Great Patriotic War (USSR in World War II)

flamming_python wrote:

kvs wrote:

The video has a recording of Hitler talking about Soviet tanks.   This is a clear instance proving that he was drinking the
Reich propaganda koolaid like all western leaders always do.  

1) He claims that 34,000 out of an initial 35,000 Soviet tanks were destroyed on the eastern front.

2) He assumes that 35,000 tanks were there from the beginning.

On both counts he is full of shit.   The USSR was producing T-34s and other tanks from 1941 to 1945.   It did not
have some huge pool of tanks that it depleted.   Here he is dismissing Soviet industrial capacity since he believes
Russians and other peoples of the USSR were mud hut dwellers.    In this line of BS-think he is surprised that
the USSR had so many.

Then we have the claim that the Reich was taking out basically 100% of the Soviet tanks.  This is utter rubbish.
In no major eastern front battle after 1941 did the Reich completely destroy every Soviet tank.   And there is
no way they encountered 35,000 tanks in 1941 and 1942.   There were 35,119 T-34 units produced from 1941 to 1945.
There were 29,430 T-34-85 tanks produced after 1943.   The other models had much smaller numbers.

It certainly did.

The numbers are off, but not that far off. From memory the USSR had 20000-22000 tanks when the war started. And about 2000 left by the end of 1941.

Yes they were mostly BT-5s, BT-7s, T-26s, T-28s, T-38s, various tankettes and training tanks pressed into battle, and so on.
From memory the T-34 only accounted for 4% of the Soviet tank force at the outbreak of war, and a lot of those were located in the Far East. The KV series accounted for even less; just over 2%.

By the winter of 1941 their armour reserves were incredibly depleted and Soviet industries had not yet kicked up to enough tank production to begin compensating; although lend-lease did help to supply some Allied tanks. Remaining tanks were stretched out so much that entire tank divisions had only about a batallion's or several companies worth of tanks.

GarryB wrote:Honestly the T-26s should have been converted into troop transport and artillery towing vehicle, and all focus put on T-34s and KV-1s... and to be honest they should have put 57mm high velocity guns in the KV-1s with a massive turret with a gunner, a loader and a commander.

The T-34 was fast and useful against most things while the KV-1 could have been the tank killer with a big comfortable turret with better views for the commander and more powerful better quality optics for the gunner... the 85mm AA gun should have been prepared for use in the KV-1 as soon as possible and of course when the Tiger and Panther were revealed they could transfer the 85mm turret to the T-34 and put something bigger on the KV/JS heavy.

Instead they ended up with a medium and a heavy tank with the same gun... they led the way with a multi purpose main gun instead of separate HE and high velocity guns as used on previous vehicles.

Tsavo Lion wrote:Was the Soviet fleet useless in World War II
https://vz.ru/society/2020/5/17/1039405.print.html

GarryB wrote:Even in western comedy shows like Allo Allo, and Hogans Heroes they mention the Eastern front is where all the hard core Nazi soldiers went.