Germany ignores England

German heavy tank design began before the war. I would suspect that the desire to mount the 88mm gun on a tank would have happened with or without the T-34/KV-1 scare.

Even so given a modicum of sense the Germans would have produced some heavy tank in order to counter Soviet forces.

What might not develop is the line of PanzerJagers and the StuG with a long 75mm, without the need for them to act as stop-gap tank killers.

 

As stated above the Germany Waffenarmant was developing heavy tank designs. Plus Hitler in OTL wanted an 75mm armed tank but shortages slowed this down. If the Abwehr found out about the T 34 then the long barreled Pz 4 would have been pushed up.

 

What if...Germany did NOT "declare war on the U.S.?

 

Well there still leaves the issue of Italy, and with any good alliance the different countries would have stayed true to the Axis powers.

 

The thing is its fine building superheavy,heavy,medium,light tanks but the problem was I think was the way Germany was set up in ww2.The more advanced the tank the more problems that can go wrong with it, one good example would be the super basic Russian t34 and the basic US sherman advantage over the German Tigers.If you have a powerful industry like Russian then yes super advanced tanks can be built fast.A stupid mistake for Germans building tigers in 43 when they needed to build large amounts of light and medium tanks and fighter planes to replace their loses.The reason is Tigers needed so many parts to build them so much time needed to assambly them and so many workers to build just 1 tank.Another mistake added to the blunder book for ww2

 

The Tiger was never built as a main battle tank but, a heavy break through tank. I find the main problem with German tank production was in their breath of varaints. They had a tank for every situation. While the aliies just built mostly their main battle tank in numbers. If they had settled on the Pz 4 as their MBT earlier then they may have done better .

 

John

I disagree. The first british main battle tank was the centurion, it didn't make the war. The western allies made cruiser tanks, and relied on tank killers to fight tanks. It was a flawed concept.

In the first part of the war the Pz III was germanys main battle tank. In the latter part the Pz IV. Both splendid designs that could be upgraded without loosing too much performance.

The Tiger was a good design, but not availiable in large enough numbers. Sure it was high maintenence, but it was a fearsome opponent.

I don't find that the germans had a tank for every situation. The variations you describe are usually upgrades of the same design, or captured equipment (czech and french designs)

If there was a tank design that was not needed it was the panther. Too weak side armour, even worse maintenance than the tiger.