Prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II, the German armed forces were not aware of two newly developed Soviet tanks, the T-34 and the KV-1. As a result, they were surprised when they met them in combat for the first time in June 1941. The Germans' standard anti-tank weapons were found to be ineffective against these new Soviet vehicles.
"...We believed that at the beginning of the new war [Barbarossa] we could reckon on our tanks being technically better than all known Russian types; we thought that this would more or less cancel out the Russians' vast numerical superiority...but one curious incident made me at least slightly dubious concerning the relative superiority of our armoured equipment. In the spring of 1941 Hitler had specifically ordered that a Russian military commission be shown over our tanks schools and factories; in this order he had insisted that nothing be concealed from them. The Russian officers in question firmly refused to believe that the Panzer IV was in fact our heaviest tank. They said repeatedly that we must be hiding our heaviest models from them, and complained that we were not carrying out Hitler's order to show them everything. The military commission was so insistent on this point that eventually our manufacturers and Ordnance Office officials concluded: 'It seems that the Russians must already possess better and heavier tanks than we do'. It was at the end of July, 1941, that the T34 tank appeared at the front and the riddle of the new Russian model was solved."
Heinz Guderian: Panzer Leader, 1974 Futura pb ed, p143.
This episode seems to have slightly preceded Hitler's 18 April attendance at an equipment demonstration where he discovered that Ordnance had ignored his order to fit the Panzer III with the Kwk 39 L60 and instead installed the Kwk 38 L42. Had Guderian given his opinions of Russian tank development to Hitler? Of course, this was a bit late to change things.Heinz Guderian: Panzer Leader, 1974 Futura pb ed, p143.
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