Tanks!

- Season 1

(2004)

During the Second World War the United States experienced a revolution in tank design and production. As Hitler's army swept through Europe, America transformed itself from an isolationist backwater into an industrial giant.

In 1940, Nazi Germany unleashed a blitzkrieg on an unprepared Europe. Hitler's tank division shocked the world with their overwhelming mobility, armor, and firepower. In 1942, Britain unveiled its new weapon of war to counter Nazi terror.

The Russian T34 medium tank was one of the technological wonders of World War II. The colossal tank stunned the German army and prevented it from seizing Moscow. The Third Reich's attempts to clone the T34 never came to fruition.

Witness the enduring images of the panzer formation of World War II and the Nazi's infamous Panther and Tiger tanks that have become synonymous with the Wehrmacht. Undoubtedly well-known, they were not the most numerous fighting vehicles.

Although it seems commonplace in the armies of today, the tank is a surprisingly new invention. Tanks first saw action less than a century ago in the First World War. The Tiger was the most complete fighting machine of World War II.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Out of sheer desperation, self-propelled artillery vehicles were rushed into production from war ravaged German factories to shore up their defensive lines on the Russian Front.

The battles on the Russian front during World War II were among the most destructive engagements ever fought. Between 1941-1945, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia fought an ideological war that cost millions of lives.

During the dark days of August 1942 there was still a chance that the Nazis might emerge victorious in World War II. After America entered the conflict, it would take the U.S. time to assemble a fighting force in continental Europe.

In December 1944, the Nazi regime launched a surprise counteroffensive in the Ardennes region of Belgium. The Battle of the Bulge represented a strategy devised by Hitler to split Allied forces between the Eastern and Western Fronts.