Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Military History Visualized"
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I guess that one can use any kind of sensor as a trigger. Only human imagination is the limit. A mine that explodes when someone press on it (like when you press a key on your mouse), or a sensor that makes the mine explode when it hear loud noises, or mines that explode from heat, or a mine that explodes from a smell of certain chemicals, from certain color, from heat, from magnetism, mines that explodes from a tripwire, mines that can explode when you crush the glass of a window, you can make mines that sends out a a laser beam towards a sensor and when someone moves between the two and interrupts this laser beam and blocks it - then the mine explodes. You can make mines that reacts to electricity, magnetism, air pressure, the speed of particles moving around in the air.
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The ukrainian frontline is shorter. Wehrmacht had to mine the entire atlantic coast and the eastern front so of course was there large spots on the map not covered by land mines or other obstacles like barbed wire, dragoons teeths, punji sticks or whatever.
I think this video is useful as it puts yourself in shoes of the bad guys (Nazi-Germany and Ṋạƶì-Ŗǜṣṣḯâ ) and their challanges with their land mines. Their lack of mines that made it impossible to cover all areas with mines. The terrain challanges of putting land mines in certain areas.
Too often do we think of the challanges how to overcome the landmines from our perspective as the good guys. However by seeing the weaknesses in our enemy can we understand the weakpoints in our enemys defensive strategy that is based around mines.
Going through minefields is easy of the enemy does not defend that area, so having artillery and air superiority would be an option.
Another option would be to use amphibous landings to circumvent minefields - like the russians did when they invaded Finland in 1713 when they just landed troops behind every newly established defensive line of the Swedes.
And exploiting an area not covered by mines - where they enemy could not cover the area because of cows or lack of mines - is also an option.
There are some similiarities to old siege warfare in all this, where a fortress is a place where a small troop can hold up a much larger enemy force and inflict disproportionally heavy losses on them when they are forced to fight under unbenefitial circumstances.
Of course you can get cannons and siegecraft to batter a hole in the wall, dig tunnels under the wall, offer bribes, make threats, siege the place, use ships to cut off food supplies to the town.
But the best way to take a place is probably through a surprising coup. A few men can sneak in to the town through a trojan horse and open the gates so that a big army quickly can cross the water and storm into the city.
However with airdropped mines and artillery deployed mines do I think that warfare has become more complex than ever. Now are the minefields no longer just in front of you. But now can the enemy even also quickly deploy minefields behind you to prevent you from retreating and fleeing and catch you a death trap.
And with advanced sensors and drones flying everywhere like CCTV cameras, plus AI bot FPV drones in the future will it be hard to hide on a future battlefield. And electronic warfare and cyber warfare will become very important.
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PanzerIII was intended to be main tank of the German army - and it was the best tank they had in the beginning of the war, so this was the tank they wanted to use against other tanks.
And PanzerIV was a bigger machine that was just thought of as something to support other tanks or helping the infantry. Its gun was short because it was used to kill enemy bunkers and enemy footsolidiers.
And that was the German idea on how the war should be fought. But those dreams got crushed in 1940, because Germany didn't have enough panzerIII tanks to fight against France since the production of the German industry was so small. So Germany had to attack France with all that they had - which was mostly weak light tanks such as Panzer I, Panzer 35t, Panzer 38t and the most numerous of all German tanks was the Panzer II.
And Germany only had a very small number of somewhat good tanks as Panzer IV, Panzer III and StuG B.
But Germany won over France anyways.
And after the battle of France the Germans realized how good the StuG B was so the started to build them in large numbers, and they also realized that they had to replace their weak light tanks with more powerful Panzer III and Panzer IV tanks, and give the PanzerIII tank a new better 50mm gun so it would have any chance of winning a fight in a modern tank battle.
Then when Germany invaded Russia they had a much more powerful tankforce with much more StuGs and medium tanks - but even in 1941 so was the weak Panzer II still the most used tank in the German army.
And in Russia the Germans got many nasty surprises - they meet monster tanks like t-34 and kv1 which was the most powerful tanks in the world in 1941... just as the Panther and Tiger was the most powerful tanks in the world in 1943.
And the only way of taking out those tanks was to fire at them with the powerful 88mm anti-aircraft guns. And the shots from German tanks just bounced off the Russian armor of those beasts. The German solidier felt powerless against those Russian tanks, and the Luftwaffe anti-aircraft gunners didn't like their new job as tank killers, since this was nothing they was trained for, and driving this high siluette unarmoured thing close to the enemy lines was nothing they liked.
So Germany realized that they needed better tools that was able to kill those tanks before the Russians could start building them in large numbers.
So Germany started the Panther project in 1942, and they continued their development of the Tiger tank since the German army deseratly needed anything that could take on the Russian monsters. And to solve the most urgent crisis the Germans put some Russian 76mm guns they had conquered and putted them on Czech panzer 38t tanks and used them as the Marder38t tank destroyers.
And the old PanzerIII and PanzerIV got better guns so they would be better able to kill enemy tanks. Panzer IV got a long 75 gun and thereby became the best tank in the world in 1942, but the little panzer III was too small to carry such a big gun so it only got a 50mm gun that was good enough to kill most tanks, but it could not destroy the frontal armour of a KV1... so the German infantryman now always felt safer standing next to Panzer IV.
Panzer IV had become tha main tank of the German army because it had a better gun against enemy tanks, while Panzer III became more of a support tank because it too weak to fight the best enemy tanks.
But panzer III would live on for the rest of the war, because it was a reliable good tank that could turn fast. Its big problem was its weak gun, so the Germans took away the turret from the tank and built it like a box with a large 75mm gun on it. And without a turret, a tank becomes cheaper and easier to produce.
The turret also weights a lot, so by taking the turret off, the Germans could instead put a larger gun on the tank and give it extra thick armour. So the StuG became the most produced German tank of world war II, and also one of the most succeful. It was cheap to produce and it killed 3 tanks for every StuG that was lost.
In August 1942, the Tiger tank entered service, just about the same time when Germany was trying to conquer southern Russia and push forward into Egypt. And it was not a tank Germany planned to build in large numbers since it was too expensive and too difficult and time consuming to produce.
This heavy tank was intended to be a huge sledgehammer that would turn even the most well defended enemy position into pieces. And it would be a weapon superior to anything the enemy have, and it would be a great morale booster to the German troops and make the enemy solidiers piss their pants when they saw one these monsters show up.
And it was a good tank, but not good enough to justify all trouble that went into producing these machines. And they had their drawbacks - they were too heavy to use most bridges, and also most German military bridges.. and they needed 3 trucks to draw them to a repairshop because they were so heavy, and doint that thing is not a funny job at a battlefield where fire is raining down everyware.
And by 1943 the war had changed and Germany was now no longer the attacker, but now needed to defend her territory. And then the Tiger was forced to fight a type of war it was never build for.
And in 1943 Germany was getting the Panther which was starting to replace the old Panzer IV as the main medium tank of the German army. It was fast, had a good gun with excellent precision, penetration, range and reload time, and it had good frontal armour....and it could travel over snow and mud better than all other tanks - even those half its own weight, and its optics was superior to any tank during the war, and it was a pioneer in IR-sights (something Nato only began using in the 1960s).
But the tank also had serious drawbacks. It was expensive to produce and consumed many workhours to make one tank. It was too heavy to use on most military bridges. Its sidearmour was no better than other tanks despite this tank was so expensive to make. And the tank was an overly complex design so it often suffered from all kinds of problems from engine fires, electrical failures that prevented the gun from firing to all kinds of things. It needed so much repairs that it every year spent half its time in a repairshop, and therefore only could help the troops on the battlefield half the time. While Sherman and T-34 could be at the battlefield 80-90% of the time because they were tanks with less design problems.
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If Hitler thought that Russia was about to fall, then there would be no need to get Japan involved to share the booty. The Japanease Navy was an impressive addition to the Axis, but I think Hitler made a huge misjudgement when one compares the benifits of having Japan as an ally compared to having the USA as an enemy.
But as I said earlier, Hitler and Japan had to make a quick decision. Because Japan was quickly running out of resources, and without those resources the war in China would be doomed to fail. And Japan was furious on USA for their blockade, but on the other hand did they fear a war with this mighty power. And Hitler made the decision that he wanted to have Japan as his brother in arms, so he tried to impress them and make them believe that the war in Russia was almost over so Japan would be convinced to join the Axis and fight America togheter with Germany.
Personally I think that Hitler had reason for some optimism in 1941 and 1942. The Russian military disasters of 1941 was simply happening at an unsubstainable rate. He had misjudged the opposition and it was guessed that he would face opposition from 150 Russian Divisions, but a few months into Barbarossa it was estimated by his own military that he had been facing 300 Division equalents, and by late October over 150 Russian Divisions had been destroyed.
The German losses had also been heavy of course, but not as severe as the Russian losses. And as 1942 started Germany began the war with a decimated force, and so did the Russians. But in terms of firepower Germany was better off. Her tank losses had mostly been among the outdated garbage with shitty armour and guns, while all newly produced tanks were powerful machines - such as the excellent PzIVF,G and H models.
While Russia had lost of her good equipment in 41 and her industry was in great trouble with all movement to the Ural. Germany also had total control over the skies.
And after the catastrophic Soviet winter offensive and the disasterous Kharkov offensive in 1942, I would say that the Axis had its finest hour and Victory was almost at sight. The road to Southern Russia laid open for Germany to take and Japan was still having the upper hand in the sea battles of the pacific.
But just a few weeks later things would change forever with the battle at Midway. And Japan would lose her naval dominance. And later that year the Afrika korps would get defeated, and the battle for the Atlantic would turn bad for the Germanz, and the year would end with the disaster at Stalingrad. And the war would be lost.
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