next ladies and gentlemen we have three fine young men from Germany they're coming hold on they're coming here we are Penzer weapon [Music] [Applause] [Music] this video is sponsored by RetailMeNot more on that in a minute so this is part two to my previous German tank video where I left off talking about the production methods that slow the number of tanks available on the battlefield these changes became the hallmark of the next era of German tanks the Gen threes which are what most people think about when discussing German tanks the tiger Panther Tiger SB or Tiger two these tanks see Germany shift from an emphasis on speedy maneuverable tanks too thick boys with big dick energy the panther was thrown into production very quickly his response to Soviet tanks it suffered in its early days from mechanical issues due to a very short development period though the tiger 1 had been in development before the war but the initial design being proposed in 1935 for a large breakthrough tank though later grow from a first proposed 30-ton design to a 57-ton in the final Alpha C very these tanks would have some teething problems but in their later variants the reliability issues would be addressed although not completely fixed with some of these late war problems being detailed in the postwar frangipane Thur report tiger ii was the final fielded tank model and was the pinnacle of german heavy tank design showing up very late in the war with very few models being made and often following victim to fuel shortages causing them to be abandoned in recent years the second look has been taken at these tanks showing that in a defensive position the guns and armor that they had made them excellent vehicles but due the complexity of their designs and reliability issues they weren't completely all that they were made up to be there's a really interesting talk by John partial online where he explains the different approaches to manufacture between the different tanks and he highlights the difference between the low-cost few model long runs system of the Allies and the high cost multiple model few runs to smooth the Germans and this is what I was getting to with the multiple variant issue earlier he mentions that when going through the tiger reference Bible there were enough changes made during the production cycle that on average every sixth tank was in some way different than the previous ones and as I said most of these were smaller changes that didn't change much about the overall performance of the vehicle such as the repositioning of the few men on the tiger one with bigger changes such as upgrades for an HL 210 to an HL 238 being less common but it shows how often changes to the design were made that would overall slow down the production process fewer units to be produced that rarely make any sweeping positive changes to the capability of the vehicle that redesigning more important parts such as the gun or the power system would have and these are the changes that you see made in major increments in the Allied factories that kept older designs relevant despite this though gentry german tanks when implemented correctly did perform quite well on the battlefield which makes sense with them having very powerful guns being used mostly on the defensive however because they are on the defensive kill counts for german tanks are very difficult to reliably track and they have most likely been inflated over the years the most obvious symptom of this is the near hero-worship of german tank cases and their kill counts that aren't based on anything very substantial I'm sure a lot of you have seen this image before on some sort of forum or newsfeed and you might have wondered for these big claims being made where these numbers came from and the answer is frankly very unreliable places German tank ace kill numbers come from two main places claims from the crews themselves and memoirs or field reports or propaganda pieces from the time shown to the general public in Germany to create a continued hope for the war effort it should go without saying that neither of these are very reliable sources for numbers memoirs are troublesome in general just because they're often not sourced or poorly sourced and are very open to personal bias and the propaganda newsreels are exactly that propaganda the Germans themselves and their reports on Soviet tank losses were aware that their tank crews overestimated kills with many of them able to be repaired once knocked out or only being rendered inactive for that engagement able to be put back into the fight once the particular battle is over and often reduced the number of kill claims by 35 to 50 percent to get more accurate readings on their guessing's of remaining soviet tanks this really well sourced article down at the description going into detail on this coming to the conclusion that basically a skill claims are nearly impossible to verify and shouldn't be taken too seriously and a discussion on them really doesn't go anywhere but that's not to say that German tanks didn't kill unfavorable ratios especially late in the war as being on the defensive would suit that very well Germany closed the war in an interesting spot as they had a few tank designs that they were working on that didn't get past the trial phases before they were utterly destroyed at the end including the super-heavy mouse in e100 along with a whole new line of standard Panzers that would replace the current line of tanks with different classifications of models that would share as many parts as possible to simplify production and repair the Maus had two prototypes pleaded that the Germans destroyed before the Soviets could get to them with one still surviving made up of the turret of one in the hull of another the e100 had one prototype that wasn't yet completed that was found by the British at the end of the war taken back to Great Britain and later dismantled a lot of people think that these super heavy vehicles have they gone to production and seen action would have been very successful due to the two-dimensional look at vehicles the various tank games had promoted with the idea that more Armour and a bigger gun in a vacuum means better design but both of these tanks that could have only been made in small numbers would make very big targets in the battlefield that although hard to punch through would be slow poorly maneuverable targets for things like fighter bombers or large-caliber artillery or even infantry if one of these large tanks was out unsupported and probably would not have made really any difference in the grand scheme of the war sizing up these large behemoths the pinnacle of German tank production as it were really gets me to my final point the biggest criticism that German tanks get is that the gen 3 tanks although impressive should have been ignored in favor of producing more Panzer Ford's or other vehicles that would have been made in higher numbers to play the same production game that the Allies were the issue is that Germany was not set up in any way to play the numbers game even if he focused more on Panzer force the fuel and manpower shortages would still curtail the numbers of them that you could have deployed at the cost of less capability from the vehicle that you send out yes the German Gen 3 tanks are overcomplicated and they were really like taking a nice sports car to a demolition derby but although it wasn't the best strategy it was the best option out of a list of bad ones in the situation that Germany had backed itself into and I know I sound like a broken record at this point with all the videos that I made about this but by the time this last generation of Tanks makes it to the field Germany is in an economic war that it can't win so although the loss of one tank is a huge loss to the Germans compared to the loss of one tank for the Allies it's hoped that it can take out enough allied ones before it's destroyed to make it worth it by it being the best thing that it can be now the reliability issues sort of fly in the face of this but the things that would have resolved these issues such as engine development and stronger tooling take time to create time that Germany didn't have so the option they went with at the end of the war although vastly different from what they wanted going into the war with fast tanks for maneuver was the best option they had left to go with out of a need for more performance out of every vehicle pushing them towards the only solution they could economic before that was the best of a bad situation now as you can imagine these tanks were not cheap but the Germans were stuck paying full price because they had no other option when it comes to your own purchases that doesn't have to be the case RetailMeNot is a free search tool that searches the Internet through thousands of coupons and deals for anything you might need including clothes electronics travel restaurants even prescription drugs they now have a free browser extension called RetailMeNot Genie that you just have to install that works in the background all of the time on any sites you use and it's compatible with all major web browsers you'll never have to search for a deal again with RetailMeNot Genie and the extension is so lightweight that it never interferes with anything else you're doing online just have the items to your cart and the genie implies the coupons or promo codes right at checkout it's completely free very simple to use and pretty much the definition of a win-win visit my link on the screen or in the description to download the free RetailMeNot genie browser extension today and start saving the easy way they would also like to offer a giveaway so that you can enter to win $100 Visa gift card by downloading the genie browser and letting us know in the comments what deal you're most excited to use we'll pick a winner from the comment section below I'd like to thank my patrons on patreon for making these videos possible I only have a few more countries left to do in this series but I'd be interested to hear what everybody wants to see next so if you have a certain country out of France Soviet Union any of the ones they haven't covered yet let me know thank you all for watching and I'll see you on the net [Music]