Tanks in the Battle of Germany 1945 – Western Front, Steven J. Zaloga

Tanks in the Battle of Germany 1945 – Western Front, Steven J. Zaloga

New Vanguard 302

The most significant element of this battle is mentioned right at the start – during 1945 the vast majority of new German tanks went to the Eastern Front, so when the Allies went onto the offensive in February 1945 they outnumbered the Germans by a factor of 18 to 1!

This mismatch influences everything that follows. For the Germans the Doctrine and Organisation section combines a look at the repeated attempts to produce an order of battle for a Panzer division that could actually be achieved with the handful of tanks left with a look at what units were actually available. For the British and Americans we can still look at the official structure of their armoured units

The same is true when we look at the tanks themselves. The author is well aware of the danger of using percentages when looking at the German tank force – on 15 March the Panther made up 63% of the tank force in the west, but that only amounted to 49 operational Panthers along the entire length of the western front! As always the unreliable nature of the Panther was part of its downfall, with another 103 Panthers out of service! As for the famous Tiger, only six were present on 15 March, making it entirely irrelevant.

On the Allied side both the British and Americans relied largely on the Sherman, which dominated the American tank forces and was the most common tank in British and Canadian service. However the Americans also introduced the Pershing and the M24 light tank, along with a range of tank destroyers, while the British also used the Cromwell, Churchill and a small number of Comets and even a few Valentines!

The Battle Analysis looks at areas such as the number of AFVs lost by each side, and what weapons were responsible for those losses. It quickly becomes clear that tank-vs-tank battles were pretty rare in this period, and instead infantry anti-tank weapons (Panzerfaust and Panzerschreck) became a major threat, accounting for 41% of Allied tank losses in May 1945. We don’t get similar figures for the Germans, mainly because in the collapsing Third Reich that sort of detail was no longer being recorded.

The focus in this book is on the statistical picture – how many tanks, how they were organised, what type of tanks, how did they compare with each other etc, how many were lost, and which anti-tank weapons were most effective. As a result we get a good overview of the nature of armoured warfare in the West in 1945. The main conclusion is that tank-vs-tank battles were increasingly rare during the last few months of the war, simply because the Germans ran out of tanks in the West! 

Chapters
Introduction
The Campaign
Doctrine and Organization
Technical Factors
Battle Analysis

Author: Steven J. Zaloga
Edition: Paperback
Pages: 48
Publisher: Osprey
Year: 2022


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