Nazi Germany’s Mega Structures – Super Tanks

Adolf Hitler, who served as a corporal in the German army during World War I, encountered British tanks during the war and was fascinated by this seemingly unstoppable technology. Shortly after securing power in Germany, despite the Treaty of Versailles banning German tank production, he pushed forward with tank production through a secret program.

The Germans’ effective use of this technology was highly influential in Nazi Germany’s sweep across Europe from 1939 onward, conquering nearly all of it. The Germans not only produced technologically superior tanks, but also discovered a combat technique that entered military literature as Blitzkrieg (lightning war).

In World War I, tanks were merely scattered across various positions on the battlefield as infantry support. In Blitzkrieg, however, tanks were used as an entirely separate combat unit in their own right.

Panzer units, in a fast and effective formation, attacked the enemy with intense pressure supported by artillery units and the air force (Luftwaffe), surrounding enemy units on all sides without giving them a chance to regroup and organize, and throwing their defenses into chaos. The infantry would then attack the enemy units, thrown into disarray by this sudden assault from the Panzer and mechanized units, delivering the final blow.

After a large, developed country like France, one of the victors of World War I, fell to the Germans within a matter of weeks, the other nations Hitler targeted during the years-long world war also focused intensely on this technology. Hitler’s generals were especially stunned when they encountered the Soviets’ T-34 tanks on the Eastern Front. The T-34s appeared superior to every tank the Germans had built up to that point.

At Hitler’s order, Nazi Germany then produced far more effective tanks. The Tiger tanks are the most important of these. Hitler’s war engineers, operating on the idea that bigger meant more powerful, designed massively sized tanks such as the Maus. This video covers these tanks.