Joshua Martin

3/1/2015
English 11
Freestone
Within the last one hundred years, the most influential wars have been determined by
tanks. One of the most important figures in the development of tanks was Adolf Hitler. As the
leader of Germany after the First World War and into the second, Adolf Hitler was very involved
with the wars that he waged. His obsession with size led him to create technological terrors that
dwarfed all those that came before them. I decided to research the development of tanks in
regard to Hitler and his obsession with the gargantuan in warfare.
I first got interest in this subject after seeing a documentary called,WWII: Hitlers Super
Tanks, I was fascinated by the scale of the tanks created and the scale of Hitlers obsession that
eventually led to their failure. The first time that Hitler was shown the power of tanks was when
his weapons developers showed him the first Panzer Tank. This tank was very small compared to
modern tanks but Hitler saw its potential and personally advanced the improvement and
enlargement of the Panzer Tank. The very first Panzer was small weighing in at only five tons,
measured five and a half feet tall, and had two machine guns. After the first model was released,
more advanced versions were quickly developed, all of which got larger and got bigger guns.
I then followed the timeline all the way to the Panzer Four. By the time the fourth Panzer
was developed, they had grown from five tons to twenty tons in a small span of years. These
were one of the first models to go into the battlefield and were deployed in the invasion of
Poland. The extreme effectiveness of these tanks when combined with air support and ground

troops was enough to crush almost all resistance in central Europe. The only existing tank that
could exceed the Panzer four was the Russian T-34 repelled Hitlers invasion because they were
faster, had thicker armor, and had larger cannons. This caused Hitler to yearn for having the
largest tank but didnt stop there.
To combat the Russians superior tank Hitler enlisted the help of Ferdinand Portia. The
newest tank Hitler desired had an 8.8 centimeter gun which would be the largest of any in
existence. The new Tiger Tank was twice as large as the Russians T-34 and was equipped with
an 8.8 centimeter cannon that was originally designed to shoot down planes in FLAK guns. The
first large test of the Tiger was at The Battle of Kursk (also known as Battle of The Bulge). This
was the largest tank battle in history and the outcome would determine whether Germany would
be successful with its endeavors on the eastern front invading Russia. The tanks were able to
push forward but eventually abandoned the Kursk Offensive, but the success of individual Tiger
Tanks convinced Hitler that bigger tanks were always better.
Next, I directed my research towards Hitlers next dream, The Maus. After the success
of the tiger tank as perceived by Hitler, he returned to Portia to create an even larger tank. This
monster weighed 207 tons with eighteen inches of steel armor, a 128 mm gun, and consumed a
liter of fuel every thirty meters. This was the last of the tanks that Hitler had envisioned that was
actually built and was never tested in warfare because the Allies were victorious before it could
be perfected. A task of which is basically impossible because the tank is too slow and
cumbersome to be effective in combat.
All of this went to show how Hitlers belief that bigger is better didnt apply to every
aspect of warfare as was shown by his many weapons blown far out of their useful limits. I

learned a lot about the development of modern tanks as well as the obsession with size that Adolf
Hitler possessed.

Work Cited
1.
2.
3.
4.

WW2: Hitler's Super Tanks. PBS, 2014. Documentary.

"Tiger Tank." Tiger Tank. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Mar. 2015.
"Panzer VIII Maus." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 01 Mar. 2015.
"The M-4 Sherman Tank Was Hell on Wheels - And a Death Trap | RealClearDefense." The
M-4 Sherman Tank Was Hell on Wheels - And a Death Trap | RealClearDefense. N.p., n.d.

Web. 04 Mar. 2015.

5. "Schwerer Gustav." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 04 Mar. 2015.