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

Another factor that hindered a significant increase in German tank production in 1943 was the over-engineered nature of German tanks and the finicky criteria retained by the Heereswaffenamt inspectors to evaluate completed tanks. For decades, most sources have claimed that the Tiger tank required 300,000 man hours to complete, or roughly double the time required to build a Panther. Yet other sources state that the Panther required 55,000 man hours, and another authoritative source states that a single complete Panther could be built in just 2,000 man hours.³⁰ In fact these numbers are over-simplistic, because the production rate of Panther tanks at various German factories varied considerably – there was no standard rate. However, by 1944 the MAN factory employed 4,483 employees directly involved in tank manufacture and assembly, who together spent roughly 1.6 million man hours per month on this task. Since MAN’s production of Panthers in 1944 topped off at 140–155 Panthers per month, this means than a single late-model Panther required at least 10,400–11,500 man hours to complete.³¹ Obviously the early Panther Ausf D, plagued by technical faults, required many more hours than the late-run Panther, but the same could be said about the T-34 or any other tank. It is clear that as German tanks became more sophisticated after 1942, the amount of time and effort required to build just one of them greatly exceeded the amount of time and effort that Soviet industry needed to construct several T-34s. Even after Stalingrad, the Heereswaffenamt inspectors at the Nibelungenwerke were rejecting completed tanks due to ‘un-polished welds’ and ‘non-standard painting’ – i.e. for aesthetics. This kind of nonsense continued until mid-1943 until the Battle of Kursk, after which Speer pushed factories to expedite production by simplifying construction procedures and lowering standards; these changes resulted in much greater output in 1944. Yet based on the numbers from MAN, it is clear that even after Speer’s improved efficiencies, a Panther still required three times as much labour effort as a T-34 to produce.

Allied strategic bombing also had some effect on German tank production, although Alkett was the only factory that was seriously disrupted in 1943. Panther production was temporarily reduced in August 1943 when the MAN plant was bombed twice.³² The Henschel plant in Kassel was bombed by the RAF in October 1943 and also suffered some disruption in Tiger tank production.³³ In November 1943, a major RAF raid on Berlin left much of Alkett’s Berlin-Borsigwalde plant in ruins, which severely disrupted StuG III production for about six weeks. Reacting hastily, Hitler decided in December 1943 to terminate Pz IV production at the Krupp-Grusonwerk AG plant and instead use Pz IV hulls to build the new Jagdpanzer IV assault gun. Guderian opposed this decision, pointing out that Alkett would soon restore StuG III production and that Hitler had already authorized a new tank destroyer to be built on the Panther hull (the Jagdpanther), armed with an 8.8cm Pak 43. It made little sense for Germany to further reduce its tank output in order to produce another assault gun variant, but again he was ignored.

The RAF bombing of the Ruhr in March–June 1943 also caused the Zulieferungskrise (sub-component crisis) in which delays in the arrival of sub-components delayed AFV construction at the main plants.³⁴ For example, a Pz IV assembled at the Nibelungenwerke received its turret from Magdeburg, its main gun from Dusseldorf, its engine from Friedrichshafen and various other sub-components from across the Reich. Allied bombing increasingly disrupted rail yards in central Germany, causing delay in the internal transport network. Without a large stockpile of critical sub-components on hand, the main tank plants became increasingly vulnerable to transportation disruptions. Allied bombing also induced second-and third-ordered effects, by causing distribution problems with raw materials and damaging the myriad of small manufacturers who built unique items for tanks.

The Red Army’s Tank Forces

In 1943, the Red Army had six different kinds of armoured units with a variety of missions committed on the Eastern Front:

• Tank Armies, intended to be capable of large-scale mobile operations. Although the Red Army had created five tank armies in 1942, both the 1st and 4th Tank Armies were disbanded after suffering crippling combat losses in August 1942. At the start of 1943, the 2nd, 3rd and 5th Tank Armies were still active. These formations were supposed to consist of two tank corps and one mechanized corps with about 500 tanks, but the tank armies were still rather improvised in nature.