland had been taken, and then Denmark and Norway, and then Belgium and France had fallen to the Germans, who now had advance units reportedly within eyeshot of the Kremlin.

December 1941 was a dark month and the end of a dark year for the Soviets as the Germans pressed ever onward toward Moscow, the lair where Joseph Stalin and his minions plotted what to do next against the Nazi juggernaut that had, in a few short months, rolled over everything before them.

Soviet tank force june 1941 armored