Spoonist wrote:OK, I was not that clear. Mind you this is from memory so I can be wrong and if so point it out to me. But what I do remember is that Sherman design was not the only design considered by the US, instead of selecting the most advanced though they selected a design which was sufficient for its purpose but which could be produced in large numbers and then be adapted as necessary. So it was not the 'coolest' design that won, it was the most effecient. So compared to the other designs it was the shitty tank that was selected, because it was the best strategic decision.
If the 1-1 is a comparison between a Panzer IV vs a Sherman on stats alone then I agree with you and give points to the sherman. But again you have to take into consideration the intent of the design, the US knew that it would be an offensive campain where the axis would be on the defensive. Being the aggressive you do not win 1-1 scenarios, you need enough of the stuff to take at least equal losses and still be winning. If they had selected a more expensive but slightly better model, then they still would have taken the first hit but would have had a harder time repyaying the favor.
Look, that attitude works quite well from the point of view of, say, General Eisenhower. When you can step a thousand miles back from the battlefield and look at the production statistics, the relative attrition rates, that sort of thing, your argument is sound and I am not denying it.
But for the guys on the ground, who are faced with the reality that they are sacrificing six or eight or ten tanks (which, remember, is 30, 40, or 50
people) to kill one German heavy tank (and five people), that one German tank becomes impressive as all hell. There are plenty of reasons to dismiss that when you take the ultimately abstracted view of the military analyst, but that level of abstraction is impossible for most of the people actually involved in the war, the people who actually
see German tanks blowing shit up.
Talk about how that one Tiger cost the Germans more tons of steel than eight Shermans cost the Americans, or more money, or how it's a larger fraction of their total tank force, fine. But it's a simple reality that if you use human (or machine) wave tactics against an enemy that uses individually tougher units, the enemy
will earn a reputation among your common soldiers, and eventually among your officers. The best you can expect is that the enemy will get a reputation for being tough, well armed and competent. Because they
are tough, well armed, and competent; it's just that those three traits do not guarantee victory by themselves in the face of superior numbers and logistics.
Which is mostly due to propaganda, which the nazi's excelled at. The psychological impact of the tiger was fully utilized during the war. But really when you look at production cost, for a single tiger to be cost effective it would have to have a lot more kills than they did. So what the allies failed was to tell their troops what was considered a "loss" and what was a "victory". How many Shermans lost against a single tiger is still a "win"? Instead they only got the figures that oh my god we lost X tanks and they only lost Y tanks. When really comparing apples to melons.
This is true. But when you're one of the apples getting crushed to take down that one melon, the fact that the comparison isn't fair isn't at the forefront of your mind. Hence the psychological effect... which exists
independently of the production costs and the cost-effectiveness.
And that effect is not just propaganda. Part of it is an honest reaction to the fact that you are using superior numbers to overwhelm an enemy that is inflicting disproportionate losses on you. You can do that, but don't expect real soldiers in a real battle to ignore the fact that they're dying twice as fast as the enemy just because their army has four times as many men.
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Simon_Jester wrote:But the Soviet armored corps did not stand out quite so much because the Soviets did not manage to stage stunning upset victories over entire national militaries by the use of tanks. Thus, they did not manage to impress the world quite as much as the Germans- with reason.
*Though I've heard bad things about, for instance, their mechanical reliability; I don't know what to think about that.
What you are describing right now is in effect the propaganda value.
For instance, lots of the german tanks failed soon after rolling out of the factories. The most reliable nazi tank was built by checkoslovakia.
I don't think it's propaganda to say something like "T-34s had a mean time to failure in combat of 16 hours, and some T-34 crews went into battle with entire spare engine blocks strapped to the back of the tank in anticipation of a breakdown." It may not be
true, or it may be equally true of both sides, but it's not propaganda. And unless it
is true of both sides (which I'm quite prepared to believe), it's relevant to the quality of the tanks.
There's a reason I said "I don't know what to think about that." I
don't. I've heard things, but I know they could be asymmetrical because I heard someone talking about how Soviet tanks had problems in a different (Cold War) context and chose to illustrate it by hearkening back to the WWII tanks. They were not a perfectly impartial speaker, but that doesn't mean they were lying, so I don't know whether or not to take their assessment seriously.
On a more general note, propaganda can be based on facts. The Germans, through a combination of moderately good tank engineering (including, for instance, thinking to build radios into the tanks) and very good tank tactics, overwhelmed what were once thought to be powerful nations. And did so quickly, mostly by using their tanks. That is a
fact. It does not make the German tankers or tank designers into gods, as the Nazis would probably have liked to present them. But it does make them impressive, respectable, to be taken very seriously.
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So once again, i'm inclined to say that I am impressed by nazi propaganda, it still holds up today. I mean who have heard of the french WWII tanks?
Well... there's a reason for that aside from Nazi propaganda, again. The French
lost; their tanks saw action in only one campaign before being destroyed or captured. Even the captured ones were mixed into their enemies' armies, where they were diluted enough that it was hard to assess their performance.
We've heard more about, for example, British tanks than about French tanks with good reason that has nothing to do with propaganda: the British made a better showing during the war, giving us more opportunity to judge the effectiveness of their designs and tactics. Now, British tanks don't get the rampant fanboyism that some of the German heavy designs draw, but they
do get attention, and people with even a moderate education about the period will be aware that the British had tanks and used them reasonably well.
The best propaganda is
always that which puts a useful spin on existing, irrefutable facts, not on outright lies. The quality of German tanks as seen by popular culture is an example of this- it's an exaggeration, but it isn't a lie by any stretch of the imagination.
I think it's just due to Cold War "obstructionism" (i.e. relevant information about a putative adversary dissapeared from wider discussions in the society).