Operation Barbarossa

The Soviet-German front that opened with Operation Barbarossa proved to be the decisive theater of the Second World War.

[incomitatus]

According to the Germans, the Russian T-34 super-tank (& KV1& 2) came as a complete shock to their fighting troops in 1941 when they were first encountered. A small provision in the original prewar non-aggression pact, allowed each nation to send a delegation to each other's tank factories to see their latest tank building methods, and newest tank designs. The Russians sent a technical delegation to a factory manufacturing Pz.Kpfw. IVs. That Red Army delegation, loudly refused to believe that the Panzer IV was the Germany's heaviest & latest tank & complained to Hitler that Germany's newest tank(s) were being hidden from them by the Wehrmacht.. Meanwhile the Russians allowed a German Army delegation to visit a Moscow factory assembling the early version T-34. For some unknown reason the fact that the Russians were assembling this new and remarkable AFV under their noses never reached German intelligence. Guderian later stated that he had an inkling the soviets had an unknown new heavy tank because of their refusal to believe that the Mk-4 was Germany's heaviest tank. True story. One of the later excuses by the Germans was that the visiting German Army delegation in Moscow was made up of infantry & artillery specialists who weren't aware how dangerous this new tank would eventually turn out to be to Germany. Somewhere in the old captured German archives there must be a report sent back to Germany about what the German delegation witnessed in Moscow, I'd be curious to know what was in that document regarding that new T-34.