Steve Stone: Tiger Heat: German Panzers on the Eastern Front

Within Normandy, the Tigers had great success with a very high kill ratio. On July 11, 1944, thirteen British Sherman tanks were lost out of twenty with two more captured with no Tiger losses. The Tigers did well enough to survive the onslaught at the Falaise Gap and in August, just two Tigers held up the advance of the 53rd British Infantry division.

The Tiger II followed the Tiger I that the Germans called the King Tiger. The King Tiger first saw action on the Western Front on August 1944. The Tiger II was a formidable weapon. It also used a vast amount of fuel, which the Germans were finding very difficult to produce due to Allied bombing of fuel plants. The Allies also bombed the factories that made the Tigers. This meant that only one hundred Tigers were available for the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes during the winter of 1944-45. Many of those ended up being abandoned as they ran out of fuel.

December 1942

The small column of Tiger’s continued their journey from the bridge down a rough track before moving onto the frozen Tundra, a mixture of ice and frost that looked like a shiny white carpet. As they headed towards a village, where there was a small number of Panzers and light infantry, currently holding the village. Max hoped to get fuel and ammunition there and a place to rest up for a short while. All around them there was evidence of past battles, burnt out vehicles, arms and legs protruding out of the snow. As they passed a German half-track, a Sonderkraftfahrzeug 251 produced by Hanomag and nicknamed Hanomag. These were the most widely produced half-tracks with 15,532 being built between 1939-1945. They proved extremely versatile from being a personnel carrier, medical carrier, flack gun or even a cannon mounted on them. This Hanomag had four of its seven rear wheels blown off and the track was broken in three places. The side of the Hanomag was peppered with holes some small and some the size of a fist. The front of the Hanomag had been partially blown away with the engine missing and the driver of the vehicle half hanging out. His bright green head made for a very strange sight as his body was already starting to decompose and had been there for at least a few days.

Further along an Ilusyian lay half buried in the ground at a 45-degree angle, its propeller had snapped off and was lying some forty feet away. The headless pilot, was still in the cockpit of his aircraft. The pilot had either dived into the ground or tried to perform a crash landing. The smell of death hung heavy in the air and even though it was also bitterly cold, the whole area sent a shiver down the spines of the crew. A feeling that something had happened here. From the carnage that surrounded them it must have been a fierce firefight. Two T-34 tanks were almost huddled together. One was on its side and the other upright but the turret had been blown clean off and the remains of the crew were still sitting inside. There had been an intense fire that had engulfed both tanks. Any crew left inside would not have had chance of survival. German infantry had a saying “ The T-34 doffs his hat when he meets the Tiger. ” This was due to the T-34s turret having a tendency to come away from the main hull if the tank was penetrated by 88mm armour-piercing ammunition.

A lone Panzer IV was not too far away from the T-34s. The rear end of the Panzer IV had been blown apart from what could only be bomb damage, possibly dropped from attacking Ilyushin.

For a short while, any evidence that a fierce war was ranging disappeared. The fog completely lifted and slim rays of sunshine burst through the small gaps in the clouds. For a few seconds, everything seemed peaceful and almost normal. Max drifted back to his childhood in. Max was 13 when he was just one of six children out of the 70 children at his school to be selected to attend a Nazi development camp for the Future Little Elite. It was a great opportunity and very much moulded Max into the person he was now. Max never agreed fully with Nazi policies, but her knew that they had helped Germany become strong once more. Max was proud to be German and fight for his country. He had seen the brutal acts that the Red Army had done towards the invading Germans. The Soviets were nothing more than Neanderthals who needed to be obliterated. A smile came to Max’s face as he remembered the story of how one of the children in his class brought a condom into school. His friend blew it up like a balloon, before throwing it out a window as the teacher approached the classroom. It was found by a Nazi youth leader who knew where it had come from. Max and his friends were lined up; each of them was almost interrogated. They all stuck to the same story and would not reveal who the culprit was. As they had shown solidarity the Nazi youth leader let them off. Solidarity was more important than the act. The youth leader said, “You can do what you want, you can let your teenage violent impulses out, it doesn’t matter, as long as you do it for us.” Instead of a good telling off, Max and his friends were congratulated for sticking together.

In the distance, the damaged roofs of the village came into view. It was obvious the village had seen its fair share of fighting. The odd building was partially destroyed and the local people all looked very glum. They hated the Red Army as much as they hated the Germans. Finally, the Tigers came to an abrupt stop and the crews clambered out. A fuel truck was not too far away. Max went to sort out getting fuel and ammunition on board. The rest of the crew went to smoke and get something to eat. The plan was to stay at the village for the night and continue in the morning to their main objective.

At least they would be safer here. Air attacks were common, but there were two flak batteries complete with quadruple 20mm anti-aircraft cannon guarding the sky and several anti-tank guns stationed around the village. A counter attack was expected. The German infantry had been getting dug in and preparing their own defences in preparation for an attack. Very little tank fighting occurred at night, since tanks could not effectively engage targets at ranges much beyond 100 yards unless flares were fired, but this tended to aid the defender more than the attacker, revealing enemy positions.

Hitler hated the Communist ideology and his intention was to crush the Soviet Union. He already had battle prepared and tested panzer divisions along with the mighty Luftwaffe to offer air support. His plan was to use armoured spearheads to penetrate deep into Russian and destroy the Russian Army. Hitler saw Operation Barbarossa as a crusade to not only destroy the Red Army and Soviet state, but at the eventual obliteration of the indigenous Slavic populations as a necessary precursor to German colonization in the East.

The war in the East would see an offensive planned on an almost ad-hoc or making tactical decisions based on opportunity. This was very different to the campaigns in France, Poland and the Balkans. Hitler made three assumptions, the first being that the Soviet campaign would be a short campaign lasting only a few months. The second was that the Soviet terrain and climate would not have a significant impact on the operation. The third was that the Red Army could be swiftly destroyed – maybe taking around six weeks with a fast moving campaign.

Hitler had not taken into account what would happen if the operation lasted longer than intended. The production of tanks and training of new tank crews to replace battle losses. The stockpiling of fuel and ammunition to keep the panzer forces moving. He had just assumed the flat terrain of the Soviet Union would aid the fast progress of the panzer divisions across Russia. The dense forests, poor roads, plethora of rivers and vast distances had not been factored in. He had also underestimated the Red Army’s ability and fighting spirit. Each one of these factors would conspire against the German’s and lead to their eventual defeat allowing the Red Army to repel the attacking force all the way back to Germany before marching into Berlin.