Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941-1942: Schwerpunkt

In operational terms, the Red Army mounted eleven major offensives in 1942 that employed multiple tank corps or tank armies, but only Uranus and Little Saturn could be considered successful. Despite being well-equipped, the 1st, 3rd, 4th and 5th Tank Armies had all performed poorly in battle and two of them were disbanded. The tank armies were not built as combined arms teams, being weak in organic artillery and support assets, which contributed to their failure against panzer divisions. Several tank corps were destroyed in 1942 and many more crippled at one time or another. However, the Red Army had enough large armoured units by late 1942 that it could cycle decimated units through the RVGK to rebuild, while replacing them with fresh units. In contrast, the Wehrmacht only occasionally received a rebuilt panzer division from training areas in France and its panzer divisions remained at the front until burnt out. The Wehrmacht conducted six major armoured offensives in 1942, with Wirbelwind and Wintergewitter being failures.

The Wehrmacht lost about 2,480 tanks on the Eastern Front in 1942, including about 293 Pz.II, 429 Pz.38(t), 1,261 Pz.III and 389 Pz.IV. In addition, the Germans lost another 563 tanks in North Africa during the same period, or about 18.5 per cent of their total armour losses in 1942. Although Russian historians tend to dismiss the contribution of Great Britain to defeating the Wehrmacht in 1941–42, a disproportionate share of German armour was being lost in North Africa and Rommel’s Deutsche Afrika Korps (DAK) was a sink-hole for tanks that would have been better used on the Eastern Front. Altogether, Germany built 4,168 tanks in 1942 and lost 73 per cent of them; among the main types, 63 per cent of Pz.IIIs and 48 per cent of Pz.IVs were lost. German tank production remained flat throughout 1942 with negligible growth, although the proportion of assault guns being built increased to nearly one-quarter by late 1942. The increased emphasis on assault guns, plus diversion of production toward the new Pz.VI Tiger tank, cast the Panzerwaffe in an increasingly defensive role that emphasized firepower and protection over tactical mobility. Another important industrial decision was Hitler’s decree in June 1942 that no more tungsten would be used for armour-piercing ammunition due to the shortage of that material, and that existing stocks had to be turned in; just as German industry was producing better tank guns, they lost access to the raw materials needed to make them most effective. Going into 1943, the Panzerwaffe and Panzerjäger would be increasingly dependent upon larger guns to increase muzzle velocity, which resulted in heavier, less mobile tanks and anti-tank guns.

While German industry was just beginning to field new tanks, it finally standardized its two main battle tanks in late 1942, enabling significant production increases in 1943. The Pz.III Ausf L and Ausf M models added only minor improvements to armoured protection and fording capability, but the Pz.IV Ausf G increased frontal armoured protection to 80mm and soon received the improved 7.5cm KwK 40 L/48 cannon. Likewise, the StuG III Ausf G, also outfitted with the L48 cannon behind 80mm thick frontal protection, began mass production in December 1942. While the Pz.IIIL/M were only modest threats to the T-34, the appearance of the up-gunned Pz.IVG and StuG IIIG signaled that the Russian policy of resisting upgrades on the T-34 in favor of increased production would carry increased costs on the battlefield. While the T-34 still had superior tactical and operational-level mobility over any German tanks, its firepower advantage was gone and its level of armoured protection increasingly inadequate. By the end of 1942, German tankers knew that they were beginning to receive tanks that gave them some measure of superiority over their opponents.