HITLER’S RECKONING: TIGER vs T-34, History of War – August 2018
The ‘face-off’ between German Tigers and Soviet T-34s is one of the most fiercely debated contests in military history. Of course, direct comparison between the two tanks is facile, the Tiger was a heavy and the T-34 a medium class. Yet both played huge roles in the Battle of Kursk. As this issue explores, the numbers of machines off the assembly line, the nuances of their design, as well as their manufacturing speed and cost arguably decided the armoured clash at Kursk. Even further behind the lines, Allied spy networks and codebreakers had won the intelligence battle, revealing Hitler’s plans to the Soviets before the tank tracks began to rumble forward.