I don't know about that. The Germans had the same head start on Russia that they had on the US, but when the Russians came into the fighting in 1941 they were already fielding the T-34 tank (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-34), which outclassed any German panzer in a one-to-one engagement and may have been the finest tank in the world. The best US industry could turn out in 1941 was the abysmal M3 Lee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3_Lee), which would go on to get absolutely chewed to pieces by the Germans in the North African campaign. Even the next American attempt, the iconic M4 Sherman, which was the US' standard medium tank by 1944, was unimpressive compared to contemporary Russian and German designs.

The big lesson of WW2, though, was that in modern all-out warfare the quality of individual tanks didn't really matter. What mattered was the quantity those tanks could be turned out in. The Germans, stung by the unexpected quality of Russian tanks, had turned their efforts toward building absolute monsters like the Tiger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_I) and Panther (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panther_tank). Those tanks individually outclassed any Allied tank of the era, even the Russians'. But they were so complicated to build that the Germans could only turn out a few thousand of them, which was peanuts compared to the swarms of T-34s and Shermans the Allies were cranking out. The tactical doctrine in 1944 was that it would take five Shermans, acting together, to knock out a single Tiger; but US industry turned out 12,000+ Shermans that year, while German industry would only turn out around 1,000 Tigers, so five-to-one numerical superiority wasn't hard to put together. No matter how fearsome the German tanks became, they eventually got stung to death by swarms of less impressive enemies.

Well put. Additionally, German industry was under heavy strategic air bombardment, further complicating their ability to mass produce tanks. And Tigers were vulnerable from the air, and the U.S. had nearly complete tactical air superiority from D-Day forward.

True, but the Russians had their own production problems too, namely the loss of nearly the entire industrialized area of their country to the enemy in 1941. The great virtue of the T-34 was that it was so simple to manufacture that it could be built in numbers in the ad-hoc, open-air factories the Russians set up east of the Ural Mountains, and maintained even in facilities directly under enemy attack, like the famous Tractor Factory in Stalingrad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volgograd_Tractor_Factory).

Fuel was a big (bigger?) problem. Albert Speer was an organizational genius and plane production (unsure about tanks etc) was actually increasing despite the bombardment. Lack of fuel and pilots scuppered the air force. I'd love to post the graph I can't find, but this Wikipedia article gives GDP versus year. Until 1945 German output was increasing. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_Wo...

Same with u-boat production. They still managed to build a lot in 1944, and in the first few months of 1945 they built nearly 100.

My understanding is total Allied domination of the air is what made the difference. German tanks were highly vulnerable to air attack, even the best of them.

True on the Western Front, where US air superiority was indeed total; less so on the Eastern Front, where the Soviet air force was essentially wiped out in 1941 and took years to rebuild, so the great tank battles, like Kursk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kursk), took place in a contested air environment.

A quick look at the table here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ussb-1.jpg will illustrate that air superiority in the west was achieved by the Allies. I am sure you meant to say "Allied air superiority", and I am sorry for being pedantic. However, there is a tendency for national triumphantism, especially over WWII, that points to some of the issues highlighted in the "The Atlantic's" article.

You're correct, I did not mean to slight the contribution of the RAF and other Allied air forces. (Though I think my other comments should illustrate that I am far from a "national triumphalist.")

I don't know about "T-34 tank... which outclassed any German panzer in a one-to-one engagement and may have been the finest tank in the world"

It beat panzers the same way American tanks beat panzers --by swarming them. It's not like Americans didn't know about sloped armor --they did. We even provided the Russians with armor --if I recall my history channel stuff. Also, the Russian tanks were prone to quality defects but they made that up with production numbers. Also their effective firing range was dismal --but again, in a swarming tactic, range is unimportant.

The German generals, who presumably would have been in a position to know, disagreed with you. Take Heinz Guderian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Guderian), for instance; he was deeply impressed with the quality of the T-34 as a fighting vehicle. Example (http://books.google.com/books?id=feIBwIK6DA0C&lpg=PA10&#...):

General Heinz Guderian's 2nd Panzer Army spearhead was ambushed near Mtensk on October 6, 1941, by a brigade of T-34s. In a brief action, T-34s under Colonel Mikhael Katukov destroyed ten Pz III and Pz IV tanks for the loss of only about five of their own. Guderian, creator of the German panzer force, was shocked. The German panzers, with their short 50mm and 75mm guns, could only penetrate the thick armor of the T-34 from point-blank range of 100m or less, but the T-34 could destroy the poorly armored Pz III and Pz IV from up to 1,000m. The T-34's mobility over muddy terrain and poor roads astonished the German tankers. Furthermore, the use of sloped armor on the T-34 and KV-1 tanks indicated that German tank design had fallen woefully behind.

Guderian came away from the battles of 1941 believing that Germany should just drop its own tank designs and straight-up copy the T-34. They didn't, of course; the Panther and Tiger were supposed to be T-34 killers, but they were too difficult to produce and maintain in the field to ever really live up to that role.

It seems there are many sides and superiority swung every other month. I only know from what a history buff's knowledge rubs off on me.

Anyhow, not sure the veracity of the following link, but it provides some different opinion: http://operationbarbarossa.net/Myth-Busters/MythBusters2.htm...

Essentially, with a production run in the 55,000 range, it's no wonder it has able to overwhelm the enemy. Not unlike when Russian generals sent barely armed men against the enemy to face automatic weapons. They had the numbers.

It's strange then how Russians and Axis on the Eastern front had the same order of magnitude of losses.

Distilling the whole thing to a number isn't insightful, or a good description of how it progressed. I think you need to look at timelines.

The Germans obviously had the upper hand in the beginning as Russia was unprepared and Stalin having purged Russia's (USSR's) most able commanders (due to paranoia) before the war didn't help things. Had they been prepared Germany would not have been within 20 miles of Moscow. Germany grew overconfident and was unprepared for a war in freezing climate, whereas the Russians at least didn't have supply line issues to contend with.

Well every ally's entry to the war was botched. France was overwhelmed in a couple of weeks. U.S. lost much of it's Pacific fleet in matter of hours. Britain had its Dunkirk moment.

Unlike the Brits and Americans though, USSR didn't have have an advantage of natural geographic isolation. It's a bit unfair to pretend Russian case was somehow fundamentally different than the others.

> It's a bit unfair to pretend Russian case was somehow fundamentally different…

Can you elaborate on that? I'm not sure I follow.

Never the less, I would say the Russian front was different in that the Winters imparted severe contraints and challenges on the invading army. Another thing is Russia had the population numbers. They could afford to "throw" a generation at the Germans.

A little known tank destroyer - the M18 Hellcat could more than hold its own against German tanks, given the right tactics. It had a more powerful gun than the early Sherman models and phenomenal speed. (Still respectable today.) Some crews even used this speed to outpace the slow turret traversal of German tanks for the kill. The speed came at the price of very light armor. (No armor in the case of the turret.)

    "The best US industry could turn out in 1941"

The US wasn't in the war in 1941. So there's zero head start time.

Ironically, the German war plans were geared towards the conflict starting in 1944. If they had held off and gone to war later with vastly greater numbers of submarines, jet fighters (Me 262), and perhaps even a nuclear weapon...

Realistically the German's had zero chance of developing nuclear weapons. That wasn't known at the time, but we know enough about their program now to say that with certainty.