Page 70 - The Chief Culprit

Stalin’s Preparations for War: Tanks y 47

further reinforced. e wide caterpillar tracks of the KV allowed it to fight on almost any
terrain in any weather conditions. Imagine the situation of the following year, 1941: German
tanks got stuck in the snow and the mud; the crews (and future historians) cursed the weather
and lack of roads, while the KV advanced through the mud. Hitler lost the war, but the mud
and the cold weather were not to blame—it was the German designers, who counted on easy
victories and on operations only during the resort season and only in places that had good
roads. ey should have designed tanks for war, not for parades. ey should have tested
them in Finland. ey should have given them wider caterpillar tracks. And they should
have installed diesel engines. e KV had a 600-horsepower diesel engine. e Soviet tank’s
diesel engine surpassed all foreign tank engines in power, reliability, and economy. e use of
a diesel engine drastically reduced the risk of catching fire. A 76-mm long-barrel F-32 gun
was installed on the KV. At that time, this gun was unrivaled in the world. In comparison,
Germany had great tanks, which conquered all of Europe, but the most powerful German
tank gun at the beginning of World War II was the 75-mm short-barrel gun on the Pz-IV
tank. e initial speed of the shells it fired was 385 m/s. is was a very good gun. But the
KV-1 had an initial shell speed of 662 m/s. e difference in initial shell speed was a differ-
ence both in the energy of the shell and in the precision of firing.
e KV-2 had even more powerful weapons. It had the 152-mm howitzer. e most
powerful German tank shell of that time weighed 6.8 kg. It was a very good shell for a very
good weapon. But the KV-2 fired concrete-destroying shells that weighed 39.9 kg at an initial
speed of 529 m/s, and high-explosive shells that weighed 48.7 kg. ere were even reports
of a shell that weighed 50.8 kg. e Chief of the General Staff of the German land army
Colonel-General Franz Halder simply did not believe the report of a weapon of such caliber
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on a Soviet tank. At the same time two other heavy tanks, the SMK (55 tons) and the T-100
(58 tons), also passed government tests. If the choice had fallen on any of them they could
have been launched into production. Aside from these tanks, the KV-3 and the KV-220 were
created and subjected to government tests. Prototypes of the KV-4 (90 tons) and the KV-5
were also designed but never produced because of Hitler’s attack.
Germany and the USSR shared the two first places in heavy tank production. ere
was nobody in third place. Elsewhere around the world, generals and designers did not even
think of drafting a heavy tank on paper. e situation was such that while Germany had a
heavy tank just on paper, other countries did not have heavy tanks even on their minds, while
the Soviet Union was the only country in the world that in 1941 had heavy tanks both in
experimental stages and in series production. e Red Army was the only army in the world
that had heavy tanks among its units.
Nonetheless, Western and Soviet historians claim that Germany was ready for war,
and the Soviet Union was not. ey pronounced the T-35 tank obsolete and didn’t mention
it in statistics, even though the rest of the world had nothing comparable to the T-35 tank.
e T-35 surpassed everything other countries had in terms of weapons, armor, and engine
power—all the main characteristics. Moreover, the T-35, despite its size and weight, exerted
less pressure on the ground than the German tanks, which meant it had much greater mobil-
ity, did not sink in snow, mud, and soft ground, where twice- and three-times-lighter tanks
of other armies sank. If the T-35 were declared obsolete, all other tanks around the world had
to be declared obsolete as well, and excluded from statistics.