This decidedly utilitarian medium tank earned the praise of no less than the famed German panzer general Heinz Guderian, who affirmed the T-34’s “vast superiority” over the German tanks used in the operation. One of the key weapons systems in the Reds’ comeback victory - along with the Mosin-Nagant rifle in the hands of the immortalized sniper Vasily Zaitsev at Stalingrad - was the T-34. (As a gee-whiz trivia aside for anybody wondering about the operational moniker, its namesake was Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor from 1155 until his death in 1190, who was also known as Frederick Barbarossa on account of his red beard.)Įventually, of course, the Soviets turned the tide of battle and put a serious damper on Hitler’s drive to dominate Europe. Stalin, his generals, and the rank & file of the Red Army and Soviet Air Force were all caught with their pants down. Blooded at BarbarossaĪs students of World War II are well aware, Operation Barbarossa, Adolf Hitler’s grandiose invasion of the USSR, went poorly for the Soviets at first. This battle tank earned its treads in the brutal battles that pitted Stalin’s Red Army against Nazi Germany’s Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS during the Second World War, or as the Russians still call it, the Great Patriotic War ( Velikaya Otechestvennaya voyna ).

Regardless of whether or not Uncle Joe said this, the quote can easily be applied to a Soviet-designed ground-pounding weapon – the legendary T-34 medium tank. Russia’s T-34 Tank, a History: In response to my recent 1945 articles on the ubiquitous Soviet-designed MiG-21 “Fishbed” and MiG-23 “Flogger” jet fighters, a couple of my Facebook friends quoted the saying, “Quantity has a quality all its own” – a statement supposedly made by Joseph Stalin.

Battle of tank t-34 pelicula