As a stopgap measure pending the Panthers’ design,
production, and delivery, Guderian’s commission had recommended upgrading the
army’s assault guns. About 120 of the Model IIIF with a 75mm L/43 had entered
service in 1942, prefiguring the assault gun’s development from an infantry
support vehicle into a tank destroyer. As a rule of thumb, the longer a gun,
the less effective its high-explosive round. From the infantry’s perspective,
however, the tradeoff was acceptable, and the Sturmgeschütz IIIG was even more
welcome because of its 75mm L/48 main armament. The effective range of this
adapted Pak 43 was more than 7,000 feet. It could penetrate almost 100mm of
30-degree sloped armor at half that distance. The IIIG took the original
assault gun design to the peak of its development by retaining the low
silhouette and improving frontal armor to 80mm by bolting on extra plates, all
within a weight of less than 25 tons. The family was completed, ideally at
least, with the addition of a 105mm howitzer version in one of the battalion’s
three ten-gun batteries to sustain the infantry support role.
The one-time redheaded stepchild of the armored force now
had a place at the head table. There had been 19 independent assault gun
battalions in May 1941. In 1943 that number would double. Constantly shifted
among infantry commands, their loyalty was to no larger formation. Continuously
in action, they developed a wealth of specialized battle experience that led
infantry officers to follow the assault gunners’ lead when it came to
destroying tanks and mounting counterattacks. Assault guns cost less than
tanks. Lacking complex revolving turrets, they were easier to manufacture, and
correspondingly attractive in an armaments industry whose workforce skill and
will were declining with the addition of more and more foreign and forced labor
and the repeated comb-outs of Germans destined for the Wehrmacht.
Meanwhile, tank production was in the doldrums. The Panzer
III was so clearly obsolete as a battle tank that its assembly lines had been
converted to providing chassis for assault guns. By October 1942, production of
the Panzer IV was down to 100 a month. The General Staff recommended a leap in
the dark: canceling Panzer IVs and concentrating exclusively on Panthers and
Tigers. Previous outsiders like Porsche, and a new generation of subcontractors
turning out assault guns, were jostling and challenging established firms. But
the German automotive industry, managers and engineers alike, had from its
inception been labor-intensive and conservative in its approaches to
production. As late as 1925 the US Ford Motor Company needed the equivalent of
five and three-quarters days’ labor by a single worker to produce a car.
Daimler needed 1,750 worker days to construct one of its top-line models. When
it came to design, focus was on the top end of the market and emphasis was on
customizing as far as possible by multiplying variants. It was a far cry from
Henry Ford’s philosophy that customers could have any color they wanted as long
as it was black.
For their part, the civilian tank designers were
disproportionately intrigued by the technical challenges Panthers and Tigers
offered. They took apparent delight in solving engineering problems in ways
that in turn stretched unit mechanics to limits often developed originally in
village blacksmith shops.
One might suggest that by 1942 a negative synergy was
developing between an armored force and an automobile industry, each in its own
way dedicated to an elite ethos and incorporating an elite self image. The
designers were correspondingly susceptible to the dabblings of Adolf Hitler.
Previously, his direct involvement in the issue had been limited, his demands
negotiable, his recommendations and suggestions reasonable. The Hornet, for
example, combined the Hummel’s armored open-topped superstructure with the 88mm
L/71 gun Hitler had wanted for the Tiger. The vehicle’s bulky chassis made it
too much of a target to render feasible stalking tanks in the fashion of the
Marder and the assault guns. But its long-range, high-velocity gun was welcome
to the half dozen independent heavy antitank battalions that absorbed most of
the 500 Hornets first introduced in 1943.
The Ferdinand, later called the Elephant, was a
waste-not/want-not response to the Porsche drives and hulls prepared in
anticipation of the Tiger contract that went to Henschel. Hitler saw them as
ideal mounts for a heavily armored tank destroyer mounting the same 88mm gun as
the Hornet. Ninety were rushed into production in spring 1943 and organized
into an independent panzer regiment. Without rotating turrets, at best they
were Tigers manqué, with all the teething troubles and maintenance problems
accompanying the type and no significant advantages. At 65 tons, any
differences in height were immaterial. And the omission of close-defense
machine guns as unnecessary would too often prove fatal for vehicles whose
sheer size made them targets for every antitank weapon in the Red Army’s
substantial inventory when they were sent into action at Kursk.
The Hornet and the Elephant were mere preliminaries. Since
adolescence the Führer had liked his architecture grandiose, his music molto
pomposo, and his cars high-powered. In June 1942, he authorized Ferdinand
Porsche to develop a super-heavy tank: the Maus (“Mouse”—and yes, the name was
ironic). The vehicle carried almost ten inches of frontal armor, mounted a
six-inch gun whose rounds weighed more than 150 pounds each, and weighed 188
tons. Its road speed was given as 12.5 miles per hour—presumably downhill with
a tail wind. It took more than a year to complete two prototypes. To apply a
famous line from the classic board game PanzerBlitz, “The only natural enemies
of the Maus were small mammals that ate the eggs.”
The complete worthlessness of the Maus as a fighting vehicle
in the context of World War II needs no elaboration. Neither does the total
waste of material resources and engineering skill devoted to the project. The
Maus was nevertheless a signifier for Germany’s panzer force during the rest of
the war. Apart from its direct support by Hitler, the Maus opened the door to a
comprehensive emphasis on technical virtuosity for its own sake, in near-abstraction
from field requirements. The resulting increases in size at the expense of
mobility and reliability were secondary consequences, reflecting the
contemporary state of automotive, armor, and gun design. After 1943, German
technicians turned from engineering to alchemy, searching for a philosopher’s
stone that would bring a technical solution to the armored force’s operational
problems. Hubris, idealism—or another example of the mixture of both that
characterized so many aspects of the Third Reich’s final years?
The Maus thread, however, takes the story a few months ahead
of itself. Its antecedent combination of institutional infighting, production
imbroglios, and declining combat power led an increasing number of Hitler’s
military entourage to urge the appointment of a plenipotentiary
troubleshooter—specifically Heinz Guderian. Guderian describes meeting
privately on February 20, 1943, with a chastened Führer who regretted their
“numerous misunderstandings.” Guderian set his terms. Hitler temporized. He was
given the appointment of Inspector-General of Panzer Troops, reporting directly
to Hitler; with inspection rights over armored units in the Luftwaffe and the
Waffen SS, and control of organization, doctrine, training, and replacement.
That was a lot of power in the hands of one officer.
There was also a back story. Guderian had spent most of 1942
restoring his stress-shaken health, which centered on heart problems, and
looking for an estate suitable to his status, to be purchased with the cash
grant of a million and a quarter marks Hitler awarded him in the spring of
1942. Norman Goda establishes in scathing detail that once Guderian became a
landed gentleman on an estate stolen from its Polish owners, his reservations
about Hitler as supreme warlord significantly diminished. Cash payments, often
many times a salary and pension, were made to a broad spectrum of officers and
civilians in the Third Reich—birthdays were a typical justification. Since
August 1940, Guderian had been receiving, tax-free, 2,000 Reichsmarks a
month—as much as his regular salary. Similar lavish gifts were so widely made
to senior officers that Gerhard Weinberg cites simple bribery as a possible
factor in sustaining the army’s cohesion in the war’s final stages.
The image of an evil regime’s uniformed servants proclaiming
their “soldierly honor” while simultaneously being bought and paid for is so
compelling that attempting its nuancing invites charges of revisionism.
Nevertheless there were contexts. A kept woman is not compensated in the same
fashion as a streetwalker. Dotation, douceur, “golden parachute,” hush money,
conscience money, or bribe—direct financial rec ognitions of services rendered
the Reich were too common to be exactly a state secret. Guderian and his
military colleagues were more than sufficiently egoistic to rationalize the
cash as earned income, as recognition of achievement and sacrifice in the way
that milk and apples are necessary to the health of the pigs in George Orwell’s
Animal Farm.
The appointment Hitler signed on February 28, 1943,
ostensibly gave Guderian what he requested. But lest any doubt might remain as
to who was in charge, only the heavy assault guns, still in development stages,
came under Guderian’s command. The rest, whose importance was increasing by the
week, remained with the artillery. It was a relatively small thing. But
Guderian’s complaint that “somebody” played a “trick” on him belies his own
shrewd intelligence and low cunning. The desirability of trust between the head
of state and the general in such a central position was overshadowed in
Hitler’s mind by Lenin’s question: “Kto, kogo?” (Who, whom?): the question of
who was to be master. Guderian had spent a year in the wilderness. Now he was
back on top. Omitting the assault guns was a reminder that what had been given
could be withdrawn at a chieftain’s whim. It might well make even a principled
man think twice before deciding and thrice before speaking. And Hitler’s army
was increasingly commanded by pragmatists.
From the Führer’s perspective, Guderian’s appointment was
one of the heaviest blows he had struck against the High Command. The ground
forces’ key element, the panzers, were now under his personal authority—at one
remove, to be sure, but Guderian was the kind of person whose ego and energy
would focus him on the job at hand, and whose temperament was certain to lead
to the same kinds of personal and jurisdictional clashes that had characterized
his early career. Hitler would have all the opportunities he needed either to
muddy the waters or to resolve controversies, as circumstances indicated.
Albert Speer’s appointment as Minister of Armaments in
February 1942 brought no immediate, revolutionary change to Germany’s war
industry. But Speer had Hitler’s confidence, as much as anyone could ever
possess it. He was an optimist at a time when that was a declining quality at
high Reich levels. He concentrated on short-term fixes: rationalizing
administration, improving use of material, addressing immediate crises. And he
faced a major one in tank production.
In September 1942 Hitler called for the manufacture of 800
tanks, 600 assault guns, and 600 self-propelled guns a month by the spring of
1944. In April 1944 the army’s panzer divisions had fewer than 1,700 of their
total authorized strength of 4,600 main battle tanks: Panthers and Panzer IVs.
That gap could not be bridged by admonitions to take better care of equipment
and report losses more accurately. The long obsolete Panzer II was upgraded
into a state-of-the-art tracked reconnaissance vehicle. But a glamorous
renaming as Luchs, or Lynx, could not camouflage an operational value so
limited that production was canceled after the first hundred. Other resources
were also diverted to the development of a family of tracked and half-tracked
logistics vehicles and increased numbers of armored recovery vehicles, both in
their own ways necessary under Russian conditions. The growing effectiveness of
the Soviet air force led to the conversion or rebuilding of an increasing
number of chassis into antiaircraft tanks with small- caliber armaments. The
continued manufacture of early designs—again necessary to maintain even limited
frontline strength—further impeded production. Between May and December 1942,
tank production actually declined despite constant encouragement and repeated
threats from the Reich’s highest quarters.
One positive result of the slowdown was the ability to
address the Panther’s shortcomings. The original Model D received improved
track and wheel systems. Das Reich received a battalion of them in August, 23rd
Panzer Division in October, and 16th Panzer in December. All played crucial
roles in Army Group South’s fight for survival. The D’s successor, the Model A,
had a new turret with quicker rotation time and a commander’s cupola. Both were
important in the target-rich but high-risk environment of the Eastern Front.
Engine reliability remained a problem, in part because of quality control
difficulties in the homeland, and in part defined by the tank’s low
power-to-weight ratio. Improvements to the transmission and gear systems
nevertheless reduced the number of engine breakdowns. Modifications to the
cooling system cut back on the number of engine fires.
Soft ground, deep mud, and heavy snow continued to put a
premium on driving skill. One Panther battalion reported having to blow up 28
tanks it was unable to evacuate. Fifty-six more were in various stages of
repair. Eleven remained operational. But during the same period Leibstandarte’s
Panther battalion reported only seven combat losses—all from hits to the sides
and rear. Of the 54 mechanical breakdowns, almost half could be ready within a
week. On the whole the improved Panther was regarded as excellent: consistently
able to hit, survive hits, and bring its crews back.
Toward the end of 1943 the High Command began rotating
battalions officially equipped with Panzer IIIs—the old workhorse was still
pulling its load—back to Germany for retraining on Panther Model As. The
reorganized battalions were impressive on paper: 4 companies each of 22 or 17
tanks, plus 8 more in battalion headquarters. First Panzer Division welcomed
its new vehicles in November. Others followed, army and SS, the order depending
on which division could best spare a battalion cadre. By the end of January 1944
about 900 Panther As had reached the Russian front, in complete battalions or
as individual replacements.
As good as they were, the Panthers were a drop in the bucket
compared to the mass of Soviet armor facing them. As compensation the High
Command began considering a Panther II. Beginning as an up-armored Model D,
during 1943 the concept metamorphosed—or better said, metastasized—into a
lighter version of the Tiger. Weighing in at over 50 tons, it was originally
scheduled to enter service in September 1943, but was put on permanent hold in
favor of its less impressive, more reliable forebear.
The same might have been better applied to another armored
mammoth. The Panzer VIB, the “King Tiger” or “Royal Tiger,” could trace its
conceptual roots all the way to the spring of 1941. Prototypes emerged in 1943;
the first production models appeared in January 1944. The VIB was best
distinguished by a redesigned turret with a rounded front and a cupola for the
commander. Its second characteristic feature was an 88mm L/71 gun (that
translates as 19 feet long!) that could take out any allied tank at extreme
ranges. Its frontal armor, more than seven inches in places, was never
confirmed as having been penetrated by any tank or antitank gun. Its Maybach
700 horsepower engine gave it a reasonable road speed of 24 miles per hour. But
if the King was dipped in the River Styx for strength, it was also left with an
Achilles heel. Its weight was immobilizing. Only major road bridges could
support it. The tonnage increased fuel consumption when fuel supplies were a
growing problem, and also overstrained the drive system to a point where
breakdowns were the norm.
The point was initially moot, since only five VIBs were in
service by March 1944. But the situation was replicated in other end-of-the-war
designs. The Jagdtiger was a tank destroyer version of the VIB carrying a 128mm
gun—not only the heaviest weapon mounted on a German AFV, but an excellent
design in its own right. At over 70 tons, however, and with only 20 degrees traverse
for its main armament, the vehicle was only dangerous to anything unfortunate
enough to pass directly in front of it.
The Panther’s tank destroyer spin-off was far more
promising. Indeed the Jagdpanther is widely and legitimately considered the
best vehicle of its kind during World War II. An 88mm L/71 gun, well-sloped
armor, and solid cross-country capacity on a 45-ton chassis made the
Jagdpanther a dominant chess piece wherever it appeared. Predictably,
preproduction difficulties and declining production capacity kept its numbers
limited.
For all the print devoted to the Panthers, the Tigers, and
their variants, the backbone of the armored force through 1945 remained the
Panzer IV. Its final versions had little enough in common with the “cigar
butts” of 1940. The Model H officially became the main production version in
March 1942. Its armor protection included side panels and grew to a maximum of
3.2 inches in front, at the price of increased weight (25 tons) that cut the
road speed to a bit over 20 miles per hour. A later J version incorporated such
minor modifications as wider tracks and wire-mesh side skirts just as effective
as armor plate in deflecting infantry-fired antitank rockets.
Guderian in particular considered the new version of a
well-tried system a practical response to the chronic frontline shortfalls in
tank strength in the East. The Panzer IV was relatively easy to maintain -and
relatively easy to evacuate when damaged. Over 3,000 of them would be produced
in 1943, and standard equipment of the army panzer divisions was set at a
battalion each of Panthers and Panzer IVs.
Guderian’s opposition to the assault gun had eroded with
experience. Not only was its frontline utility indisputable, it could be
manufactured faster and in larger numbers by less experienced enterprises than
the more complex turreted tanks. Guderian correspondingly advocated restoring
the panzer regiments’ third battalions and giving them assault guns as a working
compromise.
The vehicles he intended were significantly different from
the original assault guns and their underlying concept. The mission of
supporting infantry attacks had become secondary at best. What was now vital
was holding off Soviet armor. The self-propelled Marders, with their light
armor and open tops, were well into the zone of dangerous obsolescence. In 1943
the Weapons Office ordered the development of a smaller vehicle mounting a
scaled-down 75mm gun on the chassis of the old reliable 38(t). The 16-ton
Hetzer (Baiter) was useful and economical, and continues to delight armor buffs
and modelers. It was, however, intended for the infantry’s antitank battalions,
and did not appear in combat until 1944—one more example of diffused effort that
characterized the Reich’s war effort.
On the other hand, the Sturmgeschütz IIIG, with its 75mm
L/48 gun, seemed highly suited to tank destruction and was readily
available—until Allied bombing intervened. The factory manufacturing the bulk
of IIIGs was heavily damaged in late 1943. To compensate, Hitler ordered the
available hulls to be fitted to Panzer IV chassis. The result proved practical
enough to encourage the production of over 1700 Jagdpanzer IVs by November
1944, despite Guderian’s protest at the corresponding fallout of turreted
tanks. The new name of “tank destroyer” suited the vehicles’ new purpose,
though their predecessors continued in service under the original title,
creating confusion during and after the war that remains exacerbated by the
vehicles’ close resemblance.
The Jagdpanzer IVs were intended for the panzer divisions
and the assault gun battalions, whose number grew to over three dozen during
1943. A slightly heavier version with a 75mm L/70 gun like the Panther’s and
the unflattering nickname of “Guderian’s Duck” began entering service in August
1944. It proved first-rate against armor in Russia and the West; almost a
thousand were produced during the war. The “Duck’s” long gun made it
uncomfortably nose-heavy (the source of its sobriquet), but by then that was
among the least of the panzers’ problems.
Apart from a few emergency variations churned out in the
war’s final months, the technical lineup of Hitler’s panzers was complete. As a
footnote the design staffs, after years of work, finally developed the war’s
best armored car. The SdKfz 234/2 Puma had it all: high speed, a low
silhouette, and a 50mm L39 still effective against tanks in an emergency.
Unfortunately, by the time the Puma and its variants entered production, the
panzers’ need for a long-range reconnaissance vehicle was itself long past. Now
their enemies all too often found them.
