Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front 1943-1945: Red Steamroller

The final campaign along the Oder River in April 1945 and the subsequent attack into Berlin was not the Red Army’s finest hour. Instead, Zhukov allowed his rivalry with Konev to affect his decision-making and Stalin goaded both men into a sloppy offensive that relied on mass, rather than skill. Zhukov’s decision on 16 April to commit the 1 GTA and 2 GTA into battle, even though the German defences on the Seelow Heights were still unbroken, resulted in massive Soviet casualties. Amazingly, Hitler had not anticipated a direct Soviet advance across the Oder and had left his best armoured units in Hungary, which left few Panzer units on the Oder. The SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Nordland and 10 King Tigers from schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 503 were the only veteran armoured units to fight in the final battle for Berlin. Instead of elite units, the approaches to Berlin were defended by extemporized units such as Panzer-Division Müncheberg and Panzer-Division Kurmark, which were divisions in name only. The final German stand on the Oder and in Berlin involved only small amounts of armour, mostly assault guns, but the fanatical defence inflicted enormous losses on the Red Army, including nearly 2,000 tanks. The widespread introduction of the Panzerfaust proved deadly in Berlin and the Soviet use of so much armour in the dense urban terrain was a tactical error. Nevertheless, Zhukov and Konev used their armour to batter their way into Berlin and brought an end to the Third Reich.

Conclusions

Both sides made tactical and operational mistakes in the conduct of armoured operations on the Eastern Front in 1941–45, but it was the Germans who made the strategic mistake of starting a war that they were not prepared to win. Furthermore, the Red Army learned a great deal more from its defeats in 1941– 42 than the Wehrmacht learned from its victories. Both during and after the war, the Germans repeatedly tried to rationalize their defeat by pointing to the Soviet numerical superiority, as if it was somehow not fair. Yet the reason that the Red Army enjoyed a numerical superiority in tanks was due to the fact that its tanks were designed to be simple to produce and operate and easy to repair; they could also move lengthy distances without too many breaking down. This functionality of Soviet tanks was based on pre-war industrial decisions that were made with an eye to winning a protracted war. Both before and throughout the war, the Soviet oversight of tank development, production and evolution was much more professionally directed than on the German side. Unlike the Germans, who did not put a tank expert like Guderian in charge of overseeing the restoration of the Panzer-Divisionen until after Stalingrad, General-leytenant Yakov N. Fedorenko, head of GABTU, directed Soviet tank programmes throughout the entire war. Furthermore, Guderian was ignored on all the key decisions – such as the premature commitment of the Panther tank, the decision to attack at Kursk, the need to build panzer reserves – whereas Fedorenko played a key role in reconstituting shattered Soviet tank armies and ensuring that tank production stayed ahead of combat losses. Instead, the Germans opted for more sophisticated tanks that were produced in smaller numbers and were more difficult to maintain. The Germans also enjoyed producing small numbers of experimental designs such as the Ferdinand tank destroyer, whereas the Soviets had the discipline to focus on a few proven designs.