Page 113 - The Chief Culprit

e KV-2 heavy tank. By the end of June 1941 German frontline officers reported that the
Russians had tanks with powerful engines, wide tracks, impenetrable armor, and six-inch
guns that used 48-kg (105.6-lb) projectiles. Berlin did not believe these reports.

By 1936 the Soviet Union created the TB-7 strategic bomber, which was capable of reaching
altitudes where anti-aircraft fire and enemy interceptors could not reach them. In 1942 the Soviet
foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, used a TB-7 to fly over German occupied territories with-
out fear of being attacked while en route to Great Britain and the USA. e TB-7 had the
capacity to carry 11,000-pound bombs. Before 1941 Soviet industry had the capacity to produce
a thousand of these planes, but Stalin ordered a halt to mass production of the TB-7. By the
summer of 1941 only seventeen of these bombers were built. Stalin had decided he did not want
to destroy European cities, factories, and ports; he wanted to seize them undamaged and for that
purpose he needed different aircraft.