The Real Behemoth of World War II

After Mr. Stewart’s lecture, you may have thought that the Mark VI Tiger had to be one of the biggest tanks in the German arsenal, however, this is far from true. Behold, the Panzer VIII Maus! This German WWII super-heavy tank was completed in late 1944 and was the heaviest fully enclosed armored fighting vehicle ever built. During the war, the Germans believed that the only way to compete with the Allies' vastly superior economic production was to produce better quality weapons. This lead to the Germans building some of the best military equipment out of all the countries participating in the war! Luckily for the Allied forces, only one functioning Maus tank was fully completed before the war ended, and it was never used because the testing grounds where it lay were captured by the advancing Soviet forces soon after. The prototype that was found by the soviets measured in at 188 metric tons, with a 128 mm gun powerful enough to destroy all Allied armored fighting vehicles then in service, some at ranges exceeding 3,500 meters!

The main objective the Germans had in creating the Maus tank was to punch holes through enemy defenses in the manner of an immense "breakthrough tank", whilst taking almost no damage to any components.  When looked at by engineers after the war, the principal problem in the design of the Maus was developing an engine and drivetrain which was powerful enough to adequately propel the tank, yet small enough to fit inside it — as it was meant to use the same sort of "hybrid drive", using an internal-combustion engine to operate an electric generator to power its tracks with electric motor units. Because of the obvious complications present, the tank was only able to go a slow 22 miles per hour, making it a lumbering giant on the battlefield. On top of engine-related complications, the vehicle's weight made it unable to utilize most bridges, instead, it was intended to ford to a depth of 2 meters or submerged up to a depth of 8 meters and use a snorkel to cross rivers.

Even though creating a tank like this is awesome in its own right, there was much controversy and confusion over why Hitler would decide to build the Maus. Nazi Germany had already lost its oil fields in Africa and was starting to run short on fuel for their vehicles. Furthermore, the allies were slowly closing in on the fatherland of Germany, giving very little time to come up with an answer. Because of these major hurdles, the Maus couldn't have been more impractical, being gas-guzzling monster that would obviously be very costly and time-consuming to produce  Even if Germany did have the resources to complete this massive project, there was a lot of controversy between military generals over whether or not heavy tanks were even that effective. While bulkier tanks did have stronger weapons and thicker armor, was it really worth the loss of mobility and fuel economy? Overall, most historians thought the decision to start developing this tank was mainly based on fueling Hitler’s Ego.  Influenced by a trend toward producing heavy tanks, many Allied armor developers were experimenting with different models during the middle years of World War II. Of course, Hitler had to do them one better.

Currently, the only surviving prototype of the Maus exists in the Kubinka Tank Museum, which I find pretty cool, looking at the history of the place. Kubinka was a top-secret armor testing range and proving ground from before World War II. All new tanks from Russian research and design bureaus and facilities and factories had to be first tested there. Also, Nazi German tanks and armored fighting vehicles that were either captured by Soviet troops or transferred by the US and the UK were tested in Kubinka. Located at Moscow Oblast in Russia, the Kubinka museum would be a great place to go if you want to see this behemoth of a tank close up.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kubinka_Tank_Museum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_VIII_Maus
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/nazi-germanys-king-tiger-tank-super-weapon-or-super-myth-17332
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/maus-meet-hitlers-super-tank-was-total-waste-time-45407