- 7/6/2025
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00:00The Russian T-34 tank was probably the greatest tank of World War II.
00:26Produced in huge numbers in a remote site in Siberia known as Tankograd,
00:32the T-34 was reliable in all weathers,
00:35was the only tank that could stand up to the mighty German panzers,
00:40and fought in some of the greatest tank battles in history on the Eastern Front.
00:47The T-34 was very agile and it was very fast.
00:51And it was the T-34 that led the Red Army in its advance to Berlin,
00:56the capital of Hitler's Reich, and to final victory.
01:01Using authentic archive film and colour reconstructions,
01:05battle stations goes right inside the dangerous, frightening world
01:10of the T-34 tank and its crew.
01:16If I said I wasn't scared, it would be untrue.
01:19All of us were very scared.
01:22In the 1930s, the Soviet Union was a vast country of 180 million people,
01:38extending from the edge of Europe to farthest East Asia.
01:43Its land borders ran for more than 12,000 miles.
01:47But its defence was primitive.
01:53As the country tried to catch up,
01:55it industrialised as quickly as it could.
01:59To make up for its lack of resources,
02:01its armed forces simply copied military technology from the West.
02:08Because of the vast distances,
02:10tanks were a priority.
02:12And the Soviets soon became aware of maverick American tank designer,
02:17J. Walter Christie.
02:19J. Walter Christie was a genius of the First Order.
02:21The fastest tanks that had ever been made up to that date
02:25were Christie designs.
02:27One of the things that he does come up with is a system
02:31by which each one of the road wheels is independently sprung.
02:35And because of this, his tanks are extraordinarily fast for the period.
02:41The Russians acquired some of Christie's tank designs.
02:45The U.S. military, however, ultimately rejected Christie's work.
02:50Mr Christie's ideas were not adopted by the United States Army
02:52because of the not invented here syndrome.
02:55The army did not invent his ideas.
02:58The Soviets were quite eager to borrow any good idea that they could get.
03:03They have a vast country to defend.
03:06It didn't bother them if they didn't invent it there.
03:10But this was the era of Stalin's great purges.
03:14Two thirds of party leaders, scientists, doctors and peasants
03:18were denounced as enemies of the people and executed.
03:23Then the terror spread to the Soviet army.
03:26In June 1937, Stalin arrested eight of his army's most senior officers
03:34and accused them of treason.
03:37Eventually, about half the senior officers in the whole army were arrested.
03:43Some of them were simply shot.
03:45Others disappeared into labour camps in Siberia.
03:48It was a quite extraordinary episode.
03:51And it left the Red Army weakened and disorganised.
03:57One of the victims of Stalin's purges was Afanatsi Fiatsov,
04:01the head of the Tank Design Bureau,
04:03working on plans for a new Soviet tank.
04:07He was sent to a hard labour camp in Siberia, where he later died.
04:11My father used to say to me that they owed a lot to Fiatsov,
04:20because they were just young boys, fresh from university.
04:27Replacing Fiatsov, the brilliant young engineer,
04:30Mikhail Koshkin, took over the design of the new tank.
04:36Mikhail Koshkin, according to the memories of those who knew him
04:40well, was a very passionate man.
04:44He fell in love with the tank immediately.
04:47He fell in love with the idea.
04:50Koshkin incorporated the best of different elements
04:55of foreign tank design.
04:59In 1939, he took the plans for the new tank to Moscow.
05:05He took the blueprints, the drawings,
05:09and the models to Moscow,
05:12to the session of the Supreme Military Council.
05:16Stalin spoke and said,
05:18I would like to go back to the idea of the new tank.
05:21I think Koshkin and the designers should be given a chance.
05:25If they succeed, we will get a new, unique tank.
05:29If they fail, we shall punish them.
05:36In this climate of fear and secrecy,
05:40Koshkin and his team were allowed to carry on with their work.
05:43Koshkin concentrated on simplicity, guns, armour and mobility.
05:50In the spring of 1940, Hitler launched his blitzkrieg attack on France, Belgium and Holland.
06:02His lightning victory in the West proved to everyone the primacy of the tank in modern war,
06:09by leading a fast-moving attack and in destabilising the enemy.
06:12Although the Soviets were allies of the Germans at this time, they knew it was an uneasy alliance.
06:31Most Soviet armour was no match for the panzers that had so brilliantly led the invasion of France.
06:36Only the new tank, still under development in great secrecy,
06:43could hope to stand up to the German panzers.
06:46But Mikhail Koshkin never lived to see his tank fight in action.
06:51He caught pneumonia during trials and died in September 1940.
07:00But his tank, now officially numbered the T-34, was almost complete.
07:06By comparison to Western tanks, it was very basic.
07:10Russia was not a mechanised country,
07:13and the peasants and factory workers who crewed the T-34 did not expect luxuries.
07:25The interior of the tank was like a luxury hotel.
07:28It was a beautiful vehicle, a joy to look at.
07:40My first impression was excellent.
07:47The crew had to work together in close quarters.
07:49The tank commander and the gunner were both in a turret.
07:59The driver and I, the machine gunner, were sitting side by side in the front of the tank.
08:06The driver wrestled with the controls, which were physically very demanding.
08:11We had steering levers on the right and the left.
08:17If I needed to go right, I pulled the left lever.
08:20If I needed to go left, I pulled the right lever.
08:24There were pedals, an accelerator pedal like in a car, and a clutch pedal.
08:28The T-34 was heavy going, and there were no automatic controls in those days.
08:43But once you got to know it, you learned to change gears.
08:48You felt the engine working, and you got to change gears smoothly.
08:53Commanders often communicated with drivers by touch.
09:11Forward, to drive forward, the sign was to push him in the back.
09:17If you need to turn left or right, you nudged him with your leg.
09:23Even if you touched him very lightly, he knew exactly what to do.
09:33Stop, forwards, right, left.
09:44But the key to the T-34's success would prove to be its armour.
09:49Nearly two inches thick and sloping.
09:51And its main gun.
09:55The first models fired a powerful 76mm.
09:59Later tanks were equipped with an even more deadly 85mm weapon.
10:03The T-34 has some really good strong points, one of which is the gun.
10:14The armour was superb.
10:16The armour, this vehicle was the first vehicle to ever have sloped armour, which is miles ahead of flat-faced armour.
10:21The other thing about it was it had a diesel engine, which did not burn if the vehicle got hit, like a Sherman.
10:30A Sherman would burn.
10:32The T-34 did not burn as easily.
10:34It has wide track.
10:35It allowed the vehicle to have good mobility in ice, snow and mud.
10:42In the spring of 1941, Hitler began to amass his armies along the long 450 mile border with the Soviet Union.
10:49Stalin ignored all warnings, convinced that Hitler would not invade.
10:57But by mid-summer, Hitler had assembled the biggest invasion force in history.
11:02How could the Red Army, fatally weakened by Stalin's purges, resist such a force?
11:1422nd of June, 1941.
11:19Hitler unleashes Operation Barbarossa.
11:237,000 field guns.
11:263 million German troops supported by a million other Axis soldiers.
11:303,350 tanks launch a vast offensive against the Soviet Union.
11:41The Red Army stood no chance.
11:44Their most numerous tanks, the T-26 and T-28, were poorly armoured and undergunned,
11:52and proved no match for the battle-hardened panzers.
12:00The Russian losses were immense.
12:04Hundreds of square miles of territory were occupied.
12:08The Germans continued to drive towards the major Russian cities.
12:13600,000 Russians were taken prisoner.
12:17Nearly 6,000 tanks were destroyed or captured.
12:21Hitler spoke of his crusade against communism.
12:30He called the Soviet state a rotten structure that, when kicked in, would come crashing down.
12:36It looked as though he would be proved right.
12:38In August, the German army reached the giant, open prairie fields of the Ukraine.
12:49Now it seemed unstoppable.
12:51On the 21st of September, the Germans captured Kiev, along with two-thirds of a million Soviet prisoners.
13:06Hitler called it the greatest battle in world history.
13:09But with massively extended supply lines, even the German army could not keep up this momentum.
13:20And then, as before in history, the Russian winter came to the aid of the defenders.
13:28The first snow fell in early September, and although it soon melted, it turned roads into rivers of mud.
13:34Hitler's advanced troops were only a few miles from Moscow, when the freezing winter blizzards set in.
13:56No one lost faith. No one thought the Germans would win.
13:59The talk was that in Napoleon's time, the French reached Moscow, but then froze to death.
14:14I certainly never imagined that we would lose the war.
14:17It never crossed my mind.
14:21I never heard my comrades say anything of the kind.
14:29Despite the bitter cold, the Germans were certain that the Red Army was on the brink of total collapse.
14:36Then, came a complete surprise.
14:48On the 5th of December, Stalin launched a powerful counter-attack.
14:52Fresh troops from Asia, well-equipped for winter fighting, threw the Germans into retreat.
14:57Moscow was saved, as was Stalin's Russia.
15:08There's little doubt that the Germans were tantalizingly close to victory in 1941.
15:15In early December, some of them were just 17 miles from Moscow's Kremlin.
15:22But the Germans had underestimated the corrosive effects of distance and of the dreadful Russian winter.
15:29In the end, they just ran out of men.
15:34Within the first chaotic weeks of the German invasion, the Soviets had sprung one surprise on the Germans.
15:39In July, the first T-34s were ordered into action.
15:44Developed amidst great secrecy, no Westerner had set eyes on the tank before.
15:50The German soldiers watched in astonishment as their shells bounced off the front armour of the Soviet tank.
16:06Wherever a T-34 appeared, it succeeded in holding up the advance.
16:13When the Germans first see these vehicles, they're shocked.
16:20Uh, they can't believe that these subhumans, the Undermenschen, can have such a vehicle.
16:33It was actually superior to anything they had at that time.
16:37Now, with their industrial base devastated, the Soviets attempted what to many seemed impossible.
16:52Entire factories were packed up and transported by train, east behind the Ural Mountains.
16:57A new tank factory was built near the town of Nizhny Tagil in Siberia.
17:08Here, in appalling conditions, Soviet engineers and workers restarted production on a massive scale.
17:15Several tank men were drafted in to work temporarily in the factory.
17:28It was a huge plant, a huge place with many workshops, with its own steel-making and steel-working plant.
17:37People working there were tired, exhausted.
17:41There were a lot of women workers there, because most of the men have been conscripted, and they did a lot of their heavy work.
18:07They worked day and night, 12-hour shifts.
18:17Nizhny Tagil produced, before I arrived, 40 tanks a day.
18:21And by the end, when we received our tanks, it was producing 60 tanks a day.
18:26Despite winter temperatures that reached minus 30 degrees, and a thick snow blanket for five months of the year, this town would eventually become the center of a huge complex of tank production, known outside Russia simply as Tankograd.
18:46But could enough tanks be produced in time to prevent the Nazis from finishing off what they had nearly completed by the winter of 1941?
18:58The war on the Eastern Front was a tank war.
19:08Huge numbers of infantry were deployed, but both sides relied on armoured units to lead them across the vast distances.
19:16Tanks operate well in open terrain.
19:28And, of course, Russia is a wide open expanse, and it is great tank country.
19:35Tank crews would work together and live together for weeks at a time.
19:45Sometimes political slogans would be daubed on the side of a tank, like, forwards to victory, or together we defeat fascism.
19:56For the motherland, this was the slogan on my tank, painted in white.
20:07Getting enough to eat was always a challenge.
20:15The field kitchens cooked different soups, cabbage soup, beetroot soup, made out of whatever ingredients the cook could find.
20:26We had canned meat. American canned meat was a particular favourite.
20:36We had enough bread. Well, what else did we need?
20:43And, of course, we could always replenish our supplies with booty.
20:49And to supplement the rations, every Russian soldier was given an allowance of vodka.
20:56We drank vodka from the same flask.
21:02The commander had the first go, and then passed it around the whole crew.
21:09Vodka was issued once a day, usually in the evening.
21:14We were issued with 100 millilitres each.
21:17We were closer than brothers to each other, like one big family.
21:32There was real warmth and closeness.
21:36We worried about each other, as we did for ourselves.
21:39In 1942, as the spring thaw arrived, fierce fighting started up once again.
21:55And in late summer, forward German troops advanced right to the banks of the Volga River and reached the city of Stalingrad.
22:18Here, one of the great battles of history unfolded.
22:25After months of intense fighting, the Red Army succeeded in cutting off the entire German 6th Army.
22:44Surrounded, with petrol and ammunition running out, the Germans were squeezed to breaking port.
22:54On the 31st of January 1943, what was left of the 6th Army surrendered.
23:0391,000 men, including 22 German generals and their commander, Field Marshal von Paulus, went into captivity.
23:19I think that Stalingrad really was one of history's decisive battles.
23:23Although the Germans remained formidable, the battle's impact was terrific.
23:27A whole army had disappeared from the German order of battle.
23:30Her allies were dispirited and her opponents encouraged.
23:37Stalingrad ended the myth of German invincibility.
23:44In 1943, the huge numbers of T-34s coming into service would begin to have a major impact on the course of the war.
23:51In July, the Battle of Kursk turned into the biggest tank battle of the war.
24:04Three German armies prepared to assault a Russian line some 100 miles wide.
24:10During the Battle of Kursk, the Russians know that the Germans are going to attack them.
24:14And because they know they're going to be attacked, they adopt an offensive posture.
24:20And they, in fact, lure the Germans into fire cauldrons, where they actually decimate the Germans in these ambushes, large ambushes.
24:35The German Panzer crews fought bravely, but were overwhelmed by Soviet firepower.
24:40And then, once they do that, then they can go back over and use the tank,
24:51and what it's actually best used for in the attack.
25:00The Soviets had six tank brigades in reserve, which were now hurled into the battle.
25:05From now on, the momentum on the Eastern Front would remain with the Red Army.
25:12As the Germans withdrew along the Eastern Front, they left a trail of devastation behind them,
25:18destroying everything in a vicious policy of scorched earth.
25:23When the Germans were retreating, they destroyed a lot.
25:26When the Germans were retreating, they destroyed a lot.
25:29They usually blew up railways.
25:43They destroyed the factories and plants that produced for war.
26:01They destroyed the war.
26:08June, 1944.
26:11A thousand miles to the west, the Allies landed in France to open the Second Front.
26:16As the Allies fought their way out of the Normandy beachheads,
26:34Soviet army group Center launched another huge offensive on the Eastern Front.
26:39Outnumbering the Germans by three to one, the Red Army advance picked up speed.
27:01Across the Eastern Front, Russian tank crews faced dangers almost daily.
27:06T-34 machine gunner Zufar Zaradinov's tank was ordered to clear a village in the Ukraine.
27:13We were told that the Germans had no tanks, but only light artillery.
27:22But the information turned out to be wrong, and we were ambushed.
27:35And there were Tiger tanks.
27:41The commander of my tank shouted,
27:44Ambush! Turn left!
27:47I continued firing my machine gun, because ahead of me were German infantry.
27:56And all of a sudden, I could hear a terrible noise, and something heavy fell on me.
28:02It turned out that we'd been ambushed by a Tiger tank, and their shell hit us head on, and came in, and ricocheted around the turret.
28:19When I came to, it was hard to see much inside the tank, because it was filled with smoke.
28:31But then, all of a sudden, within seconds, the air cleared.
28:35I lifted my head, and I could see that the turret was full of light.
28:42And I looked down, and I saw the commander and the gunner lying on the floor.
28:46The commander groaned, my arms, my arms, and then I saw that both his arms were injured.
29:05I asked the driver, Nikolai, what happened, but he didn't answer.
29:09I shook him by his shoulders, and saw that he was unconscious.
29:16So I tried to start the tank, the engine.
29:19I pressed the ignition switch.
29:24And it started working.
29:28That cheered me up a lot.
29:30Then I pushed the levers into the first gear, and felt that the tracks were intact.
29:46I went into first, second, and I tried to go a bit faster, and got into third gear.
30:02This is how I escaped.
30:07The gunner died.
30:08The commander and the driver recovered in hospital, and eventually returned to the front.
30:15Zufar Zadodinov was decorated for his heroism.
30:23By 1944, the workers in Tankograd were now producing some 2,000 tank chassis each month,
30:29far in excess of German tank production.
30:36With the Russian steamroller sweeping west, Soviet soldiers at last began to liberate Russian towns and villages.
30:43It was such a joy to meet the people who had been under occupation.
30:52It really gave us such a boost.
30:55They threw themselves at us, kissing us and crying.
31:00And, of course, anyone's heart would have melted.
31:02In the summer of 1944, the Red Army advance reached Eastern Europe.
31:16And in September, the 6th Tank Army, led by T-34s, captured the Romanian capital, Bucharest.
31:24Here, the Russians were welcomed as heroes.
31:26And in Romania, some were throwing flowers at us.
31:37Some were offering wine.
31:39They were all smiling, cheerful and friendly.
31:47There was a feeling of pride.
31:49Every one of us felt very proud.
31:51This is such a joy for every person.
32:05January 1945.
32:07The next Soviet offensive.
32:09This time across Poland.
32:10Again, the T-34s spearhead the Red Army's progress, which reached 50 miles a day.
32:24After six weeks, the Red Army arrived at the border with Germany.
32:42And waited.
32:47In the early spring of 1945, the Red Army prepared for its final assault.
32:52On Hitler's capital, Berlin.
32:59Two complete Soviet army groups assembled in readiness along a 100-mile front.
33:05Led by Marshal Zhukov and Marshal Konev.
33:08Competing to win the glory of capturing Berlin.
33:14Meanwhile, General Eisenhower, whose Allied armies had now crossed the Rhine
33:19and were advancing eastwards across Germany, decided to leave Berlin to the Russians.
33:25Eisenhower had good reason to leave Berlin to the Russians.
33:30Firstly, in February 1945, the Allies had met at Yalta and agreed on the post-war division of Germany.
33:37The eastern part, with Berlin in it, was going to be occupied by the Russians.
33:44So it made no sense to waste British and American lives to capture something which would have to be given up after the war.
33:52Secondly, whatever the politics, Eisenhower knew very well that Berlin would be a tough nut to crack.
33:58Monday, 16th April 1945, the Red Army finally launches its assault on Berlin with a mighty barrage.
34:13Storming a high ridge known as the Selov Heights on the far bank of the river Oda was the first objective.
34:30We heard the heavy shells begin to explode.
34:36non-stop firing.
34:40Everything was roaring.
34:43And we waited for the order to advance.
34:47It was very frightening.
34:55This difficult military operation held up Zhukov's army group for three days.
35:00During the delay, Marshal Konev's army group advanced from the south into the suburbs of Berlin.
35:23Fearful of the revenge the Soviets would unleash on Germany for the atrocities they had committed in Russia,
35:29the Germans fought with fanatical determination.
35:37To the very last moment, they were fighting bitterly.
35:47On every corner, from every roof, from every window, they were shooting and firing at us.
35:54It was horrific, horrific.
35:56The Nazis had organized the old men and young boys into a people's militia, the Volkssturm.
36:05They were armed with two powerful anti-tank weapons, the handheld Panzerfaust and the Panzerschreck.
36:11Once you get a tank inside a city, it suddenly loses all the advantages it has on open terrain.
36:25It's channeled down very narrow avenues of approach.
36:29And because the enemy knows where these tanks are going to come from, they can ambush them very easily using, in the Germans' case, the Panzer Schreck or the Panzer Faust, and knock them out very easily.
36:46Armed with these anti-tank weapons, what was left of the German fighting machine took on the Russian tanks.
36:52There were a lot of Panzerfausts in Berlin.
37:06They were lying in every basement.
37:09Mostly the operators were old men or boys.
37:11Russian tank losses were severe.
37:18Overall, the Russians lost 400,000 men in the battle for Berlin.
37:35The soldiers of Marshal Zhukov and Marshal Korniev had to fight for each suburb.
37:54Then, for each street.
37:59Finally, for each house.
38:02Parts of the city were reduced to rubble.
38:10I had seen our Russian cities destroyed, razed to the ground.
38:18So, I was not wide-eyed.
38:22Naturally, we had to destroy in our turn.
38:32With the Germans still fighting fiercely, it was Marshal Zhukov's men who finally reached the heart of Berlin,
38:39only a few hundred yards from Hitler's underground headquarters.
38:45Knowing at last that the war was lost, Hitler committed suicide on the afternoon of Monday the 30th of April.
38:53His SS guards dragged his body out of the bunker and set fire to it.
38:57A few days later, the Germans laid down their weapons and surrendered.
39:14Most Germans wanted to surrender to the Americans or British, fearful of reprisals from the Russians.
39:20The Russians were keen to leave their mark on Hitler's capital.
39:29But it was soon difficult to find a space on the walls of the Reichstag to carve a message.
39:34We took turns to go to the Reichstag, and then we had to climb on each other's shoulders to be able to leave our message.
39:45I wrote, a boy from far away Siberia has reached the Reichstag, Berlin.
40:00I wrote just my name, Sergeyev.
40:19The war on the Eastern Front had been fought on a monumental scale.
40:25Millions of men had fought on both sides.
40:28The price of victory was immense.
40:35Tens of thousands of farms.
40:38Thousands of factories.
40:41Hundreds of towns.
40:43And dozens of cities had been destroyed.
40:46Latest estimates suggest that as many as 27 million Russians had been killed.
40:52The Soviet state had nearly caved in under the onslaught, as Hitler predicted.
41:07But the line held.
41:09Just.
41:10Just.
41:16And in the vanguard of the Russian advance, 1500 miles from Stalingrad to Berlin, went the T-34 tank, produced in huge numbers in Siberia.
41:27The production of the T-34 tank is an extraordinary achievement for a country that is basically just industrializing.
41:39And not only is it an extraordinary achievement of just being able to do it technologically, which it's a technological marvel in and of itself, but they made in excess of 50,000 of these vehicles.
41:51Lenin once said that quantity has a quality all its own.
41:56So, the Germans got outproduced in addition to being outfought.
42:01The T-34 played a crucial role in the offensive.
42:11Without it, I doubt we would have won the war.
42:17This was the tank whose first designer was sent by Stalin to rot in a labor camp.
42:31At last, the war in Europe was over.
42:36Now the Russian soldiers could celebrate.
42:47Victory.
42:49Victory.
42:50I can't describe the feelings I felt at that time.
42:56We were the victors then.
43:00It was the joy of victory, firstly.
43:01And secondly, I was glad to be alive and in good health, with my limbs intact.
43:19I was very happy to have survived.
43:21And I was A Donc psy…
43:23And I was glad I didn't live.
43:24And I did that same thing.
43:30And what did I believe was near?
43:34It don't look like I was stupid for my brand and I was ready to buy.
43:39So it was the discomfort for that time.
43:41It went through.
44:12The T-34 is a basic, simple vehicle.
44:31Everything about it is as simple as can be.
44:35It was made that way because you're dealing with a bunch of folks that are not mechanically
44:41adept.
44:42They may not have even driven a tractor on the collective back home.
44:46So this vehicle is designed to be maintained by folks that are not mechanically adept.
44:55The Soviets were quite eager to borrow any good idea that they could get.
45:01They have a vast country to defend.
45:04Anything that they can use that was foreign didn't bother them if they didn't invent it
45:10there.
45:12The Soviets actually see the tests that Mr. Christie does in the United States with his vehicles.
45:18There was nothing secret about these things.
45:19They appeared in the press.
45:21So either through espionage or through the Soviet military attache actually going to Mr. Christie
45:28and buying this stuff, they got it.
45:33The main strengths of the T-34 are its armor.
45:35It had very good armor for its time.
45:38The armor was sloped, and because it was sloped, it increased the depth of the armor without
45:46increasing its weight.
45:47If you draw two lines on a piece of paper that are parallel and then slope them 60 degrees,
45:52you lengthen the armor.
45:55You double it with no increase of weight, and you get a grazing effect.
45:59This was the first vehicle to have sloped armor, a very, very innovative thing of the period.
46:07The gun was good.
46:08The Soviets realized that the 76-millimeter gun that appeared on the first vehicle was
46:13going to become obsolete.
46:15So what they did was when they designed the T-34-76, they made the turret ring big enough
46:21to take an 85-millimeter turret.
46:23So all they had to do was take off the 76-millimeter turret, they put on the 85-millimeter turret,
46:28and away they went.
46:30Really thinking ahead.
46:31That was a very good point.
46:33The other thing, it had very wide tracks.
46:36This allowed the vehicle to move through ice and snow and mud very well.
46:44The other thing was, of course, it had the Christie suspension system, which is a very simple
46:48sort of system.
46:50And it's almost, not quite, but almost maintenance-free.
46:57Whereas the German system, with the overlapping track on the Panther, was notorious for getting
47:03bogged down in mud and that sort of thing, and it would freeze.
47:08So the Soviets were way ahead of them in that regard.
47:13The other thing was, it had a great engine.
47:15The engine was a diesel-powered engine.
47:18And, of course, diesel does not burn as well as gasoline.
47:22So if the tank took a hit, the vehicle did not burn as easily as, say, a Sherman would.
47:30The really bad thing about the T-34, however, is the transmission.
47:35It has absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the worst transmission known to mankind.
47:40But the Russians knew that.
47:43So they hinged the back of the vehicle so that they could very easily change the transmission.
47:52In the T-34-76, one of the things about the turret, it does not have a cage on the inside.
47:59So when the turret turns, the crew actually has to walk around inside the vehicle.
48:04It's very hard because you have shell casings in the bottom of the vehicle, you have ammunition
48:09cans in the bottom of the vehicle.
48:11Just the smoke and confusion of battle makes this very difficult to do.
48:16The other thing is, when the gun fires, there are gases that are held within the gun tube.
48:23And the pressure on the outside of the vehicle is greater than the pressure on the inside
48:28of the vehicle.
48:29So when you open the breach, that pressure is going to cause the gases to be expelled into
48:34the turret of the vehicle.
48:36And after a while, you're going to asphyxiate the crew.
48:38So you're going to have to open up the hatches to vent the vehicle from the inside.
48:43A major step forward in the design of the T-34 was the jump between the 76mm gun version
48:51and the 85mm gun version.
48:53The 76mm gun, in and of itself, was a pretty good gun.
48:57But the 85mm gun is the rough equivalent of the German 75mm gun you find in, say, the
49:04Panther tank.
49:06So this gun is roughly equivalent.
49:11And with that gun, you can take on, at battle ranges, the Germans with a very good success
49:19rate.
49:20Unlike the American Sherman, where you had to have at least five Shermans to take on one
49:24Panther, with the T-34, you'd go one-on-one with the Panther and have a very good chance
49:30of winning the fight.
49:32The production of the T-34 tank is an extraordinary achievement for a country that is basically
49:40just industrializing.
49:42The five-year plans that Stalin had during the 30s industrialized to a good deal.
49:50The Soviet economy went from basically a peasant economy to an industrial economy almost overnight.
49:58So the production of this vehicle is an extraordinary achievement.
50:02And not only is it an extraordinary achievement of just being able to do it technologically,
50:07which it's a technological marvel in and of itself, but they made in excess of 50,000 of
50:12these vehicles.
50:14Lenin once said that quantity has a quality all its own.
50:17So, the Germans turn out 5,000 Panthers.
50:23The Russians turn out in excess of 50,000 T-34s.
50:27The United States turns out 55,000 Germans.
50:31The Germans got outproduced in addition to being outfought on the Western Front and Eastern
50:36Front.
50:37During the Battle of Kursk, the Russians know that the Germans are going to attack them.
50:44And because they know they're going to be attacked, they adopt an offensive posture.
50:49And they, in fact, lure the Germans into fire cauldrons, where they actually decimate the
50:57Germans in these ambushes, large ambushes.
51:02And then, once they do that, then they can go back over and use the tank in what it's actually
51:09best used for in the attack.
51:11So they allow the Germans to attack, and then they counterattack using the technical innovations
51:19of the T-34 to its best.
51:22When the Germans first see these vehicles, they're shocked.
51:28They can't believe that these subhumans, the Undermenschen, can have such a vehicle.
51:36It was actually superior to anything they had at that time.
51:41And to a large extent, the development of the Panther was accelerated, and they used a
51:48lot of ideas that were in the T-34.
51:51For instance, the idea of the sloped armor, that's a direct copy of the T-34 tank.
51:58So the Germans were absolutely amazed at the technical innovations that are on this vehicle.
52:05During World War II, tanks operate well in open terrain.
52:13That is to say, if you don't have a lot of trees, you don't have a lot of villages.
52:18And of course, Russia and the Russian front is a wide open expanse, and it is great tank
52:25country.
52:26It's like operating sort of in the desert.
52:29Operating in the desert is a great tank country.
52:31You can maneuver well.
52:33You can use the shock of the tank, the mobility of the tank to good effect.
52:40Once you get in closed terrain, you lose that with a tank.
52:44Closed terrain meaning things like a forest or a city.
52:47During the Battle of Berlin, when the Red Army gets in there, you're going to find that
52:53a lot of the fighting is going to be done by mainly three groups of folks, Hitler Youth
53:01and the SS, which were fanatical.
53:05And those guys were just not going to give up because they knew what was going to happen
53:09to them.
53:10I mean, they had done the same thing to the Russians going the other way.
53:15So the fighting is extraordinarily vicious at close ranges.
53:21And in any city fight, it's just terrible.
53:24The other group of Germans, of course, the old guys who either regular soldiers or the
53:32Sturm, who veterans that say the First World War, they know what a fight's like.
53:37And the veterans of the Eastern Front, they know they're a losing cause.
53:43So they were more likely to give up.
53:46But the Hitler Youth, mainly through inexperience because they just don't know.
53:50And the SS, because they're the true believers, they're not going to give up and the Russians
53:55have to go in there and clean them out.
54:00One of the vulnerabilities of the T-34 is in a town or close terrain, any kind of close
54:06terrain like a forest.
54:08And what happens is these vehicles get channelized down avenues of approach.
54:13And because it's not armored all the same, all the way around, it's vulnerable from the
54:18sides and the rear and the top.
54:20So one of the things the Germans would do would be to wait for the vehicle to go by and shoot
54:25it in the back with the Panzerschreck or Panzerfaust because the armor is thinner in the rear and
54:30on the sides.
54:32So tanks are extraordinarily vulnerable in towns without infantry support.
54:38From say the Battle of Kursk on, it would be fair to say that the Soviets have equivalent
54:46armor to the Germans.
54:50The T-34 is every bit as good as the Panther.
54:55And in a lot of respects, it's superior.
54:58For instance, the gasoline engine in the Panther is subject to fire.
55:02It was a mechanical nightmare to work on the Panther tank.
55:06This is a very simple vehicle.
55:08The guns are roughly equivalent.
55:13So if someone held a gun to my head and forced me to get into a tank in World War II, I'd want
55:18to be in the T-34 and not the Panther.
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