I love how David pays full attention, learning something new. I really love watching and listening those exchanges of knowledge between people knowing what they talk about.
I had a lengthy conversation with him a while ago on tiger day. And he also paid the same type of attention, even to the point that we were almost late for his talk.
@@pliat The professors I had in university that I liked the most were like that. At first you'd think they are airheads who keep coming late to class, then you go to them after class for something, strike up a conversation on the topic and realize that it's been 20 minutes and you made them late for their next class.
This reminded me of a joke where 2 arab commanders are sat chatting after the 6 day war. One says "The soviet tanks were not good enough" The other says "No it was the strategy and tactics they taught us" "But we followed them to the letter, fall back then dig in and wait for winter" 🤣
The whole issue of rationing in Germany is complicated because it is possible that Germany was like Japan in rationing even before the war began. In Wages of Destruction, Tooze describes all sorts of measures the Reich used even in the 1930s to effectively create a war economy without ever officially doing so. Going from memory, the German government starved consumer industries of imports (which Germany had trouble paying for in gold) as early as about 1935. Import permits were given to firms involved in war production. There were few things for Germans to spend money on so that people would be encouraged to save more money. The Reich then created an effective tax on savings to surreptitiously funding the war without actually raising taxes (apparently this covert method of funding the war worked until 1943 and especially 1944, when the whole system started to break down).
Germany also introduced rationing cards just before or shortly after their attack on Poland (food cards were given out first on 27th or August 1939 and clothing cards in November of the same year). For example in September of '39 a normal worker (there were different cards based on your occupation) had access to 2.4kg bread, 0.5kg meat and 270g fat (butter, etc.) per week. Basically in Germany it was the same reasoning as in Britain. In WWI almost nothing was rationed and if it was it was badly managed (many farmers were conscripted), all of which led to food shortages. My great-grandmother said: In the first world war everybody had to starve, even the farmers. In the while in the second world war people had much less but at least they didn't starve.
As an example of UK preparedness by 1938 800,000 tons of aviation fuel storage had been built in preparation for hostilities. In 1941 to 1944 a number of pipelines and additional storage was built to pump fuel around the country avoiding the need for transportation by rail or on the road network. This was extended to the continent from August 1944 as operation PLUTO where 17 pipelines fed fuel from the UK to allied forces in Europe under the channel. The UK fuel network continued through the cold war and to some extent to this day.
Agreed. Been a fan of MHV / MHNV since probably 2016. I think he suffers from a title/thumbnail issue more than anything else. People have aged. The viewers that he needs are aged
"Myths of tank warfare: Russia" is a slight improvement based on their discussion. But it's missing reliable clickbait trigger words like "shocked" etc. "Historians stunned by brutal truth of Soviet tank tactics" a bit better. Should win more clicks as it's not clear if we are talking about WW2 or present-day Ukraine!
Lovely bit in the middle there. "Is your miith true?" "No." "Germany had a more efficient war economy than Britain before 1943." "I though you said your miith wasn't true." "That is not my myth"
One important aspect was the number of people the UK did no longer need to provide for their own population, because they out sourced a lot of this over seas, so they could use a bigger share of their population for the war effort, in fact the largest share of any nation at war
I think @TIKhistory had a video recently with a topic that touched on german WW2 economy where he makes a good argument that nazis implemented (partial) war economy in peace time (~1934) as well as why it wasn't turned to full on till late in the war.
Sorry David, but Germany was on war economy before 39. It wasn't efficient war economy and they still produced some comercial stuff, because they remembered how war economy turned out during the Great War- there were huge shortages on the civilian market that impacted the civilian morale that partially led to the collapse of the german war effort. Old Albert the organiser mearly optimised the war economy whe the war prolonged itself beyond what the Germans expected - and so they resorted tho slave labour to augment the production capabilities.
Regarding the middle east, it's worth to remember that the Arabs didn't use their Equipment (soviet ore otherwise) very well. For example Egyptian comanders flatly refused to disperse their (surviving) Aircraft, on their own responsibility, despite the soviet advisors pleas to do so.
less drilled forces as well. soviet forces were at least expected to be fairly well trained and not do stupid things but your middle east army lacked the resources to maintain a large professional force or their standing forces were used more for internal security. they go to war with little training and troops that aren't used to operating together
Even recently the "NATO allies" in the middle east were not able to use sophisticated and high tech USA equipment to their advantage (Afghanistan/Iraq) it is obvious we cannot judge either soviet equipment used by the middle east or NATO equipment used by the middle east as they forget all doctrine and basically waste any resources given to them.
@Steve Kirkup ive heard other, similar stories as well. Things like technicians assuring job security by not teaching anyone else how to do certain Maintenace tasks, a very hierarchical, "father knows best", culture that tends towards rigid, top down command systems and discourages low level initiative, a heavy interpenetration of the military officer corps and the political/social elite that can put "reliable" but incompetent leaders in command, a disconnect between the officers and the troops, etc, etc. short answer is, they dont think like westerners or Russians do, and solutions that work in Europe or Russia dont always work so well in the mid east.
Sounds like Arabs. A combination of need to save face and stubborn personal proudness makes a chronic inability to admit mistakes and even worse an unwillingness to correct mistakes.
Loved Bernhard's point about Germany was planning for peace in the early '40's. The Allies always knew it'd be a long war - so put lots of thought into mass production, e.g. sticking with one main tank designs in Sherman. Germany was looking at a 1000 year Reich, so didn't need to bother with this approach, e.g. Tiger, Panther, King Tiger, Maus etc. Its more complicated I know, yet...
Ich fände es sehr interessant ein oder mehrere Videos über die Frauen in der Kriegswirtschaft zu sehen. Allgemein sind Videos über Kriegswirtschaft sehr interessant
I think the strategy the Soviets mastert is "good enough". You improve the kit to the point there it's start to get diminishing returns and it was "good enough". And so they get the best out of their number's.
Don't make assumptions. Read documents. Such numbers of tanks made not because of the idea to replace the ineviteble losses, but to acheve numerical superiority and make an enemy retreat, to prevent as much losses as possible in the first place. Some contribution to such a significant number of tanks was made by the fact that the USSR border was the longest in the world and a significant part of it passed through the European plain. For the time of the start of production, the tanks were stunningly high-quality. Remind you, T-26 "is widely considered one of the most successful tank designs of the 1930s". Disadvantages such as poor optics and the lack of radio stations on most of the tanks of the early period are the result of an acute shortage of qualified personnel caused by, what a surprise, a world War, civil war, intervention, actions of British spies who worked out, among other things, the operation to blow up the Baku oil fields before the Second World War. And here it didn't work out anymore, Hitler didn't want to be a puppet and decided to kill the puppeteer earlier. The soviet massproduced tanks had no rivals exept french Char in continental Europe. It was after the Munich betrayal (yet another) that Germany received production facilities and applied the experience of the Spanish Civil War.
Right now we see how the Eussians use Soviet doctrines but the circumstances of Russia are so different (economically, demographically, etc.) that is more of a hindrance than an advantage. Small army. Smaller economy. Few young people. Such a doctrine is just useless now.
Dr, Willey should read Tooze, the fact that Germany didn’t go on “total war” mode until 1943 is just a myth. Germany was on war footing at least since 1936, actually without the war Germany economy would have imploded in 1940 because of lack of raw resources. The stagnant production of 39-42 was caused by huge capital investments which bore fruits in 1943 and onwards. Germany had a higher percentage of working women that any other country except the Soviet Union since the start of the war, but most of them were employed in in the fields instead of factories.
Still waiting to hear an in-depth discussion about Soviet tanks and mass vs quality. I like these guys and appreciate their knowledge, but I think during their ramblings they touched on the topic for about half a minute.
I'm reading General von Vormann's book about the Cherkasy-Korsun battle and he maintains that the Soviets had an almost inexhaustible supply of men to use in human wave attacks. As his army withdrew in late 1943, they left behind Russian a old men and wash women for the German army and he says these people were then thrown against the Germans, half unarmed and without shoes even! He also recounts that because the German lines were so thin, a 1000 or more Soviet soldiers just walked through their lines at night. He does blame the Furrier and talks about having the ability to win if only "that painter" hadn't intervened just like the other generals but I do believe he was telling the truth in the small details. He described how a Pzrgrenadier regiment was supposed to have 2000 men but only had 800. A battalion had about 2-300, a company size! So the numbers on paper vs. the actual numbers were vastly different. And as the Germans had to withdraw in -20, -30C temps, the ground was too hard to dig in so the grenadiers had to just lie on the open ground. So such a small, incapacitated force facing a superior Soviet force are going to feel very overwhelmed, imo.
there's more than a few book that have dwelled on how Hitler and the upper echelons of the reich delayed major movements and reallignments to the point where all stategic advantage was squandered and the plans were out of date with the tactical situation
@@phunkracy I don't believe in god but I have read most of the bible at some time or other, if only to find out what the hell these people are so worked up about ? If you only read the history from Your sides point of view you are only reading propaganda, it is a Must to read from both perspectives to gain an even view of an event\war etc..
In hindsight, we know that Soviet units were often just as depleted as their German opponents - so much so that as the war progressed, Stavka issed a series of modified tables of organisation and equipments (or "shtats", to use the Soviet term), authorising "reduced strength" formations, to be adopted when a division fell beneath certain manpower thresholds. This does not, however, mean we should be entirely without sympathy for German officers who claim waves of Soviet troops coming at them in "inexhaustible supply". Soviet doctrine stressed the necessity to reinforce success, rather than shore up failure: concentration of force at critical points in the line was an important part of Soviet breakthrough tactics. If you were one of the poor sods stationed at one of these critical points, you could certainly be forgiven for thinking that the Soviets had endless waves at their disposal, even if this was not really the case. It's the same reason why, to this day, popular culture tends to think of the Chinese as having possessed numerical superiority in the Korean war. It's simply not true: overall numbers were about equal, but using light, mobile troops to achieve localised numerical superiority at critical locations was an important part of Chinese doctrine.
I thought Lazerpig put it well. What people who promote quantity over quality ignore is staffing. Finding, training and maintaining those additional crews isn't free. Also, notifying the parents of the dead crew isn't free, especially nowadays.
yeah me too. For me its that every german was an evil nazi and that every member of the nazi party was evil. Also to be a nazi, you have to be either inept or evil. From what I remember which is probably wrong, about 95% of the population was a member of the nazi party. The war was not good vs evil, it was basically one ideology against the western world. Even when you look at modern conflicts like the war on terror (iraq, afghanistan, libya, egypt, etc.) you will find that its not about disposing evil dictators because we are the good guys. its about economics and power. Bernhard knows far more about these subjects than I do and I am interested to hear his take on it too.
Britain lost in France, Greece and in the far east at the start of the war, so the seriousness of the situation led to more of a desire for total war if you like, whereas Germany had 'easy' victories and perhaps was a bit over-confident regarding the need for 'totale Krieg'. Once the Soviet Union was defeated in 'a short campaign', the war would more or less be over, right?
That was a far different time. During the second world war you had a vast people population (Russian) who were taken from a mostly agrarian life and told to fight for the Motherland or die trying. Stalin used this by pushing as many soldiers and quickly built weapons of roughly comparable ability if lesser to the enemy onto the battlefield as possible in hopes of overwhelming the enemy, and there by win by sheer weight of numbers/attrition. Skip forward to today, again Russia thinking that pushing massed forces to a quick end will carry the day. But instead, are meet by a highly skilled/educated force with equal and in some cases better equipment and the will to use it to its utmost ability. And we get what we see today in the Ukraine. The ill trained, equipped and paid conscripts for the most part Russians are getting their collective backside kicked time and time again. Even when they make progress, it is meet with a better equipped/motivated/trained forces and beaten back.
Isn´t it also true that the UK would have died if their had no colonies? Maybe the UK was better at rationing than Germany, but the later did not have access to the resources the UK had. So it did not really matter. If you don´t have the resources for an offensive war and can´t replace nor trade them you can ration how much you want. If Britain did not have colonies they would have it much harder to fuel their fleet and build their airforce. You could also argue that the integration of the Wehrmacht veterans was also possible, because their myth of being defender of Europe before Bolshevik invasion could be carried over and that they mostly harmed people in the East. I don´t think any American, French, etc would have liked to serve with German soldiers if they had been doing in the West as they did in the East.
If you look into the increase of Soviets forces and training schools, it was not the officer purge that hurt the army, but the lack of trained NCOs and Júnior Officers that hurt the Soviets then and the Russians now. There were not enough schools to train the personnel the Soviets needed.
no. Germany could not have produced as many tanks. The whole German doctrine was developed because the Military as soon as 1922 saw that Germany was at a serious disadvantage in longer conflicts due to limited ressources and industrial power. But the Nazi leadership thought otherwise. Hell, the US produced more Shermans than the German did produce all armoured vehicles taken together...
@@theadder2243 From what I've read, Germany in 1914 had the second biggest industrial capacity after the USA. Surpassing Russia, surpassing Britain, surpassing France. I don't think so much had changed by the 1930s . They were still the second biggest country in Europe after the USSR (almost twice as big as either France or Britain) , with lots of factories and good infrastructure. What had been neglected after WW1 Hitler had more or less rebuilt. They had a steady supply of iron from Sweden, and they had synthetic rubber. Wouldn't be surprised if they actually had more factories capable of building tanks in 1940 than the USSR. Plus everything much closer together plus better infrastructure, so probably capable of higher outputs than Soviet factories. So I still think they could easily have built as many tanks as the USSR if they had wanted. The reason they didn't was probably fuel. And the fact that they were engaged everywhere at once and needed to build everything. The USA didn't need to build too many tanks are the beginning; just ships and planes. The USSR didn't need too many ships or heavy bombers; just tanks and smaller aircraft. Germany needed it all and had to divide its industrial capacity. But if they had wanted, they could easily have produced as many tanks, I think
@@jankutac9753 Germany was devastated by the Peace of Versailles. Some industry was cut away (esp. coal and iron deposits), and most was devastated by the reparations and the high inflation and the economic crisis. Germany was not able to outproduce Britain and Soviet Union in WW2. And the Military knew this - and they knew that a long war favored the others. Therefore the whole military tactics and strategy were changed to a quick war.
Soviet tactics seemed for awhile to be, mass fire on target and counter a similar response. The focus on accuracy is very much a western idea, likely rising from the failures of trench warfare tactics employed late in WWI by the English as opposed to the French artillery tactics and Russian infantry tactics. Throwing a mass formation provides minimum strategic return on your forces as does overwhelming firepower. It's really a sniper v. machine gun tactic applied to tanks. Whereas modern Western tactics target high value with precision the Eastern doctrine seems to be if you put enough rounds/units down range, anything of value will be rendered ineffective.
I think it might have David himself that said this: it's not that quantity has a quality of its own, but Quantity is more of a Quality multiplier. Ie if a Western tank can kill 3 Soviet tanks on average but the Soviet tanks out number Western tanks 5 to 1, then the Soviet forces have an advantage. The T72 video where he gets into Soviet doctrine is fascinating because we in the West like to rubbish Soviet doctrine but the way he explains it you actually start to see the logic of it.
Yeah, it's part of the reason why the Soviets and later Russians were absolute hoarders when in comes to equipment. Because they essentially thought, "Yes Comrade, the T-55 is absolutely obsolete on the modern battlefield. But, if its 8 months into the war and NATO has used up all its advanced ATGMs, Tanks, attack helicopters, and so on, and is down to using rifles, MGs, and maybe a few LAWs or bazookas, then the T-55 is a superb weapon."
@@michaelthayer5351 Exactly, well put. I think the conflict in Ukraine is showing that doctrine doesn't entirely hold up on a modern battlefield. Sure, they can still field MBTs in numbers (The head of the British army estimated our tank force would have lasted about a week), but a modern battlefield is a complex place and while a T64 can function if you have lost all your T90s, but the crews can't be easily replaced. And the proliferation of one-man Anti-Tank weapons that are easy to keep supplied is able to stay ahead, especially with multiple sources: The ubiquitous RPG7, NLAW, Javelin, Panzerfaust 3 and Ukraine's own Stuhna-P
@@deaks25 I honestly thought before the current conflict that the Russians had reformed from a Soviet Mass mobilization model to something more akin to a Prussian System, where they mobilize quickly to win a quick victory and then negotiate using nuclear brinksmanship, since Russia lacks the manpower to win an attritional fight with the West or China. Though now it seems that was aspirational at best on their part. Mobilization and vast stockpiles are best paired with either a robust training system, or deep benches of reservists, neither of which Russia retained from the Soviets. The training was never at the level it needed to be and for domestic political opinion the batches of conscripts taken in every year are relatively small, due to bribes, medical, or education exemptions. While those AT weapons are potent, their usefulness beyond urban and other cover-heavy terrain is limited, meaning that while they make capturing cities difficult, it is very difficult to do much else. What worries me most is that after this War, the Russians are going to take a hard look at themselves like the Prussians did after their defeat at the hands of Napoleon and reform their system. They are losing a lot of equipment, but its all Soviet hardware for the most part meaning they will be forced to rearm with modern equipment (I personally think they'll do to the T-14 and Armata series what they did to the T-64 to get the T-72, simplify it for mass production but keep 90% of the improvements, ditto for their other modern weapons), So the Russian military in 10 years may turn into what we all feared it was, but we will be blinded by triumphalism as the French were in 1870.
The difference is the industrial effort required to construct an army from scratch. I find it highly unlikely russia will posess the resources necesseary to reform anywhere near their percieved strength pre war in the next 50 years.
@@michaelthayer5351 You do have a very good point, and the West will, should Russia be defeated, will inevitably engage in self-congratulation. I think the difference between now and Prussia is that the technology was generally fine, it was, to my understanding, generally the tactics, training and command structures that were lacking. And Russia isn't just losing old kit, the last update to the T72 was in 2016, and the likely most common variant, T72B3M is from 2014. We know T80's (T80 BVM was updated in 2017) and T90's are in the combat zone well, so Russia is losing the most modern versions of its primary combat stock. Apparently there are less than 100 T14s in service, so production is incredibly slow, perhaps not even out of prototype stage. That's not just having to relearn how to do modern warfare, that's an army gutted at its core. There's nothing to say Russia can't do a 1930's Germany and do a leaps and bounds catch up, which leads back to your point about the West being to busy admiring itself.
The point was the Germans didn't ration materials for consumer goods production, they were still using their limited metal and other raw material supplies producing luxury items like fine furniture, wrist watches, luxury clothes, consumer electronics, etc rather than weapons. (The exception being cars, despite saying everyone could have a car for 990 Reichsmarks they never satisfied even a fraction of demand for Volkswagens and not a single person who joined the savings plan launched in 1938 ever received the car they paid for by the end of the war)
@@watcherzero5256 my point is that Britain did ration because they knew they had to. Germany seemed to think they didn't have to. Plus, Germany had to make the populace happy. Don't want the people thinking this great new German gov was going to make their lives harder and lose public support.
Bravo for being HISTORIANS and not getting sucked into a heated, IMO propaganda ridden media environment. Realizing that the best answer to most questions on current events is "we don't know, we can confirm these (FEW) facts, my experience and knowledge allows me to speculate (carefully) this, but overall, the history is not even close to being ready to be written." 👏
The U.S. and Britain, despite being democracies, and partly because they are democracies, could go immediately to war economy conditions because their populations felt they had been "forced into the war." The shock of the Pearl Harbor attack was enormous, because few civilians expected Japan would start a war with the USA -- not the least because the outcome of such a war was so obvious. The "Sneak Attack" Myth was exploited, but the sudden displacement of justified American complacency was a!so a powerful factor in winning public acceptance of food and fuel rationing and even the entry of female and African-American labor into unionized industrial workforces.
Well, « Rule Brittania » keeps repeating that Britons « never, never, never shall be slaves ». It’s a really powerful statement. I think many britons were ready to die rather than live under the nazi boot.
As living witnesses of the Russo-Ukraine war, we can already see Myths being made, and then discarded. For example, "The Ghost of Kiev," invented to boost local morale, against "Saint Javelin," in which every anti-tank missile fired at a Russian vehicle is an American-made Javelin. Each Myth from the Ukraine War is made for a reason, be it morale, war justification, operational security, oversimplification, or even to encourage outside countries like U.S., U.K., Germany, and Poland to keep donating more weapons of that type. The same process is happening on the Russian and pro-Russian side, where myth-making is even easier since the media is government controlled.
But the Russians did retreat from Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, etc. last spring. Those movements were not myths, and they came about as a result of frustrated ambitions and poorly executed advances that led to defeat on those fronts. And not sure the ghost of whatever has held much water, or gain the kind of acceptance like the clean Wehrmacht myth of the post war era - nor that Javelin bit? And currently, with breakthroughs under way in Kharkiv oblast, it seems the government of Ukraine has been a bit tightlipped, at least initially. Yes, there is celebration on reaching Izyum and Kupiansk - which isn't surprising, and which notably the Russians conceded - but overall Ukrainians have been a little vague.
@@michaeldunne338 - I'm certainly not taking Putin's side. I'm just suggesting, as a sociologist, that we are seeing Myths created, spread, and even discarded in real time. This is nothing new -- the British tried to conceal the effectiveness of their Chain Home radar system by claiming that RAF pilots ate an inordinate number of carrots to improve their eyesight. Likewise, I'm sure Americans were told that collecting scrap metal, newspapers, rubber, and even edible oils would shorten the war, along with buying War Bonds for Victory. In reality, "war bonds" were an effective way to control inflation voluntarily. It's a testament to the power of Government control over the media, even in the U.S., that all that war bond malarkey worked.
@@pacificostudios well the propaganda about that ghost got discarded pretty quickly. Not sure what hay was made out for the Javelin, since other systems were being used, and it seems most people knew that. And with the current fighting, seems like less said is the current modus operandi of the government of Ukraine (believe the government even told certain officials to watch their tongue), specifically with: Operations in Crimea, the Kherson front, and Kharkiv. Future rounds of propaganda are possible. Will have to see. As for war bonds, yes, mops up money in an economy. However, another point is to act as an instrument to finance a war effort relatively quickly, as pointed out: "War bonds are a way for the government to borrow from their population to finance the increased military spending during wartime. "
I can think of two other Myths from the Ukraine War: 1. The soldiers on Snake Island who said "Russian: Go F*ck Yourself." At the time, we were told that the defenders were all killed, but later it was revealed that at least some were taken prisoners. 2. The old woman who gave seeds to Russian soldiers so flowers would grow where their bodies fell. We'll never know if she existed, but the story is so perfect that it doesn't matter if it is true.
@@pacificostudios You seem to be confusing cases of wrong information or stories of some incidents as myth equivalent to what the speakers were discussing. As for the Snake Island garrison, think it was kind of upside in the fact they survived. As for that weird old lady story - don't think that gain much ground in telling, and don't think many will recall it in the future, especially in light of major events going on.
The biggest problem with the future is that it rarely turns out as predicted, 1984, Metropolis, etc. However we still can go down certain avenues or timelines. It this respect doctrines must throw a broad net to accommodate the near future. History gives us the facts only, which is a problem. Facts to be meaningful must be interpreted which can lead to opinions. Humans as a collective can dream of the perfect future while ignoring the statistical analysis of the facts which are saying the opposite. A myth if believed by all is a fact? A very interesting discussion guys. Iraq in 2006, we know the facts as we can analyse them continuously. The latest form of Western warfare is painfully expensive and as such has a limited endurance. All the experts agree that we used this form of warfare for far too long yet we can't agree when or at what time we should have dropped to conventional secondary and much cheaper technologies. Once we have air superiority does stealth technology have any value or should we switch to 4th generation aircraft that carries for more ordinance or do we use a hybrid system? When do we stop risking the much more expensive 5th generation aircraft? Again thanks guys for a very interesting discussion.
The one problem, where I disagree with what Mr. Willey is stating (regarding war economy), is that it is difficult, to compare the US' war economy, Britain's war economy, and Russia's war economy versus that, of Germany, because Britain was being supplied by colonies and the US, the US was sheltered from everything (minus Pearl Harbor the Alaska), and Russia was getting supplied, by the US and Britain, thus allowing them to shift focus to primary materials. On top of that, Germany was getting shut off, from imports. That, in turn, hampered their production. I don't think Mr. Willey was intentionally ignoring this. Rather, I think that it is easy, to forget in an isolated sub-conversation within the overall conversation. Case in point, Russia was able to pump out tanks because they were poorly built, by poor workers, and they didn't have to worry about focusing on everything, due to the impact of Lend-Lease.
I would like to point out that soviet tanks retained a rather high level of quality and reliability, and it's only a popular perception induced by the west wanting to claim that they are superior that made them claim that soviet tanks were garbage that was mass produced... Did they make a lot of them? Yes. Were they good quality? Yes. Were they the absolute best? I mean, no, not really, but soviet industry produced the best heavy tank of the entire war, and one of the best mediums, and their reliability is only bad in media because of propaganda... If you were to look back at the actual performance of soviet tanks in terms of reliability especially late war, they were keeping up with western designs.
@Rachandra Gupta Patel did you just hijack my comment? We dont know because we are not british! In the dutch history india is two things : Ghandi and a stop for the dutch east india company in the 1600s.
One of the reasons I've heard for Germany not going into full war economy is that through the first world war there was a massive lack of consumer goods and basic necessities which caused massive destabilization so the Nazis were adverse to rationing and full war production. I think also it's a little unfair perhaps to say that Germany didn't do this. German arms industry exploded(no pun intended) under Hitler but there was a lot of catching up to do after the decade of strife in the Weimar republic. A lot of the focus was on chemical sectors to create synthetic fuels and rubbers which were strategic resources Germany lacked and would in a war have no access to. If I recall these areas increased their production 10 fold.
TIK points out that Hitler had seen a previous government overthrown because of insufficent food supplies to the people. So he was totally against rationing until it became necessary.
Tik often talks out of his arse, especially regarding economics and politics, but in this case he’s correct: the whole German establishment was scared shitless of another turnip winter and did everything in their power to keep the population well fed depredating the countries they’d conquered, IICR Denmark alone fed something like 15 millions of Germans.
@*Uncle Joe* Absolutely, his series on Stalingrad is grate and saved me the trouble to read the 4 volumes Glanz’s “trilogy”. The colonel is a great historian and his work on the eastern front has been groundbreaking, but his prose is a bit… dry 😊
There is a reason to why Russians the sign their tanks around quantity over Quality that they have the manpower required to do that during the Soviet era. On the foreign markets they can sell them cheaper than a Western tank of the same quality. Cons Prone to Jack in the Box effect seen in 1982 Lebanon War when Syrian T-72s went against Israeli Merkava Mk 1 & 2s 1991 & 2003 Gulf War and Ukraine
They are meant to be destroyed real soon after the fallout But the mushroom never be risen on Eurasian That's wht they failed They ain't fighting the war they meant to be fighting
The high volym argument really don't hold water. Because when a high quality Western tanks take out a somewhat or slightly lower quality ussr tank, there is one tank just behind it... Well, there are 45 more shells in the Western tank as well. And no, it really wasn't high volume that beat the germans back in 1943 and 44. It was mostly higher quality, or at least a better performing product. In actuall reality there was not much true tank to tank combat. For the begining of the war, Russian just got over run. For the late part of the war there was not much german armour left. Airforce did lot of the heavy lifting. And well, luftwaffe had a very hard time from mid 1943 onwards.
Russia and the USSR never set out to build the best possible equipment. They always went for "good enough"--something that is simple enough to mass produce given the limitations of their industry, can be used by half-trained conscripts, and works reliably even if you skip the scheduled maintenance.
Indeed, like they said in the video, the Soviet army doctrine, especially after Khrushchev was shaped by the Red Army experience of the second world war, they envisioned such a high rate of attrition that the standing army at the start of the war would have been pretty much obliterated in a matter of months if not weeks even without the use of nuclear weapons, at that point even a T55 would have been useful if your opponent had nothing to oppose it. The only departure from that vision was the T64/t80 family of tanks (but even with those tanks they followed the good enough route, T80s for most of the cold war didn’t have thermal sights but only infrared ones not because they didn’t have the technology but because at the cost of two thermal sights, they could have bought an additional tank) which formed the bulk of tanks the group of Soviet Forces in Germany starting from the 70s’, but the “mobilization” tank was the much simpler T72. Funnily enough after WWII and especially since the 70s’ the US took the German route (in contrast of their WWII experience, the M4 was a good enough tank, like the T34), luckily, we’ve never had to find out who was right 😊
well, they didn't work reliably even when they did do scheduled maintenance, the engine had a short life, so it needed to be changed pretty often for example
Yet many of their flagship systems like T-64, T-80, Su-27 etc. are aiming for top-end performance and are similarly expensive (or more expensive) compared to western systems.
The Germans had fuel issues but remember the Germans had tons of coal and they could make synthetic fuel. The allies bombed all the factories and railways so fuel production and weapons was hampered. If the Germans and Japanese had the capacity to bomb USA tank factories and railways then Sherman and other tank productions would have been hampered.
Russian tanks were simpler easier to construct by a largely unskilled work force. Heinz Guderian had great respect for the T34 and later the Is 2 tank. British Tanks were a mixed bunch quality wise -Valentine and the Matilda being exceptions! Think about the Sherman was it vastly superior to the T34 ? Apparently lend lease Shermans in Russian service were liked by their crews and we're considered luxurious in some ways and yet we're not as good as far as mobility - it's never that simple !
It is a question of priorities. The Sherman was greatly influenced by the Panzer III and IV and actually had a good crew ergonomy (that's why it was liked by their crews), whereas the crew ergonomy had no priority in Soviet tank design or doctrine. Soldiers, after all, were just a material to be used just like tanks, rifles, oil or ammunition. That's the difference. The German army (the doctrines were written by old Reichswehr Panzer guys, not by the Nazis) placed importance on the crew and it's ergonomy over armor protection and firepower. They valued mobility and crew ability to fight after a long march. The British and US army learned this from them in 1940/1 with a small number of captured tanks and manuals. They also wanted their soldiers to be ready to fight after a march. And so, crew ergonomy was valued high in Shermans (after reliability and shipability). Those are doctrinal differences between the Soviets and the Germans and Americans. Actually, the Sherman WAS the best tank for US Armored Forces doctrine - and the Panzer III was the best for German Panzer forces doctrine until being forced in a solely defensive stance - and maybe the T-34 was the best tank for Soviet doctrine. It did not have to last long, it did not have to be ergonomic, as the Red Army favored Mass Assaults anyway, so there always was enough time to bring the T-34 to the front, and rest some hours before going into the short run to the enemy lines...
i would like to point out the ww2 soviet's regimental 76mm M1927 and M1943 guns were effectively equivalent to the german infantry guns. i am not sure if you were using infantry guns vs mortars as an actual example or just hypothetical.
myths - i once worked as senior trainer for a small training establishment, on commencing i found copious amounts of outdated training documention, which I updated to modern doctrine. The next senior trainer to me had been taught using the old doctrine, so he went back to teaching what he had learned, was confident of and did not need to learn anything new. The myths, errors and mistakes became new again. Myths never go away.
I work with firearms professionally as an end user. The amount of lore I get from people who supposedly know better is astounding. I've heard everything -- 45 is antimatter 9mm is tickles, if you can't win with _SHOT CAPACITY HERE_, _OTHER SHOT CAPCITY_ would not have helped, 5.56x45 is meant for wounding only, revolvers never jam, 22 is the deadliest caliber, shotguns don't require aiming, "Glock 40", "Colt 45", and more. Old country cops are the absolute worst. Their last gun class was 40 years ago and they haven't bothered to update on anything since beyond bare minimum to stay qualified. You can try to pass knowledge, but people who don't want to pay for real training, which is expensive, will say shit like "I"ll ask my grandad, he's a sherriff", or "my cousin used to be a cop" and that's how it percolates back into consciousness.
We stand alone! Nevermind the Canadians, New Zealanders, Australians, Africans, Burmese, a billion Indians and so on! After all they demanded liberty as recompense.
No ! Your not getting it. Britain and the Empire decided to fight on against :- Germany Italy and the Soviet Union ! You forget that there was no guarantee that the Soviets wouldn't invade India via Iran Iraq .... Look at the Enemies complete .... as was then ... not hind sight
Tanks are still great. But the prior Russian doctrine of overwhelming numbers has two major modern short comings. First, you need to maintain air/battle ground superiorty, or at least parity; then second, if you don't maintain some control over the battle zone, 10,000 tanks will lose out to 100,000 Javelins and grenade drones.
This soviet doctrine was invented before the rise of modern missiles. Also - the commies were not very good at effecient use of resources - both human and matrial.
He did but Ukraine ruined it because the Ukrainians are using weapons sent by NATO countries designed to fight both Sulwaki and Fulda Gaps Just in case if WW 3 breaks out.
I'd love to see you guys talk to TiK as he's pointed out recently that Germany was in a wartime economy from the mid 30s and that Speer did not in fact descend from the heavens to prolong the war with facts and logic.
I stay up all night thinking about tank philosophy. Kidding. I stay up all night thinking about how MacArthur lost the Philippines so quickly with 6 years to put together the Philippines Army. SMH what a disaster.
I really enjoy the great questions and the depth of context and answers that one can find in your videos, this one being no exception. But is it me, or David seems really cross sometimes in the last couple of videos? It's quite weird to see him like that :D
Hmm they got a lot of things wrong. Especially about the Soviet army doctrine but at least someone finally acknowledged the sheer scale of Soviet tank building effort. Yet people still think they they built tens of thousands of planes and tanks just to be "scared" to be invaded by Germany, actually hilarious
David touched on a very interesting point: the USSR decided to build masses of tanks (which it had no way or need to employ) in order to develop industrial production. It could instead have built agricultural machinery and consumer goods, which would have massively improved lives and created a very different society. On such moments hinge the destinies of nations.
Well, the USSR for most of its existence was in a state of close to war economy. It is easy for us to look back and say "well, clearly, they should have just done this or that" without realising the simple fact that for most of its existence the soviet union was under constant threat by much larger and superior powers. They couldnt both equip a large enough army to defend themselves, and produce consumer goods in high enough numbers to develop a civilian industry. They had a good go of trying to keep up but at any moment in time the 'West' could have literally buried them in men and materiel in a surprise war, even the barely functioning economy of Nazi germany was capable enough to be able to nearly break the USSR completely (while the officer purges were a factor, the army was also expanded like fivefold in the course of a few years, so competency isn't gonna be present even with a good core of officers...) They did need a massive army, because there were plenty of anti-communist hotheads that would go in and declare war if there wasn't a massive deterrent in the form of a big army and massive nuclear stockpiles there. That's why, contrary to what most people seem to think, soviet doctrine in many ways was exclusively defensive in nature (look at their airforce, it's essentially there to supplement a network of AA and support ground troops, little offensive capability on a general level)
The Soviets produced massive amounts of agricultural, mining, and lumber equipment. In 1937 alone, they made 44000 farm tractors, leading the world over the second place US at 29000. They literally made more of that stuff than they could use, just like tanks. Difference was, the export market wanted their tanks, but not their tractors. They exported massive amounts of grain, metals, lumber, and military equipment because that is what the rest of the world was willing to give them money for, but consumer goods were a drop in the bucket compared to that for two reasons. Western countries put trade embargoes on them, and neutral countries didnt want Soviet consumer goods because after Stalin killed almost everyone with a brain, they couldn't develop competitive products.
EDIT: Study the Terrain in Russia and eastern Ukraine. Wide open and flat for thousands of KM. that equals LOTS of casualties no matter what you do as seen in the Kherson offensive. so they built for MASS instead of expensive high-quality tanks that would just get bombed into oblivion anyways. The philosophy is LOSSES WILL BE SUFFERED, and vehicles will need to be replaced anyways. Also makes it easier to replace crews during wartime when your tanks are not needlessly overly complex and you can realisticaly train a cerew in about 4-6 months to at least basic comitence as opposed to Western tanks which take AT LEAST a full year. So if you are trading casulties who do you think its going to run out first?
Correct but in the case of 1991 2003 Gulf Wars 1967 Six Day War 1982 Lebanon War and 1973 they got beat by the Israelis and Western countries Anti Saddam Hussein Arab countries who used Western Strategy
Mass vs QUALITY? How exactly are Russian tanks of lower QUALITY than "western"? They're much LIGHTER in WEIGHT. That is nothing like the same thing. And as USA proved in Iraq, the big mobile fortresses that the M1 and other western big tanks are, they use up horrible amounts of fuel. To the point that in Iraq, despite >6 months of stockpiling fuel, US forces still ended up standing still for days because fuel stores COULD NOT be replenished fast enough. Also extremely important, yes a much heavier tank overall has a SLIGHTLY higher chance of being effective TACTICALLY. But nowhere near enough to justify the extra weight and the loss of OPERATIONAL and STRATEGIC level effectiveness. And what does the tactical effectiveness of a tank matter when the primary way of fighting is artillery? As long as it is good ENOUGH, it doesn't matter at all. And you're still pushing one of the myths of WWII. The idea that USSR EVER relied purely on numbers is and has always been rubbish. And USSR, when it was formed, it had just been INVADED by half the European nations, plus Japan and USA!!! Well DUH, of course they're going to focus on the military! Japan and USA together held more of Sibiria than any Russians did FFS! And it's not like other nations became less hostile to USSR. No, they became MORE hostile. When USSR tried to create a coalition against Hitler-germany between 1933 and 1939, the only nation to even bother negotiating in good faith was France! And the groups that considered USSR the great enemy that had to be destroyed were vastly greater than anyone who thought the nazis needed to be dealt with. Even as late as 1944, general Patton openly argued that they should make peace with Germany and then ally with them against "the true enemy". Again, DUH! Of course USSR wasn't going to slack on the military. Blaming them for it is like saying, oh yeah, it really was Poland that started WWII. You're blaming USSR for something they did as a REACTION to what our oh so angelic and innocent nations did to ATTACK THEM. And it sounds familiar because we've done it again.
They're lower quality because the design criteria are rarely met and the production model has a lot of shortcuts or plain bad work included. See: T-34 and their godawful welding and metallurgy even when on-paper the tank was one of the more expensive ones with good quality components like German optics. Russia stopped making good tanks after the T-64, which was arguably their first good tank, and even those had drivetrain issues early on.
@@ArchOfficial "and the production model has a lot of shortcuts or plain bad work included." In regards to the T-34, the ones built just around the start of Barbarossa actually did NOT. They were in fact such high quality that more of them survived to the end of the war than those built in the following 6 months. The problem was that they then had to make it possible for factories not meant to build such, to do it anyway. "They're lower quality because the design criteria are rarely met" That's normal for pretty much every military industry in the world. 9 out 10 designs is nowhere near original intent, OR they end up vastly more expensive. Or like in the F-35s case, BOTH. "T-34 and their godawful welding and metallurgy" Again, this has nothing to do with "poor quality" by itself and everything to do with improvising factories not meant to build T-34s or even tanks at all to do it anyway AND to achieve that without the required tools, without the required materials, without the required skills and without the required time. Also, you NEED to realise that welding at the time was not something universal, most production facilities in the WORLD would be hard pressed to manage quality welds on a tank at the time. Welding was a technique in the middle of development and adoption during WWII. USA benefitted from having had multiple large firms adopting it early and working out a lot of the kinks and problems and being able to spread that knowledge fairly easily, but UK and Japan for example? UK did have much of the knowledge and skill, but in too limited amounts to be able to spread it effectively while Japan was simply a somewhat late adopter and had to try to work much of it out in the middle of war. USSR also had the skills and knowledge to some extent, but most of those were in places that got captured early in Barbarossa, as well as disrupted by mobilisation as it took a few months for anyone to realise that it was a skill that should be made an exception for. "Russia stopped making good tanks after the T-64, which was arguably their first good tank" Disagree completely. The T-64 was specifically designed to be the "has all the bling" highend model to pair with the T-62, it was never intended to make up for a nation's whole tankpark simply because that would be horribly expensive. The T-72 is basically as good, but without the extra cost. And meanwhile, the T-80 is essentially to the T-72 what the T-64 was meant to be to the T-62. And again, USSR found that the tradeoff of the more expensive tank only made it marginally more effective, it just wasn't worth it. And that's the same tradeoff problem with heavy western tanks, except taken even further, yeah, they have the potential to be "better". But they are nowhere near as much better as they cost more both to build and even worse to maintain and keep fuelled. You can essentially build and maintain 2 T-72s or derivatives for every M1A1 or later models. And while a single M1 has a CHANCE to outfight 2 T-72s, albeit a very poor chance, because 1 on 1, it's actually a fairly even fight, once you scale that up to armies? Once you scale that up to 2000 marginally inferior tanks vs 1000 marginally superior TACTICALLY, because strategically they are severely inferior, at that point, maneuver strategy utterly overwhelms those 1000...
@@DIREWOLFx75 Not gonna read all of that. Every T-34 was bad, especially the ones made near the start. Infamously so, the ones from Ukraine. EDIT: I love how you basically say "ill-equipped factories with unskilled workers making a bad product isn't poor quality". What is, then? I'm talking about the end product in reality, nothing else really matters in the end.
@@DIREWOLFx75 The quality or lack of it applies not only to the tanks itself but also for it's equipment, training of the crew, used tactics, support and so on. For example during most of the war all german tanks had radio while most of the soviets did not. Therefore germans used much more adaptable formations. It's not all about the tank itself.
@@mightypirat9875 That's actually only a pseudotruth. USSR was perfectly aware of the need for radios. However, first came the pre-war problem of having not enough experience in dealing with interference and antenna design. Hence why you see those weird "handles all around turret" antennas on many USSR tanks in the 30s. THEN, during the war, well, the brand new Soviet manufacturing plant for radios, GOOD radios, yeah, it was in the WEST, and along with the also brand new and actually best in the world producer of optics, they were among the first major factories captured by the Germans. Who knew exactly where they were because they helped build them. There were a few hundred Soviet tanks made in the 1940-1941 period that had radios and optics from those and they were dramatically superior to what came later during the war. And during war, you make do with what you can REALISTICALLY get. Not what you could build if you spent a huge amount of resources for 2 years to build a new advanced factory. "training of the crew, used tactics, support and so on." At the start of WWII, USSR had one of the better trained armies in the world. Do remember that most of the history of the eastern front as you know it, was written during the cold war by people who listened to Germans. There are many myths accepted as truth in the west that has little to no connection to reality.
I love how David pays full attention, learning something new. I really love watching and listening those exchanges of knowledge between people knowing what they talk about.
It shows competence and confidence. An honest expert in his field doesn't have to pretend to know it all, imo.
I had a lengthy conversation with him a while ago on tiger day. And he also paid the same type of attention, even to the point that we were almost late for his talk.
@@pliat The professors I had in university that I liked the most were like that. At first you'd think they are airheads who keep coming late to class, then you go to them after class for something, strike up a conversation on the topic and realize that it's been 20 minutes and you made them late for their next class.
This reminded me of a joke where 2 arab commanders are sat chatting after the 6 day war.
One says "The soviet tanks were not good enough"
The other says "No it was the strategy and tactics they taught us"
"But we followed them to the letter, fall back then dig in and wait for winter" 🤣
That is a really good joke. It makes fun of everybody but isn't racist. Just... perfect.
@@superdupergrover9857 racist is fine as long as it's true. Trans tank commanders were obviously the true heroes
@@howardchambers9679 are you okay?
except they did excellent when used properly
@@howardchambers9679 meanwhioe actual nazis Tanks did nothing wrong.
The whole issue of rationing in Germany is complicated because it is possible that Germany was like Japan in rationing even before the war began. In Wages of Destruction, Tooze describes all sorts of measures the Reich used even in the 1930s to effectively create a war economy without ever officially doing so. Going from memory, the German government starved consumer industries of imports (which Germany had trouble paying for in gold) as early as about 1935. Import permits were given to firms involved in war production. There were few things for Germans to spend money on so that people would be encouraged to save more money. The Reich then created an effective tax on savings to surreptitiously funding the war without actually raising taxes (apparently this covert method of funding the war worked until 1943 and especially 1944, when the whole system started to break down).
Anyone with a decent layman's econ understanding should read that book. Totally mind-blowing.
TIK said something like this the other day
Germany also introduced rationing cards just before or shortly after their attack on Poland (food cards were given out first on 27th or August 1939 and clothing cards in November of the same year). For example in September of '39 a normal worker (there were different cards based on your occupation) had access to 2.4kg bread, 0.5kg meat and 270g fat (butter, etc.) per week.
Basically in Germany it was the same reasoning as in Britain. In WWI almost nothing was rationed and if it was it was badly managed (many farmers were conscripted), all of which led to food shortages. My great-grandmother said: In the first world war everybody had to starve, even the farmers. In the while in the second world war people had much less but at least they didn't starve.
As an example of UK preparedness by 1938 800,000 tons of aviation fuel storage had been built in preparation for hostilities. In 1941 to 1944 a number of pipelines and additional storage was built to pump fuel around the country avoiding the need for transportation by rail or on the road network. This was extended to the continent from August 1944 as operation PLUTO where 17 pipelines fed fuel from the UK to allied forces in Europe under the channel. The UK fuel network continued through the cold war and to some extent to this day.
I think you've got a reverse click bait title here!
That video was much more wide ranging than I thought it would be and very interesting. Thank you.
Agreed. Been a fan of MHV / MHNV since probably 2016. I think he suffers from a title/thumbnail issue more than anything else. People have aged. The viewers that he needs are aged
"Myths of tank warfare: Russia" is a slight improvement based on their discussion. But it's missing reliable clickbait trigger words like "shocked" etc. "Historians stunned by brutal truth of Soviet tank tactics" a bit better. Should win more clicks as it's not clear if we are talking about WW2 or present-day Ukraine!
The Myth Vs Müth part was hilarious 😂
More like Myth vs Müff.
Happens to me too still until today sometimes. And it started with the famous computer game Müf. 😂
Merf.
Did the curator of the tank museum just quote Iron Mike?
4:30 It wasn't farm tractors vs. tanks, they built both and they had plenty of drivers because they built both.
Lovely bit in the middle there.
"Is your miith true?"
"No."
"Germany had a more efficient war economy than Britain before 1943."
"I though you said your miith wasn't true."
"That is not my myth"
Love these chats with Mr David Willey, love to hear people who love and know their history chatting with each other.
One important aspect was the number of people the UK did no longer need to provide for their own population, because they out sourced a lot of this over seas, so they could use a bigger share of their population for the war effort, in fact the largest share of any nation at war
I have heard this expressed as The Quality of Quantity
I think @TIKhistory had a video recently with a topic that touched on german WW2 economy where he makes a good argument that nazis implemented (partial) war economy in peace time (~1934) as well as why it wasn't turned to full on till late in the war.
Sorry David, but Germany was on war economy before 39. It wasn't efficient war economy and they still produced some comercial stuff, because they remembered how war economy turned out during the Great War- there were huge shortages on the civilian market that impacted the civilian morale that partially led to the collapse of the german war effort. Old Albert the organiser mearly optimised the war economy whe the war prolonged itself beyond what the Germans expected - and so they resorted tho slave labour to augment the production capabilities.
They were partially mobilized since around 36.
Regarding the middle east, it's worth to remember that the Arabs didn't use their Equipment (soviet ore otherwise) very well. For example Egyptian comanders flatly refused to disperse their (surviving) Aircraft, on their own responsibility, despite the soviet advisors pleas to do so.
less drilled forces as well. soviet forces were at least expected to be fairly well trained and not do stupid things but your middle east army lacked the resources to maintain a large professional force or their standing forces were used more for internal security. they go to war with little training and troops that aren't used to operating together
@@AsbestosMuffins good point, internal opression has allways been bad for the combat Performance of any military
Even recently the "NATO allies" in the middle east were not able to use sophisticated and high tech USA equipment to their advantage (Afghanistan/Iraq) it is obvious we cannot judge either soviet equipment used by the middle east or NATO equipment used by the middle east as they forget all doctrine and basically waste any resources given to them.
@Steve Kirkup ive heard other, similar stories as well. Things like technicians assuring job security by not teaching anyone else how to do certain Maintenace tasks, a very hierarchical, "father knows best", culture that tends towards rigid, top down command systems and discourages low level initiative, a heavy interpenetration of the military officer corps and the political/social elite that can put "reliable" but incompetent leaders in command, a disconnect between the officers and the troops, etc, etc.
short answer is, they dont think like westerners or Russians do, and solutions that work in Europe or Russia dont always work so well in the mid east.
Sounds like Arabs. A combination of need to save face and stubborn personal proudness makes a chronic inability to admit mistakes and even worse an unwillingness to correct mistakes.
Loved Bernhard's point about Germany was planning for peace in the early '40's. The Allies always knew it'd be a long war - so put lots of thought into mass production, e.g. sticking with one main tank designs in Sherman. Germany was looking at a 1000 year Reich, so didn't need to bother with this approach, e.g. Tiger, Panther, King Tiger, Maus etc. Its more complicated I know, yet...
Ich fände es sehr interessant ein oder mehrere Videos über die Frauen in der Kriegswirtschaft zu sehen. Allgemein sind Videos über Kriegswirtschaft sehr interessant
I think the strategy the Soviets mastert is "good enough".
You improve the kit to the point there it's start to get diminishing returns and it was "good enough". And so they get the best out of their number's.
"Perfect is the enemy of good enough" Stalin
That only works if someone was helping you with materials.
Don't make assumptions. Read documents.
Such numbers of tanks made not because of the idea to replace the ineviteble losses, but to acheve numerical superiority and make an enemy retreat, to prevent as much losses as possible in the first place.
Some contribution to such a significant number of tanks was made by the fact that the USSR border was the longest in the world and a significant part of it passed through the European plain.
For the time of the start of production, the tanks were stunningly high-quality.
Remind you, T-26 "is widely considered one of the most successful tank designs of the 1930s".
Disadvantages such as poor optics and the lack of radio stations on most of the tanks of the early period are the result of an acute shortage of qualified personnel caused by, what a surprise, a world War, civil war, intervention, actions of British spies who worked out, among other things, the operation to blow up the Baku oil fields before the Second World War. And here it didn't work out anymore, Hitler didn't want to be a puppet and decided to kill the puppeteer earlier.
The soviet massproduced tanks had no rivals exept french Char in continental Europe.
It was after the Munich betrayal (yet another) that Germany received production facilities and applied the experience of the Spanish Civil War.
Right now we see how the Eussians use Soviet doctrines but the circumstances of Russia are so different (economically, demographically, etc.) that is more of a hindrance than an advantage. Small army. Smaller economy. Few young people. Such a doctrine is just useless now.
This video is one of my favorites of recent.
Dr, Willey should read Tooze, the fact that Germany didn’t go on “total war” mode until 1943 is just a myth. Germany was on war footing at least since 1936, actually without the war Germany economy would have imploded in 1940 because of lack of raw resources. The stagnant production of 39-42 was caused by huge capital investments which bore fruits in 1943 and onwards. Germany had a higher percentage of working women that any other country except the Soviet Union since the start of the war, but most of them were employed in in the fields instead of factories.
Indeed ...." Guns before butter " was one of the first National Socialist proclamations.
Still waiting to hear an in-depth discussion about Soviet tanks and mass vs quality. I like these guys and appreciate their knowledge, but I think during their ramblings they touched on the topic for about half a minute.
"Stumbling Colossus" and apt description for the Russian military even today, in Ukraine.
Too much vodka.
Hello, i really enjoy your videos, thank you for your hard work.
Keep it up, its not unappreciated 💯
love yall together, please do more
So much this
I'm reading General von Vormann's book about the Cherkasy-Korsun battle and he maintains that the Soviets had an almost inexhaustible supply of men to use in human wave attacks. As his army withdrew in late 1943, they left behind Russian a old men and wash women for the German army and he says these people were then thrown against the Germans, half unarmed and without shoes even! He also recounts that because the German lines were so thin, a 1000 or more Soviet soldiers just walked through their lines at night. He does blame the Furrier and talks about having the ability to win if only "that painter" hadn't intervened just like the other generals but I do believe he was telling the truth in the small details. He described how a Pzrgrenadier regiment was supposed to have 2000 men but only had 800. A battalion had about 2-300, a company size! So the numbers on paper vs. the actual numbers were vastly different. And as the Germans had to withdraw in -20, -30C temps, the ground was too hard to dig in so the grenadiers had to just lie on the open ground. So such a small, incapacitated force facing a superior Soviet force are going to feel very overwhelmed, imo.
there's more than a few book that have dwelled on how Hitler and the upper echelons of the reich delayed major movements and reallignments to the point where all stategic advantage was squandered and the plans were out of date with the tactical situation
" We owe Hitler a lot , for our victory" , Eisenhower.
lol why are you reading german copium?
@@phunkracy I don't believe in god but I have read most of the bible at some time or other, if only to find out what the hell these people are so worked up about ? If you only read the history from Your sides point of view you are only reading propaganda, it is a Must to read from both perspectives to gain an even view of an event\war etc..
In hindsight, we know that Soviet units were often just as depleted as their German opponents - so much so that as the war progressed, Stavka issed a series of modified tables of organisation and equipments (or "shtats", to use the Soviet term), authorising "reduced strength" formations, to be adopted when a division fell beneath certain manpower thresholds.
This does not, however, mean we should be entirely without sympathy for German officers who claim waves of Soviet troops coming at them in "inexhaustible supply". Soviet doctrine stressed the necessity to reinforce success, rather than shore up failure: concentration of force at critical points in the line was an important part of Soviet breakthrough tactics. If you were one of the poor sods stationed at one of these critical points, you could certainly be forgiven for thinking that the Soviets had endless waves at their disposal, even if this was not really the case. It's the same reason why, to this day, popular culture tends to think of the Chinese as having possessed numerical superiority in the Korean war. It's simply not true: overall numbers were about equal, but using light, mobile troops to achieve localised numerical superiority at critical locations was an important part of Chinese doctrine.
I thought Lazerpig put it well. What people who promote quantity over quality ignore is staffing. Finding, training and maintaining those additional crews isn't free. Also, notifying the parents of the dead crew isn't free, especially nowadays.
Now I'm really curious what the Myth that was created in the 21st century that you don't like is lol
yeah me too. For me its that every german was an evil nazi and that every member of the nazi party was evil. Also to be a nazi, you have to be either inept or evil. From what I remember which is probably wrong, about 95% of the population was a member of the nazi party.
The war was not good vs evil, it was basically one ideology against the western world.
Even when you look at modern conflicts like the war on terror (iraq, afghanistan, libya, egypt, etc.) you will find that its not about disposing evil dictators because we are the good guys. its about economics and power.
Bernhard knows far more about these subjects than I do and I am interested to hear his take on it too.
Same here, really hope its a video coming or something
Great discussion!
I'm 0.2 seconds in and the A7V has stolen the show.
Britain lost in France, Greece and in the far east at the start of the war, so the seriousness of the situation led to more of a desire for total war if you like, whereas Germany had 'easy' victories and perhaps was a bit over-confident regarding the need for 'totale Krieg'. Once the Soviet Union was defeated in 'a short campaign', the war would more or less be over, right?
dont worry we'll be in moscow by christmas
That was a far different time. During the second world war you had a vast people population (Russian) who were taken from a mostly agrarian life and told to fight for the Motherland or die trying. Stalin used this by pushing as many soldiers and quickly built weapons of roughly comparable ability if lesser to the enemy onto the battlefield as possible in hopes of overwhelming the enemy, and there by win by sheer weight of numbers/attrition.
Skip forward to today, again Russia thinking that pushing massed forces to a quick end will carry the day. But instead, are meet by a highly skilled/educated force with equal and in some cases better equipment and the will to use it to its utmost ability. And we get what we see today in the Ukraine. The ill trained, equipped and paid conscripts for the most part Russians are getting their collective backside kicked time and time again. Even when they make progress, it is meet with a better equipped/motivated/trained forces and beaten back.
Isn´t it also true that the UK would have died if their had no colonies? Maybe the UK was better at rationing than Germany, but the later did not have access to the resources the UK had. So it did not really matter. If you don´t have the resources for an offensive war and can´t replace nor trade them you can ration how much you want. If Britain did not have colonies they would have it much harder to fuel their fleet and build their airforce.
You could also argue that the integration of the Wehrmacht veterans was also possible, because their myth of being defender of Europe before Bolshevik invasion could be carried over and that they mostly harmed people in the East. I don´t think any American, French, etc would have liked to serve with German soldiers if they had been doing in the West as they did in the East.
If you look into the increase of Soviets forces and training schools, it was not the officer purge that hurt the army, but the lack of trained NCOs and Júnior Officers that hurt the Soviets then and the Russians now. There were not enough schools to train the personnel the Soviets needed.
You forget that Germany, France etc could also have produced as many tanks. They just didn't have the fuel for them
no. Germany could not have produced as many tanks. The whole German doctrine was developed because the Military as soon as 1922 saw that Germany was at a serious disadvantage in longer conflicts due to limited ressources and industrial power. But the Nazi leadership thought otherwise.
Hell, the US produced more Shermans than the German did produce all armoured vehicles taken together...
@@theadder2243 From what I've read, Germany in 1914 had the second biggest industrial capacity after the USA. Surpassing Russia, surpassing Britain, surpassing France.
I don't think so much had changed by the 1930s . They were still the second biggest country in Europe after the USSR (almost twice as big as either France or Britain) , with lots of factories and good infrastructure.
What had been neglected after WW1 Hitler had more or less rebuilt.
They had a steady supply of iron from Sweden, and they had synthetic rubber.
Wouldn't be surprised if they actually had more factories capable of building tanks in 1940 than the USSR.
Plus everything much closer together plus better infrastructure, so probably capable of higher outputs than Soviet factories.
So I still think they could easily have built as many tanks as the USSR if they had wanted.
The reason they didn't was probably fuel.
And the fact that they were engaged everywhere at once and needed to build everything. The USA didn't need to build too many tanks are the beginning; just ships and planes. The USSR didn't need too many ships or heavy bombers; just tanks and smaller aircraft.
Germany needed it all and had to divide its industrial capacity.
But if they had wanted, they could easily have produced as many tanks, I think
@@jankutac9753 no, Germany was not able to outproduce even Great Britain and the USSR alone.
@@theadder2243 not sure in WW2 , but I remember reading in WW1 they definitely were. And I find it hard to believe that so much had changed
@@jankutac9753 Germany was devastated by the Peace of Versailles. Some industry was cut away (esp. coal and iron deposits), and most was devastated by the reparations and the high inflation and the economic crisis. Germany was not able to outproduce Britain and Soviet Union in WW2. And the Military knew this - and they knew that a long war favored the others. Therefore the whole military tactics and strategy were changed to a quick war.
Soviet tactics seemed for awhile to be, mass fire on target and counter a similar response. The focus on accuracy is very much a western idea, likely rising from the failures of trench warfare tactics employed late in WWI by the English as opposed to the French artillery tactics and Russian infantry tactics. Throwing a mass formation provides minimum strategic return on your forces as does overwhelming firepower. It's really a sniper v. machine gun tactic applied to tanks. Whereas modern Western tactics target high value with precision the Eastern doctrine seems to be if you put enough rounds/units down range, anything of value will be rendered ineffective.
This should have been filmed in a pub, with drinks? and Bernhard, you didn't stop talking, your mike stopped working?
Preferably Vodka (to fit the topic)
Thank you for bringing in David Willey again. ^^
Origins of mass with Soviet tanks is a nonsensical statement. I’m sure you can do better.
A great discussion. Thank you.
loved the interview! plz more!
I think it might have David himself that said this: it's not that quantity has a quality of its own, but Quantity is more of a Quality multiplier. Ie if a Western tank can kill 3 Soviet tanks on average but the Soviet tanks out number Western tanks 5 to 1, then the Soviet forces have an advantage.
The T72 video where he gets into Soviet doctrine is fascinating because we in the West like to rubbish Soviet doctrine but the way he explains it you actually start to see the logic of it.
Yeah, it's part of the reason why the Soviets and later Russians were absolute hoarders when in comes to equipment.
Because they essentially thought, "Yes Comrade, the T-55 is absolutely obsolete on the modern battlefield. But, if its 8 months into the war and NATO has used up all its advanced ATGMs, Tanks, attack helicopters, and so on, and is down to using rifles, MGs, and maybe a few LAWs or bazookas, then the T-55 is a superb weapon."
@@michaelthayer5351 Exactly, well put. I think the conflict in Ukraine is showing that doctrine doesn't entirely hold up on a modern battlefield.
Sure, they can still field MBTs in numbers (The head of the British army estimated our tank force would have lasted about a week), but a modern battlefield is a complex place and while a T64 can function if you have lost all your T90s, but the crews can't be easily replaced.
And the proliferation of one-man Anti-Tank weapons that are easy to keep supplied is able to stay ahead, especially with multiple sources: The ubiquitous RPG7, NLAW, Javelin, Panzerfaust 3 and Ukraine's own Stuhna-P
@@deaks25 I honestly thought before the current conflict that the Russians had reformed from a Soviet Mass mobilization model to something more akin to a Prussian System, where they mobilize quickly to win a quick victory and then negotiate using nuclear brinksmanship, since Russia lacks the manpower to win an attritional fight with the West or China. Though now it seems that was aspirational at best on their part.
Mobilization and vast stockpiles are best paired with either a robust training system, or deep benches of reservists, neither of which Russia retained from the Soviets. The training was never at the level it needed to be and for domestic political opinion the batches of conscripts taken in every year are relatively small, due to bribes, medical, or education exemptions.
While those AT weapons are potent, their usefulness beyond urban and other cover-heavy terrain is limited, meaning that while they make capturing cities difficult, it is very difficult to do much else.
What worries me most is that after this War, the Russians are going to take a hard look at themselves like the Prussians did after their defeat at the hands of Napoleon and reform their system. They are losing a lot of equipment, but its all Soviet hardware for the most part meaning they will be forced to rearm with modern equipment (I personally think they'll do to the T-14 and Armata series what they did to the T-64 to get the T-72, simplify it for mass production but keep 90% of the improvements, ditto for their other modern weapons), So the Russian military in 10 years may turn into what we all feared it was, but we will be blinded by triumphalism as the French were in 1870.
The difference is the industrial effort required to construct an army from scratch.
I find it highly unlikely russia will posess the resources necesseary to reform anywhere near their percieved strength pre war in the next 50 years.
@@michaelthayer5351 You do have a very good point, and the West will, should Russia be defeated, will inevitably engage in self-congratulation.
I think the difference between now and Prussia is that the technology was generally fine, it was, to my understanding, generally the tactics, training and command structures that were lacking.
And Russia isn't just losing old kit, the last update to the T72 was in 2016, and the likely most common variant, T72B3M is from 2014.
We know T80's (T80 BVM was updated in 2017) and T90's are in the combat zone well, so Russia is losing the most modern versions of its primary combat stock.
Apparently there are less than 100 T14s in service, so production is incredibly slow, perhaps not even out of prototype stage.
That's not just having to relearn how to do modern warfare, that's an army gutted at its core.
There's nothing to say Russia can't do a 1930's Germany and do a leaps and bounds catch up, which leads back to your point about the West being to busy admiring itself.
Britain rationed better because they were an island facing blockade
The point was the Germans didn't ration materials for consumer goods production, they were still using their limited metal and other raw material supplies producing luxury items like fine furniture, wrist watches, luxury clothes, consumer electronics, etc rather than weapons. (The exception being cars, despite saying everyone could have a car for 990 Reichsmarks they never satisfied even a fraction of demand for Volkswagens and not a single person who joined the savings plan launched in 1938 ever received the car they paid for by the end of the war)
@@watcherzero5256 my point is that Britain did ration because they knew they had to. Germany seemed to think they didn't have to. Plus, Germany had to make the populace happy. Don't want the people thinking this great new German gov was going to make their lives harder and lose public support.
Bravo for being HISTORIANS and not getting sucked into a heated, IMO propaganda ridden media environment. Realizing that the best answer to most questions on current events is "we don't know, we can confirm these (FEW) facts, my experience and knowledge allows me to speculate (carefully) this, but overall, the history is not even close to being ready to be written." 👏
The U.S. and Britain, despite being democracies, and partly because they are democracies, could go immediately to war economy conditions because their populations felt they had been "forced into the war." The shock of the Pearl Harbor attack was enormous, because few civilians expected Japan would start a war with the USA -- not the least because the outcome of such a war was so obvious. The "Sneak Attack" Myth was exploited, but the sudden displacement of justified American complacency was a!so a powerful factor in winning public acceptance of food and fuel rationing and even the entry of female and African-American labor into unionized industrial workforces.
Well, « Rule Brittania » keeps repeating that Britons « never, never, never shall be slaves ».
It’s a really powerful statement. I think many britons were ready to die rather than live under the nazi boot.
Is that really the case. It's fun to hear TIK's catchphrase on other channels.
As living witnesses of the Russo-Ukraine war, we can already see Myths being made, and then discarded. For example, "The Ghost of Kiev," invented to boost local morale, against "Saint Javelin," in which every anti-tank missile fired at a Russian vehicle is an American-made Javelin. Each Myth from the Ukraine War is made for a reason, be it morale, war justification, operational security, oversimplification, or even to encourage outside countries like U.S., U.K., Germany, and Poland to keep donating more weapons of that type. The same process is happening on the Russian and pro-Russian side, where myth-making is even easier since the media is government controlled.
But the Russians did retreat from Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, etc. last spring. Those movements were not myths, and they came about as a result of frustrated ambitions and poorly executed advances that led to defeat on those fronts.
And not sure the ghost of whatever has held much water, or gain the kind of acceptance like the clean Wehrmacht myth of the post war era - nor that Javelin bit?
And currently, with breakthroughs under way in Kharkiv oblast, it seems the government of Ukraine has been a bit tightlipped, at least initially. Yes, there is celebration on reaching Izyum and Kupiansk - which isn't surprising, and which notably the Russians conceded - but overall Ukrainians have been a little vague.
@@michaeldunne338 - I'm certainly not taking Putin's side. I'm just suggesting, as a sociologist, that we are seeing Myths created, spread, and even discarded in real time. This is nothing new -- the British tried to conceal the effectiveness of their Chain Home radar system by claiming that RAF pilots ate an inordinate number of carrots to improve their eyesight.
Likewise, I'm sure Americans were told that collecting scrap metal, newspapers, rubber, and even edible oils would shorten the war, along with buying War Bonds for Victory. In reality, "war bonds" were an effective way to control inflation voluntarily. It's a testament to the power of Government control over the media, even in the U.S., that all that war bond malarkey worked.
@@pacificostudios well the propaganda about that ghost got discarded pretty quickly. Not sure what hay was made out for the Javelin, since other systems were being used, and it seems most people knew that. And with the current fighting, seems like less said is the current modus operandi of the government of Ukraine (believe the government even told certain officials to watch their tongue), specifically with: Operations in Crimea, the Kherson front, and Kharkiv.
Future rounds of propaganda are possible. Will have to see.
As for war bonds, yes, mops up money in an economy. However, another point is to act as an instrument to finance a war effort relatively quickly, as pointed out: "War bonds are a way for the government to borrow from their population to finance the increased military spending during wartime. "
I can think of two other Myths from the Ukraine War:
1. The soldiers on Snake Island who said "Russian: Go F*ck Yourself." At the time, we were told that the defenders were all killed, but later it was revealed that at least some were taken prisoners.
2. The old woman who gave seeds to Russian soldiers so flowers would grow where their bodies fell. We'll never know if she existed, but the story is so perfect that it doesn't matter if it is true.
@@pacificostudios You seem to be confusing cases of wrong information or stories of some incidents as myth equivalent to what the speakers were discussing. As for the Snake Island garrison, think it was kind of upside in the fact they survived. As for that weird old lady story - don't think that gain much ground in telling, and don't think many will recall it in the future, especially in light of major events going on.
Nice to see these two together but the vid in the end was not about Soviet mass tank tactics at all! 😂
We got a "bit" off track ;)
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized Good reason to meet again and make another video! : D Servus und vielen Dank
The biggest problem with the future is that it rarely turns out as predicted, 1984, Metropolis, etc. However we still can go down certain avenues or timelines. It this respect doctrines must throw a broad net to accommodate the near future. History gives us the facts only, which is a problem. Facts to be meaningful must be interpreted which can lead to opinions. Humans as a collective can dream of the perfect future while ignoring the statistical analysis of the facts which are saying the opposite. A myth if believed by all is a fact? A very interesting discussion guys. Iraq in 2006, we know the facts as we can analyse them continuously. The latest form of Western warfare is painfully expensive and as such has a limited endurance. All the experts agree that we used this form of warfare for far too long yet we can't agree when or at what time we should have dropped to conventional secondary and much cheaper technologies. Once we have air superiority does stealth technology have any value or should we switch to 4th generation aircraft that carries for more ordinance or do we use a hybrid system? When do we stop risking the much more expensive 5th generation aircraft? Again thanks guys for a very interesting discussion.
The one problem, where I disagree with what Mr. Willey is stating (regarding war economy), is that it is difficult, to compare the US' war economy, Britain's war economy, and Russia's war economy versus that, of Germany, because Britain was being supplied by colonies and the US, the US was sheltered from everything (minus Pearl Harbor the Alaska), and Russia was getting supplied, by the US and Britain, thus allowing them to shift focus to primary materials. On top of that, Germany was getting shut off, from imports. That, in turn, hampered their production.
I don't think Mr. Willey was intentionally ignoring this. Rather, I think that it is easy, to forget in an isolated sub-conversation within the overall conversation. Case in point, Russia was able to pump out tanks because they were poorly built, by poor workers, and they didn't have to worry about focusing on everything, due to the impact of Lend-Lease.
Well I think the gulags were a good motivation to make the numbers required.....
@Rachandra Gupta Patel because it a bullshit nation building myth the indians created. ChUrChIlL sTaRvEd Us!
I would like to point out that soviet tanks retained a rather high level of quality and reliability, and it's only a popular perception induced by the west wanting to claim that they are superior that made them claim that soviet tanks were garbage that was mass produced... Did they make a lot of them? Yes. Were they good quality? Yes. Were they the absolute best? I mean, no, not really, but soviet industry produced the best heavy tank of the entire war, and one of the best mediums, and their reliability is only bad in media because of propaganda... If you were to look back at the actual performance of soviet tanks in terms of reliability especially late war, they were keeping up with western designs.
@Rachandra Gupta Patel did you just hijack my comment? We dont know because we are not british! In the dutch history india is two things : Ghandi and a stop for the dutch east india company in the 1600s.
One of the reasons I've heard for Germany not going into full war economy is that through the first world war there was a massive lack of consumer goods and basic necessities which caused massive destabilization so the Nazis were adverse to rationing and full war production.
I think also it's a little unfair perhaps to say that Germany didn't do this. German arms industry exploded(no pun intended) under Hitler but there was a lot of catching up to do after the decade of strife in the Weimar republic. A lot of the focus was on chemical sectors to create synthetic fuels and rubbers which were strategic resources Germany lacked and would in a war have no access to. If I recall these areas increased their production 10 fold.
TIK points out that Hitler had seen a previous government overthrown because of insufficent food supplies to the people. So he was totally against rationing until it became necessary.
Tik often talks out of his arse, especially regarding economics and politics, but in this case he’s correct: the whole German establishment was scared shitless of another turnip winter and did everything in their power to keep the population well fed depredating the countries they’d conquered, IICR Denmark alone fed something like 15 millions of Germans.
@*Uncle Joe* Absolutely, his series on Stalingrad is grate and saved me the trouble to read the 4 volumes Glanz’s “trilogy”. The colonel is a great historian and his work on the eastern front has been groundbreaking, but his prose is a bit… dry 😊
There is a reason to why Russians the sign their tanks around quantity over Quality that they have the manpower required to do that during the Soviet era. On the foreign markets they can sell them cheaper than a Western tank of the same quality. Cons Prone to Jack in the Box effect seen in 1982 Lebanon War when Syrian T-72s went against Israeli Merkava Mk 1 & 2s 1991 & 2003 Gulf War and Ukraine
Great video. David is always a fantastic intermediator
Really like this video, I wish it was split into two separate ones for the different topics covered.
Mass indeed does have a quality all it's own.
[ “always has been “ astronaut meme]
They are meant to be destroyed real soon after the fallout
But the mushroom never be risen on Eurasian
That's wht they failed
They ain't fighting the war they meant to be fighting
Soviet mechanisation? During WW2 their 'mechanisation' was US supplied old trucks + some modern. Exept from their tanks.
The high volym argument really don't hold water. Because when a high quality Western tanks take out a somewhat or slightly lower quality ussr tank, there is one tank just behind it...
Well, there are 45 more shells in the Western tank as well.
And no, it really wasn't high volume that beat the germans back in 1943 and 44. It was mostly higher quality, or at least a better performing product.
In actuall reality there was not much true tank to tank combat. For the begining of the war, Russian just got over run. For the late part of the war there was not much german armour left. Airforce did lot of the heavy lifting.
And well, luftwaffe had a very hard time from mid 1943 onwards.
@1:28 slyly appropriating Moltke's Konzept; right in the deutschmann's face
dem britons think dey slick
møff = myth
Russia and the USSR never set out to build the best possible equipment. They always went for "good enough"--something that is simple enough to mass produce given the limitations of their industry, can be used by half-trained conscripts, and works reliably even if you skip the scheduled maintenance.
Indeed, like they said in the video, the Soviet army doctrine, especially after Khrushchev was shaped by the Red Army experience of the second world war, they envisioned such a high rate of attrition that the standing army at the start of the war would have been pretty much obliterated in a matter of months if not weeks even without the use of nuclear weapons, at that point even a T55 would have been useful if your opponent had nothing to oppose it.
The only departure from that vision was the T64/t80 family of tanks (but even with those tanks they followed the good enough route, T80s for most of the cold war didn’t have thermal sights but only infrared ones not because they didn’t have the technology but because at the cost of two thermal sights, they could have bought an additional tank) which formed the bulk of tanks the group of Soviet Forces in Germany starting from the 70s’, but the “mobilization” tank was the much simpler T72.
Funnily enough after WWII and especially since the 70s’ the US took the German route (in contrast of their WWII experience, the M4 was a good enough tank, like the T34), luckily, we’ve never had to find out who was right 😊
well, they didn't work reliably even when they did do scheduled maintenance, the engine had a short life, so it needed to be changed pretty often for example
Yet many of their flagship systems like T-64, T-80, Su-27 etc. are aiming for top-end performance and are similarly expensive (or more expensive) compared to western systems.
@@db7547 The US did not want to remain on war footing. Which USSR did which probably hastened or even caused the collapse of USSR.
T-80u and t-72b are obvuiously unknown to u
The Germans had fuel issues but remember the Germans had tons of coal and they could make synthetic fuel. The allies bombed all the factories and railways so fuel production and weapons was hampered. If the Germans and Japanese had the capacity to bomb USA tank factories and railways then Sherman and other tank productions would have been hampered.
This episode needs a better title, as captivating as it is.
Great discussion!
Russian tanks were simpler easier to construct by a largely unskilled work force. Heinz Guderian had great respect for the T34 and later the Is 2 tank.
British Tanks were a mixed bunch quality wise -Valentine and the Matilda being exceptions!
Think about the Sherman was it vastly superior to the T34 ?
Apparently lend lease Shermans in Russian service were liked by their crews and we're considered luxurious in some ways and yet we're not as good as far as mobility - it's never that simple !
It is a question of priorities. The Sherman was greatly influenced by the Panzer III and IV and actually had a good crew ergonomy (that's why it was liked by their crews), whereas the crew ergonomy had no priority in Soviet tank design or doctrine. Soldiers, after all, were just a material to be used just like tanks, rifles, oil or ammunition.
That's the difference. The German army (the doctrines were written by old Reichswehr Panzer guys, not by the Nazis) placed importance on the crew and it's ergonomy over armor protection and firepower. They valued mobility and crew ability to fight after a long march. The British and US army learned this from them in 1940/1 with a small number of captured tanks and manuals. They also wanted their soldiers to be ready to fight after a march. And so, crew ergonomy was valued high in Shermans (after reliability and shipability).
Those are doctrinal differences between the Soviets and the Germans and Americans. Actually, the Sherman WAS the best tank for US Armored Forces doctrine - and the Panzer III was the best for German Panzer forces doctrine until being forced in a solely defensive stance - and maybe the T-34 was the best tank for Soviet doctrine. It did not have to last long, it did not have to be ergonomic, as the Red Army favored Mass Assaults anyway, so there always was enough time to bring the T-34 to the front, and rest some hours before going into the short run to the enemy lines...
Interesting talk, but they completely lost sight of the subject of “mass vs quality”
yodeling at 12min mark
i would like to point out the ww2 soviet's regimental 76mm M1927 and M1943 guns were effectively equivalent to the german infantry guns. i am not sure if you were using infantry guns vs mortars as an actual example or just hypothetical.
you might want to check the captions, since I added that, because I knew someone like you would make this comment.
Soviet have 60.000 tank in 1990
I don’t know what you were drinking but obviously it must have hallucinative tendencies
myths - i once worked as senior trainer for a small training establishment, on commencing i found copious amounts of outdated training documention, which I updated to modern doctrine. The next senior trainer to me had been taught using the old doctrine, so he went back to teaching what he had learned, was confident of and did not need to learn anything new. The myths, errors and mistakes became new again. Myths never go away.
I work with firearms professionally as an end user. The amount of lore I get from people who supposedly know better is astounding. I've heard everything -- 45 is antimatter 9mm is tickles, if you can't win with _SHOT CAPACITY HERE_, _OTHER SHOT CAPCITY_ would not have helped, 5.56x45 is meant for wounding only, revolvers never jam, 22 is the deadliest caliber, shotguns don't require aiming, "Glock 40", "Colt 45", and more. Old country cops are the absolute worst. Their last gun class was 40 years ago and they haven't bothered to update on anything since beyond bare minimum to stay qualified. You can try to pass knowledge, but people who don't want to pay for real training, which is expensive, will say shit like "I"ll ask my grandad, he's a sherriff", or "my cousin used to be a cop" and that's how it percolates back into consciousness.
great discussion anybody interested in world war II history is going to like. It wouldn't be a bad idea to have more of these.
That was a great video, loved seeing you guys chat!
I always hated that BS Britain said "we sTaNd ALoNE". Even though they were the largest and most easily supplied empire at the time.
We stand alone!
Nevermind the Canadians, New Zealanders, Australians, Africans, Burmese, a billion Indians and so on!
After all they demanded liberty as recompense.
@@MrHodoAstartes all of witch were thousands of miles away. Britain stood alone as the last European country.
No ! Your not getting it.
Britain and the Empire decided to fight on against :- Germany Italy and the Soviet Union !
You forget that there was no guarantee that the Soviets wouldn't invade India via Iran Iraq .... Look at the Enemies complete .... as was then ... not hind sight
Easily supplied? Would you say that to the tens of thousands of men and women of the Merchant Navy who died during the war?
Great presentation, Myths are a hard thing to break but so interesting.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Tanks are still great. But the prior Russian doctrine of overwhelming numbers has two major modern short comings. First, you need to maintain air/battle ground superiorty, or at least parity; then second, if you don't maintain some control over the battle zone, 10,000 tanks will lose out to 100,000 Javelins and grenade drones.
This soviet doctrine was invented before the rise of modern missiles. Also - the commies were not very good at effecient use of resources - both human and matrial.
@@SMGJohn are you eating your words now? Where did you get that wrong information?
@@SMGJohn exactly what I should be asking you.
@@SMGJohn weak response.
There is a certain quality about quantity
A bit wild and wooly - got a bit offtrack relative to what the initial ostensible purpose of the interview, but interesting nonetheless!
Or the Russian 7 day plan
Starlin was reported as saying something like, "Quantity has it's own special quality".
Stalin said quantity has a quality all of its own.
He did but events in Ukraine seem to indicate that quality has a quantity of its own as well…
Only up to a certain point.... as long as you can maintain those quantities and use the same platform.
He did but Ukraine ruined it because the Ukrainians are using weapons sent by NATO countries designed to fight both Sulwaki and Fulda Gaps Just in case if WW 3 breaks out.
An excellent series of talks.
I'd love to see you guys talk to TiK as he's pointed out recently that Germany was in a wartime economy from the mid 30s and that Speer did not in fact descend from the heavens to prolong the war with facts and logic.
Bedankt
Thank you!
Is it just me that thought the video was a couple of hours too short?
Dayum boi, Russia got dat MASS
Baby got tracks.
M is silent ?
I stay up all night thinking about tank philosophy. Kidding. I stay up all night thinking about how MacArthur lost the Philippines so quickly with 6 years to put together the Philippines Army. SMH what a disaster.
Nice come back. R refusal to follow the plans I believe
@@MrHowhot yeah but it no good fighting for the same ground twice.
I don't know the details, but 6 years doesn't really seem like a lot
@@DuelJ007 With MacArthur in charge a thousand years would not have been enough.
seems like a pattern....almost every army USA trained failed and USA had to intervene directly
bohrring
You should've just recorded this as likean hour or two long interview
i don't think most of the viewers would watch 2 hour video of 2 people talking
@@H3rraM4juri cap
👍👍
Bernhard is the greatest historian in world history!!!!!!!
I really enjoy the great questions and the depth of context and answers that one can find in your videos, this one being no exception.
But is it me, or David seems really cross sometimes in the last couple of videos? It's quite weird to see him like that :D
Hmm they got a lot of things wrong. Especially about the Soviet army doctrine but at least someone finally acknowledged the sheer scale of Soviet tank building effort. Yet people still think they they built tens of thousands of planes and tanks just to be "scared" to be invaded by Germany, actually hilarious
David touched on a very interesting point: the USSR decided to build masses of tanks (which it had no way or need to employ) in order to develop industrial production. It could instead have built agricultural machinery and consumer goods, which would have massively improved lives and created a very different society. On such moments hinge the destinies of nations.
Well, the USSR for most of its existence was in a state of close to war economy. It is easy for us to look back and say "well, clearly, they should have just done this or that" without realising the simple fact that for most of its existence the soviet union was under constant threat by much larger and superior powers. They couldnt both equip a large enough army to defend themselves, and produce consumer goods in high enough numbers to develop a civilian industry.
They had a good go of trying to keep up but at any moment in time the 'West' could have literally buried them in men and materiel in a surprise war, even the barely functioning economy of Nazi germany was capable enough to be able to nearly break the USSR completely (while the officer purges were a factor, the army was also expanded like fivefold in the course of a few years, so competency isn't gonna be present even with a good core of officers...)
They did need a massive army, because there were plenty of anti-communist hotheads that would go in and declare war if there wasn't a massive deterrent in the form of a big army and massive nuclear stockpiles there. That's why, contrary to what most people seem to think, soviet doctrine in many ways was exclusively defensive in nature (look at their airforce, it's essentially there to supplement a network of AA and support ground troops, little offensive capability on a general level)
The Soviets produced massive amounts of agricultural, mining, and lumber equipment. In 1937 alone, they made 44000 farm tractors, leading the world over the second place US at 29000. They literally made more of that stuff than they could use, just like tanks. Difference was, the export market wanted their tanks, but not their tractors. They exported massive amounts of grain, metals, lumber, and military equipment because that is what the rest of the world was willing to give them money for, but consumer goods were a drop in the bucket compared to that for two reasons. Western countries put trade embargoes on them, and neutral countries didnt want Soviet consumer goods because after Stalin killed almost everyone with a brain, they couldn't develop competitive products.
Lol because the Soviets cared about their people, that's funny.
They explictly focused the second five year plan to mechanisation of the agriculture
The Tanks were used to invade ukraine in the 1930's...
EDIT: Study the Terrain in Russia and eastern Ukraine. Wide open and flat for thousands of KM. that equals LOTS of casualties no matter what you do as seen in the Kherson offensive. so they built for MASS instead of expensive high-quality tanks that would just get bombed into oblivion anyways. The philosophy is LOSSES WILL BE SUFFERED, and vehicles will need to be replaced anyways. Also makes it easier to replace crews during wartime when your tanks are not needlessly overly complex and you can realisticaly train a cerew in about 4-6 months to at least basic comitence as opposed to Western tanks which take AT LEAST a full year. So if you are trading casulties who do you think its going to run out first?
Middle East countries using Soviet tanks were trained by Soviets and did use their doctrine
Correct but in the case of 1991 2003 Gulf Wars 1967 Six Day War 1982 Lebanon War and 1973 they got beat by the Israelis and Western countries Anti Saddam Hussein Arab countries who used Western Strategy
As has been said before, it depends on the context.
First video of this channel I didn't like.
This guy just talks and talks and I can hardly say if he finished at least one of his ideas
Mass vs QUALITY? How exactly are Russian tanks of lower QUALITY than "western"?
They're much LIGHTER in WEIGHT. That is nothing like the same thing.
And as USA proved in Iraq, the big mobile fortresses that the M1 and other western big tanks are, they use up horrible amounts of fuel.
To the point that in Iraq, despite >6 months of stockpiling fuel, US forces still ended up standing still for days because fuel stores COULD NOT be replenished fast enough.
Also extremely important, yes a much heavier tank overall has a SLIGHTLY higher chance of being effective TACTICALLY.
But nowhere near enough to justify the extra weight and the loss of OPERATIONAL and STRATEGIC level effectiveness.
And what does the tactical effectiveness of a tank matter when the primary way of fighting is artillery?
As long as it is good ENOUGH, it doesn't matter at all.
And you're still pushing one of the myths of WWII. The idea that USSR EVER relied purely on numbers is and has always been rubbish.
And USSR, when it was formed, it had just been INVADED by half the European nations, plus Japan and USA!!!
Well DUH, of course they're going to focus on the military! Japan and USA together held more of Sibiria than any Russians did FFS!
And it's not like other nations became less hostile to USSR. No, they became MORE hostile.
When USSR tried to create a coalition against Hitler-germany between 1933 and 1939, the only nation to even bother negotiating in good faith was France!
And the groups that considered USSR the great enemy that had to be destroyed were vastly greater than anyone who thought the nazis needed to be dealt with.
Even as late as 1944, general Patton openly argued that they should make peace with Germany and then ally with them against "the true enemy".
Again, DUH! Of course USSR wasn't going to slack on the military. Blaming them for it is like saying, oh yeah, it really was Poland that started WWII. You're blaming USSR for something they did as a REACTION to what our oh so angelic and innocent nations did to ATTACK THEM.
And it sounds familiar because we've done it again.
They're lower quality because the design criteria are rarely met and the production model has a lot of shortcuts or plain bad work included. See: T-34 and their godawful welding and metallurgy even when on-paper the tank was one of the more expensive ones with good quality components like German optics.
Russia stopped making good tanks after the T-64, which was arguably their first good tank, and even those had drivetrain issues early on.
@@ArchOfficial "and the production model has a lot of shortcuts or plain bad work included."
In regards to the T-34, the ones built just around the start of Barbarossa actually did NOT. They were in fact such high quality that more of them survived to the end of the war than those built in the following 6 months.
The problem was that they then had to make it possible for factories not meant to build such, to do it anyway.
"They're lower quality because the design criteria are rarely met"
That's normal for pretty much every military industry in the world.
9 out 10 designs is nowhere near original intent, OR they end up vastly more expensive.
Or like in the F-35s case, BOTH.
"T-34 and their godawful welding and metallurgy"
Again, this has nothing to do with "poor quality" by itself and everything to do with improvising factories not meant to build T-34s or even tanks at all to do it anyway AND to achieve that without the required tools, without the required materials, without the required skills and without the required time.
Also, you NEED to realise that welding at the time was not something universal, most production facilities in the WORLD would be hard pressed to manage quality welds on a tank at the time.
Welding was a technique in the middle of development and adoption during WWII.
USA benefitted from having had multiple large firms adopting it early and working out a lot of the kinks and problems and being able to spread that knowledge fairly easily, but UK and Japan for example? UK did have much of the knowledge and skill, but in too limited amounts to be able to spread it effectively while Japan was simply a somewhat late adopter and had to try to work much of it out in the middle of war.
USSR also had the skills and knowledge to some extent, but most of those were in places that got captured early in Barbarossa, as well as disrupted by mobilisation as it took a few months for anyone to realise that it was a skill that should be made an exception for.
"Russia stopped making good tanks after the T-64, which was arguably their first good tank"
Disagree completely. The T-64 was specifically designed to be the "has all the bling" highend model to pair with the T-62, it was never intended to make up for a nation's whole tankpark simply because that would be horribly expensive.
The T-72 is basically as good, but without the extra cost.
And meanwhile, the T-80 is essentially to the T-72 what the T-64 was meant to be to the T-62.
And again, USSR found that the tradeoff of the more expensive tank only made it marginally more effective, it just wasn't worth it.
And that's the same tradeoff problem with heavy western tanks, except taken even further, yeah, they have the potential to be "better".
But they are nowhere near as much better as they cost more both to build and even worse to maintain and keep fuelled.
You can essentially build and maintain 2 T-72s or derivatives for every M1A1 or later models.
And while a single M1 has a CHANCE to outfight 2 T-72s, albeit a very poor chance, because 1 on 1, it's actually a fairly even fight, once you scale that up to armies?
Once you scale that up to 2000 marginally inferior tanks vs 1000 marginally superior TACTICALLY, because strategically they are severely inferior, at that point, maneuver strategy utterly overwhelms those 1000...
@@DIREWOLFx75 Not gonna read all of that. Every T-34 was bad, especially the ones made near the start. Infamously so, the ones from Ukraine.
EDIT: I love how you basically say "ill-equipped factories with unskilled workers making a bad product isn't poor quality". What is, then? I'm talking about the end product in reality, nothing else really matters in the end.
@@DIREWOLFx75 The quality or lack of it applies not only to the tanks itself but also for it's equipment, training of the crew, used tactics, support and so on. For example during most of the war all german tanks had radio while most of the soviets did not. Therefore germans used much more adaptable formations. It's not all about the tank itself.
@@mightypirat9875 That's actually only a pseudotruth.
USSR was perfectly aware of the need for radios.
However, first came the pre-war problem of having not enough experience in dealing with interference and antenna design.
Hence why you see those weird "handles all around turret" antennas on many USSR tanks in the 30s.
THEN, during the war, well, the brand new Soviet manufacturing plant for radios, GOOD radios, yeah, it was in the WEST, and along with the also brand new and actually best in the world producer of optics, they were among the first major factories captured by the Germans.
Who knew exactly where they were because they helped build them.
There were a few hundred Soviet tanks made in the 1940-1941 period that had radios and optics from those and they were dramatically superior to what came later during the war.
And during war, you make do with what you can REALISTICALLY get.
Not what you could build if you spent a huge amount of resources for 2 years to build a new advanced factory.
"training of the crew, used tactics, support and so on."
At the start of WWII, USSR had one of the better trained armies in the world. Do remember that most of the history of the eastern front as you know it, was written during the cold war by people who listened to Germans.
There are many myths accepted as truth in the west that has little to no connection to reality.