How did the Wehrmacht achieve their stunning victories in France and early operation Barbarossa even though all of...

How did the Wehrmacht achieve their stunning victories in France and early operation Barbarossa even though all of their inventory at that time was shitty weaker tanks and the heavier tanks weren't produced until later in the war?

Because they were very lucky
Because they had the element of surprise
Because their opponents were not as well prepared
Because their tactical and operational skills were better
Because individual equipment (especially when it is not entirely outclassed, just perhaps slightly worse on the whole) is not as important as the above

The Manstein Plan basically; Hitler nixed the WW1 Redux favored by High Command in favor of it. Also having much better officers than the French overall, at all levels. Also Gamelin being a chuclefuck.

Tactics, it does not that you have slightly worse equipment as long as you know how to use it.

>at that time was shitty weaker tanks
They had good light tanks, thing is that they later found they had underestimated Russian tanks.

But the fact that Russia has way better tanks didn't stop them from obliterating the Russians up till October 1941

>element of surprise
lol

The Pz.35(t) and Pz.38(t) were far from weak. Also, german tanks had good mobility, which paired very well with the tactic of exploiting breaches in the the enemy lines to strike into their rear (where their H.Q and supply lines were located).

Literally a fluke, a once in ten billion event, which would never occur again.

Its almost as if heavier tanks are a meme and not worthwhile.

>Damn, Germany's been moving a lot of troops around lately.
>Wait, where'd Austria go?
>Poland?
>Czechoslovakia?
>Oh well it's probably noth--
>BLITZED

Outflanking the Allies through the Ardennes was completely unexpected, especially with a relatively large motorized formation.

>Oui, he would never pass through there, its just ungentlemanly... Oh mon Dieu!

it wasnt that they considered it ungentlemanly
they just thought no one would push thousands of vehicles
through forested mountains with only four serviceable roads

Most of their tanks had radios. So they would either mass their armour against a single target, communicate to have a flank going, call in for air support (a favorite) or ask for artillery support. Not to mention being able to warn surrounding tanks and infantry in the area.

>even though all of their inventory at that time was shitty weaker tanks

That's all anyone had. The Soviets had over 23k tanks, the largest armored force in the world at the time, but it was almost entirely light tanks and they'd lose 90% of them in the first six weeks of the war.

Yeah sure, that's why the Germans rushed the tiger to production

Britain had Matilda 2 tanks which were pretty heavy by comparison

The Tiger is a breakthrough tank designed to work with infantry to create a schwerpunkt, thus enabling the ligher tanks to exploit.

The combination of relatively low ground pressure do to the wide tracks (lower than a Sherman without HVSS), a powerful gun and thick (if poorly sloped) armour meant it could also be used in an anti-armour role with near impunity until the arrival of upgunned T-34s and IS-2s, but it was not what it was designed to do.

And with that said, the Tiger also weighs like 12 tons more than the IS-2 and is arguably only about as effective as a breakthrough tank (IS-2 suffers from low rate of fire with two-piece ammunition, but bigger boom; Tiger carries more shells and fires faster, but smaller boom and much larger profile), so yeah, anything heavier than an IS-2 or Panther was definitely a meme in WW2.

I mean, I love the KT and the Jagdtiger for how sexy they look but they really were useless pieces of shit whose jobs could be performed by much cheaper tanks. What are you going to use a superheavy chassis with a massive 128mm gun for when your existing long 88mm gun on a ligher chassis like the Jagdpanther is more than enough to deal with all enemy tanks?

It has to be understood that tank warfare is still in its infancy at the start of WWII, different people had different ideas about how to put these mobile fortresses to use.

France and Britain saw tanks as infantry support, moving in tandem with your soldiers as the frontline advances.

other people such as Patton and Guderian had different visions, namely they wanted to use tanks as a spearhead break through enemy lines and have infantry mop up the broken enemy positions. Guderian took this one step further by having tank and aerial units coordinate with each other, having air units bomb and soften up targets, tanks break through the weakened positions, and infantry come for mop up.

Tank production in the interwar years mainly focused on light tanks built for speed to move with infantry units, such as the British Vickers tank and the Soviet BT's. Germany's Panver I-III followed this same idea, with the Panzer IV being a fundamental reworking towards a heavier tank built for punching through frontlines, giving birth to the idea of the medium tank, heavier and better armored than your nimble light tanks, but not a mobile bunker-buster like the French Char-B or Soviet KV-1, and later the Tiger I and II.

The German doctrine of coordinating air attacks with tank advances paid off massive dividends in the early years of the war, as Britain and France were still mostly thinking in terms of World War I warfare where tanks such as the Mark IV were used as infantry support for advances.

After the initial shock of this new tank warfare wore off, the allied studied it and learned how to counter it, with the battle of Kursk showcasing the Soviet's answer to Germany's coordination tactics.

>Pz.35(t) and Pz.38(t)
>German
It was tanks that germs seize after annexation of Czechoslovakia.