Showing results for "Tank" in Germany

By 1943, after the catastrophic German defeat at Stalingrad, the Wehmacht's panzer armies gradually lost the initiative on the Eastern Front. The tide of the war had turned. Their combined arms technique, which had swept Soviet forces before it during 1941 and 1942, had lost its edge. Thereafter the war on the Eastern Front was dominated by tank-led offensives and, as Robert Forczyk shows, the Red Army's mechanized forces gained the upper hand, delivering a sequence of powerful blows that shattered one German defensive line after another.

Robert Forczyk's incisive study offers fresh insight into how the two most powerful mechanized armies of WWII developed their tactics and weaponry during the early years of the Russo-German War. He uses German, Russian, and English sources to provide the first comprehensive overview and analysis of armored warfare from the German and Soviet perspectives.

Tank Rider is the riveting memoir of Evgeni Bessonov telling of his years of service at the vanguard of the Red Army and daily encounters with the German foe. He brings large-scale battles to life, recounts the sniping and skirmishing that tried and tested soldiers on both sides, and narrates the overwhelming tragedy and horror of apocalyptic warfare on the Eastern Front. So much of the Soviet experience of World War II remains untold, but this memoir provides an important glimpse into some of the most decisive moments of this overlooked history.

World War II was the culmination of a quarter century of tank development, and it would also be the first major test of tanks in mobile warfare. However, many of the tanks were constructed with the static warfare of the Western Front in mind and were thus slow and had short operational ranges. Others were too light to face opposing tanks or the new generation of anti-tank weapons that hadn’t existed in World War I. The unsuitability of these tank models for this new kind of warfare was quickly recognized, and the belligerent powers scrambled to create better designs.