German tank superiority!?
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Well there is a lot of disinformation going around, especially Soviet propaganda, since they were very eager to change public perception. A lot of people who go on tankarchives.blogspot for example dont speak russian and have never lived in a communist system so I cannot blame them for taking the information presented to them so eagerly.
There is been a lot of bias against WWII Germany. WWII testing by the allies concluded that the Assault rifle is a 'Failed Concept'. Look what happened to that!
German propaganda played a large part in perceptions too. It's like you are trying to yank peoples chains here by repeating the statements that have been most argued against in the historical debate.
There is a difference between German propaganda and Soviet one. Example:
Soviets give a penetrating power of ~200mm for their 120mm Br 471 projectile. However, when everyone else tested it (There are tests from Yugoslavia, the German Democratic Republic, the UK and the USA), they got 175mm for the western powers, and 168 mm for the communist ones(Western Allies used 50% thresholds while Communist ones used 80%).
On the other hand, when the Germans tested their 88mm Kwk43, they got 202mm of penetration for their regular APCBC-HE and 225 mm for their APCR. However the Germans had much better Steel resources for their testing plates, and used a 98% threshold for their penetration tests. When the Western Allies tested the gun, they got 225mm for regular APCBC-HE, and a whopping 310mm for APCR. This means that the King Tiger could penetrate lightly armoured battleships(In theory).
I can point out many many more flaws that often occur in the debates regarding the 'Myth of the superior German tanks'. It's not so easy to explain.
Ok, can you please explain to me then SS Propaganda which claimed to have a 50:1 K/D ratio?
Your example may be an anecdote of your thesis but it neither illuminates nor demonstrates your thesis. I dont know what that anecdote was supposed to convince me of.
I have no idea what you are talking about. Can you show me this propagand? And what does it have to do with tanks? Is that a vehicle ratio? SS-Propaganda refers to Propaganda about an SS-Unit? What are you trying to say?
I have the actual Wehrmacht reports from the Oberkommando at Home, signed by Franz Halder, Chief of Staff, if you want to see what authentic propaganda looks like.
That is simple. The Soviet Propaganda was eager to change even technical numbers, which are universal and not refutable(i.e. penetration numbers), and change them in their favour for political reasons. I have not observed the same in German 'Propaganda'(German propaganda was simply a different thing)
Yes, I was referring to the SS tank formations. More specifically, I was talking about how the German intelligence services slashed the kill claims of mid to late panzer divisions/battalions. As for the Wehrmacht reports, yes I would like to see them.
Tooze had some data on the steel wastage rates in airplane plants in Wages of Destruction. I don't have a copy in front of me at the moment so I'll have to look.
That said, Tooze correctly notes that everyone had steel wastages whenever they machined components. The critical difference with the Americans and Soviets is that they were much better at collecting this scrap steel and reusing them. The Soviets for instance had furnaces right at the tank factory itself to reuse any steel scrap and turn them into components. The German aircraft industry, which was the most developed, still had this problem and was suffering something like 50%+ steel wastage (meaning a 10 ton aircraft would use 15 tons of metal). The tanks are unlikely to have done better and are likely to have done fairly worst.
Actual Wermacht reports regularly had their kill rates slashed in half by their own intelligence services. They understood these reports widely exaggerated the performance of their own units.
As for propaganda, the prime example is Villers-Bocage where the SS claimed that Wittman destroyed 20 British tanks. Post-war examination by a former Bundeswehr Panzer Colonel revealed he only destroyed seven, not twenty, and that his premature attack allowed the British to be alerted to the presence of the rest of the 101st SS Heavy Tank battalion.
As a result, while the British lost 20 tanks in total to elements of two Panzer Divisions (12th SS Hitlerjugend and 2nd Panzer) plus the 101st SS Heavy tank battalion, the German losses were just as bad. The 101st SS Heavy tank battalion in particular was essentially annihilated. Of 45 tanks in its initial inventory, only 9 were still working the day after Villers-Bocage - or thirty-six Tiger losses compared to the loss of 20 British tanks.
That's utter nonsense. We have access to the Soviet records since the 90s, ever since the Soviet Union you know, collapsed due to reformists wanting more openess in government?
And it's been found that a lot of supposedly "Soviet propaganda" was actually manufactured or terribly misinterpreted by the West which wasn't above lying in the name of preserving democracy to begin with. The penetration tests you refer to for instance were found not to be "Soviet Propaganda", but the West using different ammunition from the ones actually used by the Red Army; or in some cases the West tested on sloped surfaced while the Soviets tested on flat surfaces.
But such technical details didn't stop all the commie-haters on the Internet from instantly declaring all Soviet records to be propaganda, since after all out-of-context anecdotes and cherry picking is the only form of argumentation they know - when real experts know that ammunition and whether the target is sloped or not is a big deal and that there are in fact variances in gun performance even from the same gun. This is why real experts automatically dismiss anyone who brings the Soviet Propaganda argument up in the first place - it shows they haven't a clue and are relying on posturing.
If anything, the two nations that have the most secretive and myth-filled records are in fact the Germans and the British - the former having lost most of their records and a new mythology created out of whole cloth to help justify the integration of West Germany to NATO, and the latter because the Brits have rather obtuse secrecy clauses in their records and their historians still can't accept that the British role in the Second World War wasn't as important as Churchill keeps making it out to be; and that the British made an enormous number of mistakes like delaying the invasion of Normandy to 1943 that they have been trying to pretend was impossible ever since despite Operation Husky actually landing more troops in Sicily using worse port infrastructure in 1943. Yet real experts don't immediately dismiss German or British accounts either - they actually examine them with a critical eye just like the Soviet ones.
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It's worth noting that perhaps as few as 10,000 Shermans actually saw service in the West, plus another four thousand or so in the Red Army (who, again contrary to most Internet accounts, actually absolutely adored the Sherman). The Soviet production figures also very likely included rebuilads of damaged tanks, given the way they counted losses and production.
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And Tigers were what percentage of German tank force, 2% to 3.5%?
Why do you even bother arguing about them. At least bring in argument about Pz4.
And Tigers were what percentage of German tank force, 2%?
Why do you even bother arguning about them. At least bring in argument about Pz4.
Because while that 2% only represented around 20 Tiger battalions, each of them was eating the logistical tail of a Panzer Division.
If you had instead used those logistical assets to supply twenty actual Panzer Divisions (which would double the Panzer strength of the German Army in 1943) - that would translate to three additional Panzer Armees that would have had much larger effect on the war than a handful of battalions who by and large never performed the role they were meant for in the first place.
Again, the Tigers and Panthers were hugely expensive not only because of unit cost, but because of operating cost. You have to pay for the oil of the 130 trucks of a Tiger battalion every day the battalion is in the field whether it fights or not.
That sounds rather less significant then the German propogandists claiming IS2 kills 50 miles from the nearest IS2 tank or claiming 30 T34s killed in an area where 4 or 5 were present.
Not to mention the role that self aggrandizing memoirs of German generals played in WWII history in the english speaking world. Guess how they judged their own performance.
Really? Last time I checked, Panzer division had 2100-2915 trucks, which means 20 Tiger battalions eat up a logistical trail of 1 or 2 Panzer divisions.
Which doesn't matter as it is still hard to tell the difference between fact and utter fiction in the Soviet records. You act as if the only culprits in fabricating myths are the German's and the British, while the fact is that all have had their own fabrications, and thinking otherwise is naïve.
But it isn't. Sure, the German propogandists did claim a couple T-34's here, and a couple IS-2's there, but those numbers are insignificant compared to the fabrication a of rather important "facts" which are still cited to this day.
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That includes trucks for the motorization of the infantry and artillery, which by 1941 was actually 2/3rds of the Division. You're not counting apples to apples because 3,000 trucks is not the logistical tail of a Panzer Division - it's the entire truck complement.
Have you actually ever seen an actual Soviet record to begin with to make this bold claim that it's hard to tell fact from fiction? Have you for instance ever tried to cross-check a Soviet account and a German account?
Again, people who complain about "Soviet Propaganda" get automatically dismissed by real experts for a reason. It's mere posturing. It's you making your prejudices known and hoping that the public will laud you for being an anti-commie. It's not analysis.
Obviously, but did you count apples to apples here:
To get twenty additional panzer divisions, one also has to provide motorized infantry, as far as I`m concerned.
What alexy highlighted:
What's the actual important bit in what I said:
Really, it's pointless to argue if you're going to constantly try to misrepresent other people's position in such a blatant manner.
The problem again is you didn't actually realize that the 3,000 trucks of a Panzer Division includes transport, and is not the same as logistical tail. But then again you've been constantly confusing unit cost and operating cost to begin with.
Who are these "real experts"? You and Soviet
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