German Generals Laughed At The Soviets During Barbarossa - Until The T-34 Appeared

In the summer of 1941, German planners expected to destroy the Red Army in a few weeks. They believed it numbered about 2 million men; it had more than 5 million, and inside its huge, worn-out tank force were fewer than a thousand T-34s that German intelligence barely knew existed. Within days, German anti-tank shells were bouncing off them. This World War II documentary follows the T-34 shock from the German side: the first encounters in Lithuania and Belarus, the remark Hitler made to Heinz Guderian at Novy Borisov in August 1941, Colonel Mikhail Katukov's ambushes at Mtsensk, and the German tank commission that came to the front in November 1941 and refused to copy the Soviet tank. Also in this video: the single KV heavy tank that blocked the 6th Panzer Division's road at Raseiniai, the evacuation of the T-34 factory from Kharkov to Nizhny Tagil in the Urals, and the Panther, Germany's answer to the T-34, at its debut at Kursk in July 1943. The Eastern Front touched families on every side, including many who later made their homes in America. If someone in your family fought there, tell us his name and his story in the comments. Chapters: 0:00 Until the T-Thirty-Four Appeared 15:38 What Hitler Told Guderian 25:06 The Men Who Came to Look 30:55 The Tank on the Road at Raseiniai 40:46 Eight Hits 46:27 The Night 1:00:41 The Factory That Moved East 1:07:17 Forty-Three Trains 1:15:33 The Assembly Line 1:29:59 Germany's Answer to the T-Thirty-Four 1:33:44 The Committee 1:47:20 The Ravine Sources: Earl F. Ziemke and Magna E. Bauer, Moscow to Stalingrad: Decision in the East (U.S. Army CMH, 1987), ch. 2: https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/... Geoffrey P. Megargee, paper for the NIDS International Forum on War History (2019): https://www.nids.mod.go.jp/english/ev... Scott M. Chafian, Building Guderian's Duck (U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 2004): https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA428... Arunas Zardinskas, A problem of "Raseiniai tank's" history, Lietuvos istorijos studijos 21 (2008): https://journals.vu.lt/lietuvos-istor... Tank Archives, Battle of Raseiniai (2013): https://www.tankarchives.com/2013/03/... J. Rickard, T-34 Medium Tank Production (historyofwar.org, 2008): https://www.historyofwar.org/articles... Mark Harrison, Industrial Mobilisation for World War II: A German Comparison (2000): https://warwick.ac.uk/markharrison/pu... Tank Archives, Gasoline T-34s (2022): https://tankarchives.com/2022/06/gaso... Tank Encyclopedia, VK 30.02 Prototypes and the Origins of the Panther: https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2-ge... Christopher A. Lawrence, Appendix II: The 39th Panzer Regiment at Kursk (Dupuy Institute, 2021): https://dupuyinstitute.org/2021/08/19... Christopher A. Lawrence, Mines at Kursk I (Dupuy Institute, 2018): https://dupuyinstitute.org/2018/10/31... Ian Hudson, Background to the Battle of Kursk (The Tank Museum, 2017): https://tankmuseum.org/?p=825 This documentary uses archival film, photographs and the original terminology of the period for historical and educational purposes. It is not intended to glorify war or to offend any person, nation or group. #WW2 #Barbarossa FOOTAGE AND IMAGE SOURCES Internet Archive: https://archive.org U.S. National Archives: https://www.archives.gov Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org