Agreed, but at least the German commanders could see the signal flags out of their cupolas.
Which is great and all, with your 20mm armed Panzer II up against a Hotchkiss 39 that was entirely immune to your weaponry, including the 37mm door knockers your infantry is toting around, along with their Panzerbu ATRs. Meanwhile the Boyes with the French could kill Pz1s and 2s frontally, and IIIs from the side. If it wasnt for air power, and Germany simply moving around and past French divisions they couldnt beat, the advance would have come to a halt.
The German's advantage was their doctrine, their infantry armament and coordination, namely the MG34, and their ability to split into fireteams, along with airpower, and a chain of command that was given the authority to make changes without running them up the chain of command.
Whereas the French were unable to alter course once a battle started, because they had to ask up the chain to make those changes and by the time the orders were sent back that it was ok to change course, the battle was usually already lost. German NCOs could attack, hold, retreat, on their own, without permission, French NCOs couldnt do that.
Add to that EXCELLENT recon with the Storch, and Britain refusing to put Spitfires in France and you have a recipe for disaster of the Allies own making. Not the Germans. The Germans got very lucky.
Slow turret: not a problem if the tank is used in the correct role. WWII wasn't anything like World of Tanks.
Yes, the Tiger was a great pillbox.
Horrible breakdowns: so did the S35 you're lauding, worse in certain areas as tracks were at times impossible to replace. Every tank had horrible breakdowns at first unless it went through significant testing before deployment. The T-34, the Panther, the IS-2, all had tons of breakdowns at first. I'll agree it's overengineered but it was still no worse as a design than many other tanks initially.
Very hard to move: Like any other heavy tank. Again, you're acting like it's supposed to be a medium tank here. Roles are important.
Guzzled fuel: True, but only a real issue in offensive maneuvers.
Remember we're talking about the Tiger, not the Tiger II. The Tiger was absolute garbage. The Tiger II was better, but still not fantastic. Then you get into outside factors like cost, resources, labor, and it was a totally wasted endeavor. Theres nothing a Tiger did well that a Stug couldnt do. Or a Hetzer. For considerably less cost.
The Tiger was (ironically) supremely suited to a defensive role, as it was used in France. Its range, accuracy, penetration, and armor meant it could catch hostile formations out of position and pick them apart, form the cornerstone of a rugged defense, or hunt enemy AFVs with ease. More often than not it could withstand the reprisals as the enemy couldn't get close enough either because they got ambushed and were panicking, or it was accompanied by other AFVs and infantry (there was that one scene in Band of Brothers that illustrates this well, where a Tiger and Jagdpanther take out a column of Sherman Fireflies). Used in this role it would be at maximum fuel efficiency, its lack of mobility would be less of an issue, its turret traverse speed would also be less of an issue (it wouldn't need to take urgent snap shots), etc. That's not to say it had no weaknesses or even few weaknesses, but roles are important.
Its not ironic, its tragic. They built them to be offensive wundertanks, and them being good at best on defense, is not a strength, its a role they were forced to fit into because they were bad at everything else. Rarely is there range in real life to take advantage of the 88s range, and its armor was fine against some weaponry, but the Firefly had no problem punching it frontally. 501 and 102 companies lost their Tigers in three weeks time in France. Airpower, doctrine and command authority by allied forces, rendered any advancements the Tiger had moot, just like the Germans rendered superior tanks moot in the Battle of France with the same advantages.
"Objective inquiry" and "Soviet Union" (substituted for "power") shouldn't be in the same sentence. Everything was political to them, from music to architecture to warfare. The information may be useful but acting as if it's this be-all end-all objective source of empirical authority is laughable. It may be a better source than demonstrably biased German sources, but you need to show why or how those sources are biased as well as why or how the Soviets aren't (or in this case whether or not they selectively preserved/released documents). There was a concerted effort during the Cold War by the Soviets to minimize the contributions of the Western Allies (just as the West tried to minimize the contributions of the Soviets), and thus I find it probable that the Soviets would seek to portray the strategic bombing campaign as ineffective in order to increase the perception of their own contributions, and decrease that of the West's contributions.
I know it sounds odd, but the Soviets only lied about the Soviet government, and they documented their lies very well. When it comes to military operations, there was a dual system in place, even after Stalin imposed Stavka over the Dual Command system. There was Stalin's history, and the ACTUAL history. We're talking about people who invented the ICBM, put Sputnik in space, did the first heart transplant, etc. When it came to science and math, these guys were on point, even if they had to hide results from Stalin. Once Stalin was dead, that stuff stopped mostly.
Military matters however were very accurate because they NEEDED to be accurate. The creation of Deep Battle, Reflexive Control, Wide Doctrine and Strategic Nuclear strategies, were all stepped in myth and clouded behind the iron curtain, but behind the curtain, these people did diligent and honest work to discover things that worked and were correct.
While what was reported during the Soviet's reign was usually political mumbo jumbo, behind the scenes people were doing real research and study. They had to. You dont build the T72 with "fake news". You dont built 30,000 Nuclear warheads with "fake news".
So while during their height you had the massive Soviet propaganda machine going, within the Kremlin, the truth was paramount. The Russians knew the entire time about the "Lost Battles" because they were the ones who covered them up to make sure the allies didnt know that the Soviet army was horrible during the war. Then perpetuated that they were bad as a part of their operation of "Reflexive Control" to the west, while at the same time, telling their own people that the Allies were terrible.
What we found when the archives were released was that there was this dual "truth" in the Soviet Union. There was the propaganda, but there was the real studies as well.
Also when it comes to captured paperwork, it wasnt Russian, it was German. So when that was released from the archives theres very little bias there. Whereas Halder was mostly going from "memory" and in large part was appeasing his new "captors" to avoid a bad fate at Spandau.
So with regards to the Soviet's assessment of the 8th Airforces campaign we dont just have Soviet analysis, we have GERMAN analysis that was in Soviet hands for 60 years.
The German analysis is METICULOUS. ~80% of allied raid documents were captured by the Soviets.
Theres some great documentaries and books about the last days of Berlin. Because of Hitler, no one destroyed anything until the Soviets were literally inside the suburbs. It only took hours to captured the Reichstag, and most of the German archives. While alot was destroyed, reports call Berlin in its final hours one big trash can fire of floating papers and ash, the Soviets captured a plethora of German archives.
