The Soviet T-34 tank was the primary tank for the Red Army throughout most of World War II. It was based on a design from the American M1928 tank and featured a suspension innovation from U.S. innovator J. Walter Christie. Before the U.S. entered the war, however, turretless versions of the M1928 had to be sent to the USSR as factory equipment.
When the Red Army finally got its hands on the tanks, they really made it their own and began to produce designs of their own. Cheaper and easier to build than other tanks, the T-34 was the most produced tank of the entire war, which was a good thing, because the Soviets really needed a weapon to match the German Blitzkrieg. When it was first introduced, it had the exact effect the Red Army was hoping for.
In June 1941, Nazi Germany launched a surprise attack on the Soviet Union. After lulling Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin into a false sense of security for years as it completed its dominance of Western Europe, Germany was ready to fight the massive Soviet Red Army, and it was initially so successful, things began to look really bad for Moscow.
All across the Eastern Front, from Finland in the North to the Baltic countries, Belarussia, to the Ukrainian border with Romania and the Black Sea in the South, German forces advanced on the Soviet Army. Its gains were quick, capturing hundreds of thousands of Soviet prisoners, fighting its way to Leningrad in the North and reaching the outskirts of Kyiv in the South.
As the German advance reached the Dvina River, near Riga, Latvia in July 1941, the Soviet Union was finally able to unleash its new tank on the invading enemy. The T-34 could reach speeds of more than 50 miles per hour, had a turret diameter of 76.2 millimeters, and could not be destroyed by the Wehrmacht’s traditional anti-tank weapons. Even German Field Marshal Alfred Jodl was shocked at the new tank’s performance.
If Jodl was surprised, it must have been downright horrifying for the German soldiers on the battlefields near Riga, who were expecting an easy victory over an unprepared and obsolete enemy. Instead, they were fighting the fastest, most advanced tank in the world, and they had no weapons that could stop it.
When the Germans pulled up a PaK 36 anti-tank gun to destroy the T-34, the Russians simply drove over it, crushing the weapon and scattering the German gun crew. Next up were two Panzer II tanks, which the T-34 immediately engaged. Jodl recollects that at least six Panzer rounds struck the T-34, but bounced off of it, “sounding like a drumroll.”
After taking out the two German Panzers, the T-34 cut a nearly nine-mile-long path of destruction through the invader’s lines. The Germans, by now probably flipping out at the sight of the behemoth tearing through them like a hot knife through butter, finally managed to take it out using a howitzer, leveled out, and fired at close range. But that was just the first encounter. The Red Army had more than 900 T-34s by 1941.
Another T-34 is said to have taken at least 30 hits in its sloped armor by 37 and 50-millimeter anti-tank guns. Not only did this not take out the T-34, but the Soviets still inflicted massive casualties on the Germans before driving back to its own lines. The PaK 36 anti-tank gun became known as the “Tank Door Knocker” because it couldn’t penetrate the armor.
The T-34 was not impregnable, of course. The Germans would use its 105-millimeter howitzers on them to great effect. Of the more than 20,000 tanks lost by the Soviet Union in the war, only 10 percent of them were T-34s – and mostly due to poor tactics and even worse maintenance.