Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941-1942: Schwerpunkt

Preface

In February 1986, amidst white-out conditions and sub-zero temperatures near the town of Yangpyeong in South Korea, I opened a wooden box that I was only supposed to open in the event of an emergency. Since my tank was alone on an independent reconnaissance mission with no other vehicles to assist, that emergency seemed to be at hand. In order to reach our battalion’s assembly area at the railhead, we had to climb a mountain road with a 30° slope, but every attempt had failed because our tracks slid on the snow and ice. The box came from Germany and it contained snow cleats that could be attached to the tank’s tracks for added traction on snow and ice. They were built by Rheinmetall, the same company which had rushed tank cleats to the Russian Front during the winter of 1941–42.

Forty years later, the US Army bought a few sets for trials and I had been fortunate to receive one, but was instructed to use them only if absolutely necessary. My crew and I mounted the cleats on our tracks in less than an hour and started up the hill. The cleats dug into the snow and ice like teeth and we started to make progress up the slope. However, the temperature was around –23°C (–10°F) and the metal in the cleats grew increasingly fragile and started to shatter. Every 20–30 meters, another cleat would shatter, with pieces falling off the track. Eventually, our tank made it up the slope and back to the assembly area, but every tank cleat was broken by that point and the US Army decided not to purchase more sets of what appeared to be a one-time use item. Nevertheless, I was thankful that modern tankers could benefit from technology that had been developed as a result of the brutal experiences in armoured combat on the Eastern Front decades prior. Indeed, I came to appreciate that there are many lessons to be learned from the armoured operations of that conflict, which will be useful for some time to come.

This is not intended to be a day-by-day campaign narrative, although it may seem that way at times. Nor is it intended to be a ‘guts and glory’ compilation of tactical vignettes, although it will have some elements of that as well. Rather, this book will focus on the operational and tactical levels of combat in order to answer how and why the Red Army’s tank units managed to defeat the heretofore undefeated panzer armies of the Third Reich.

Issues that are tangential to armoured operations will only be addressed in passing or omitted altogether, but I do intend to touch upon many topics related to tank technology, production and maintenance that are usually left out of other histories. I also intend to tell this story, as much as the reference materials allow, from both sides’ points of view rather than just one, which has unfortunately been the case in so many previous Eastern Front histories.