Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941–1942 Quotes

“As a general rule of thumb, about 5 per cent of tanks in a given unit will break down for mechanical reasons after a 100km road march, although most can be repaired within a few hours. Just three years before Barbarossa, nearly 30 per cent of the 2.Panzer-Division’s tanks broke down on the unopposed 670km road march to Vienna, along good roads.3 If the panzer divisions suffered a similar scale of combat losses as in the 1940 Western Campaign, no more than 10–20 per cent of the original panzers would be likely to reach their objectives.”
― Robert Forczyk, Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941–1942: Schwerpunkt

“Hitler deployed four panzer groups with a total of seventeen panzer divisions and 3,106 tanks2 for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. In addition, two independent panzer battalions, Pz.Abt. 40 and Pz.Abt. 211, were deployed in Finland with 124 tanks (incl. twenty Pz.III). The 2 and 5.Panzer-Divisionen were refitting in Germany after the Greek Campaign in April 1941 and were in OKH reserve. Otherwise, the only other extant panzer units were the 15.Panzer-Division with Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel in Libya and two panzer brigades in France. No other panzer units were in the process of forming in Germany. Consequently, the OKH was committing virtually all of the available German panzer forces to Barbarossa, with negligible reserves and limited monthly production output to replace losses. In mid-1941, German industry was producing an average of 250 tanks per month, half of which were the Pz.III medium tank. Combat experience in France and Belgium in 1940 indicated that the Germans could expect to lose about one-third of their medium tanks even in a short six-week campaign, which Hitler regarded as acceptable losses. Furthermore, German industry had no tanks beyond the Pz.III or Pz.IV in advance development. The Heereswaffenamt (Army Weapons Office) only authorized Henschel and Porsche to begin working on prototypes for a new heavy tank four weeks before Operation Barbarossa began, and this program had no special priority until after the first encounters with the Soviet T-34 and KV-1 tanks in combat.”
― Robert Forczyk, Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941–1942: Schwerpunkt

“The Fascist philosophy of the Third Reich, replete with parades, medals, hero-worship and neo-Gothic heraldry, helped to create a generation of over-achievers who sought to gain recognition through dedicated service and self-sacrificing behavior.”
― Robert Forczyk, Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941–1942: Schwerpunkt

“German training also put great stress on individual initiative and problemsolving,”
― Robert Forczyk, Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941–1942: Schwerpunkt

“equipped with 60mm-thick armour and 76.2mm main armament that had been used against the Finns in December 1939; this was the SMK prototype, which the Germans erroneously labeled as the T-35C. Although Kinzel was clearly aware that the Soviets had fielded a prototype heavy tank eighteen months prior to Barbarossa, he assessed that existing German anti-tank weapons could defeat it.6”
― Robert Forczyk, Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941–1942: Schwerpunkt

“In early June 1941, Oberst Eberhard Kinzel, head of the OKH’s Fremde Heere Ost (Foreign Armies East), assessed that the Red Army would deploy forty-one mechanized brigades with about 9,500 tanks against the Wehrmacht.5 Kinzel’s shop produced a handbook on Soviet tanks for the panzer groups, which described the various models of the T-26, T-28, T-35 and BT-5/7 in detail. The handbook also included information about a new Soviet heavy tank”
― Robert Forczyk, Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941–1942: Schwerpunkt

“the only real advantage enjoyed by the T-34 and KV tanks at the outset of Barbarossa was the enormous effort required by the Germans to destroy them,”
― Robert Forczyk, Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941–1942: Schwerpunkt

“Another group from the 13th Tank Regiment, with two T-34s and one KV-1 tank, made it as far as Slonim on the road to Minsk; both T-34s were immobilized by German panzerjäger but the KV-1 nearly escaped, until it fell off a wooden bridge into the Shchara River.”
― Robert Forczyk, Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941–1942: Schwerpunkt