As we approach the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising I thought it would be appropriate to set the stage for the brave but doomed efforts of the Polish Resistance to free their city from Nazi occupation. Late in July of 1944 and as the Red Army approached Warsaw's outskirts it must have seemed as if the Soviet war machine was unstoppable. Alas, this would prove not to be true.
Even though much of the blame for the failure of the Polish Resistance to overcome their Nazi overlords must be placed at Stalin's feet (with his decision to not raise a finger to help the courageous resistance
The technical superiority of the T-34 (with a T-34/76 pictured here) in 1941,and during WWII in general has become the stuff of legend. Its apparent superiority has become so entrenched in the psyche of post WWII authors that it is now assumed without question. Some go as far as to claim the T-34 as “the finest tank of the twentieth century”, and that the T-34 “rendered the entire fleet of German tanks as effectively obsolete”.[1]
However, if battle performance was, and indeed still is, the ultimate determinant of the effectiveness of any weapon system, then unlike some
Though the Panzer V "Panther" is often lauded as one of the Second World War's top tanks there is a serious question as to whether the immense resources put into developing and fielding this tank was worth it. Though a new tank design when it first appeared in the Wehrmacht's ranks during the summer of 1943, the Panzer V owed much to the superb T-34 that had spurred the Panther's development. That said, the effort to produce a new medium tank to replace the Panzer III and IV had actually started in 1938. However, the developmental process had been hamstrung by a variety of problems.
