What you know about German tanks from World War II is not really history, but rather an echo of Nazi propaganda that has been repeated for 80 years. The Tiger, the Panther, the Invincible Aces, the superiority of German engineering. A beautiful picture that Gerbal’s department created to boost morale and which postwar mass culture uncritically picked up and replicated.

The reality was completely different. British and American tankers in Normandy were terrified of tigers. Still, in seven out of eight cases, they encountered a completely different machine, one that actually formed the backbone of the German tank forces, carried the entire war on its shoulders, and about which almost no one makes documentaries.

This is the story of the Panzer 4 and how military propaganda works. But before talking about the forgotten vehicle, we need to understand how the heroes who overshadowed it were created because it was not an accident or mistake by historians. It was a planned operation and it still works today. On the 13th of June 1944, a battle took place in the Normandy town of Vle Boage, which became one of the most widely publicized episodes of tank warfare.

Several Tigers under the command of SS Hopstorm Furer Michael Vitman attacked a British column. They destroyed up to 14 tanks and 15 armored personnel carriers in 15 minutes after which the Nazi propaganda machine went into full swing. Vitman instantly became the face of the Vaffan SS. His photos were printed in newspapers throughout Germany.

His wedding attended by the Hitler Youth Choir was covered as a national event to which Hitler personally sent 50 bottles of wine as a gift to the newlyweds. Decades later, historian John Buckley would write that many researchers still uncritically repackage Nazi propaganda. At the same time, Steven Ziloga would be even harsher, calling Wittmann the hero of all Nazi fanboys and noting the uncomfortable truth.

Most of the truly successful tankers of World War II were not tournament knights, but patient ambush hunters who never made it into the news reels. But in 1944, propaganda worked flawlessly and so effectively that it gave rise to a phenomenon that historians would later call tiger phobia. Allied tankers began to see tigers everywhere.

Any angular silhouette, any longbarreled gun caused panic and indiscriminate fire. In the summer of 1944, a British sergeant in Normandy spotted a German tank in a gap between hedgerros decided it was a tiger and his crew opened fire without even trying to identify the target. It turned out to be an ordinary Panzer 4.

This vehicle was seven times more common in Normandy at the time than actual Tigers. It got to the point where General Montgomery was forced to ban any mention of the Tiger superiority in official reports because the very information about it was destroying troops morale. Fear proved to be more effective than armor.

But wars are won not by fear but by firepower. And here the Third Reich had a problem that no amount of propaganda could solve. And now for the figures that break the usual pattern. During the entire war, Germany produced 1,355 Tiger Warmer tanks, fewer than the Soviet Union, produced T34s in a single month at the height of production.

During the same period, the German factories Kup Vumaga and Nebulongenberg assembled 8,553 Panzer 4 tanks of all modifications with production rates constantly increasing. While in 1941, an average of 39 vehicles rolled off the assembly lines per month. By 1944, this figure had grown to 300. In June 1944, when the allies landed in Normandy, 41% of German tanks on this section of the front were Panzer the Foes.

Another 30% were panthers and only 6% were the much feared Tigers. These proportions were no accident. They reflected a fundamental problem with the entire German tank program. The Panzer 4 was not initially intended for use against other tanks. Hines Gderrion, a theorist of armored warfare and one of the architects of the Blitzkrieg, conceived it as an infantry support vehicle with a shortbarreled 75mm gun for destroying firing points and fortifications.

At the same time, the lighter Panzer 3 would deal with enemy armor. It was an elegant concept that lasted until the summer of 1941 when German tankers in the vast expanses of Russia first encountered the T34 and KV1, vehicles whose sloped armor deflected German shells and whose 76 mm guns could penetrate German steel from distances at which Soviet tanks themselves remained virtually invulnerable.

This came as a shock to the German crews. Reports from the front described an almost mystical horror. Shells that had previously been guaranteed to pierce any armor now ricocheted helplessly off the sloped sides of the T34. Tank crews fired point blank and watched as the shells flew into the sky. General Gudderion later wrote that officers on the front lines demanded that the Soviet vehicle be copied immediately and put into production in German factories.

The command rejected this idea partly out of pride and partly for technical reasons and I’m but the scale of the crisis was evident to everyone. Instead of waiting for a fundamentally new machine to be developed, which would have taken years, Kroo received an urgent order to modernize the existing platform.

In the spring of 1942, a version with a longbarreled 75 mm KWK40 cannon appeared and the infantry support tank turned into a full-fledged tank destroyer. Not because it was intended that way, but because there was simply no other choice. And it did the job not because of the genius of its design, but because it could be mass- prodduced, quickly repaired, and kept in combat readiness.

It took about 9,000 man hours to assemble one Panzer 4 compared to more than 50,000 for a Tiger. When war turns into a battle of attrition, arithmetic becomes more critical than armor thickness. The Tiger was a one-off product for parade victories. The Panzer 4 became the only machine that fought throughout the entire war from the first shot to the last and did so on every front where Germany fought.

The Panzer 4 was the only German tank that fought throughout the entire war from the first day to the last and did so literally everywhere. In September 1939, it crossed the Polish border. In May 1940, it broke through the Arden into France as part of Raml’s famous ghost division. The seventh panzer division earned its nickname because it appeared where it was not expected.

The German headquarters lost track of it as often as the French did. Raml personally led the column from the front and it was the panzer tofo with their 75 mm howitzers that broke through the French defenses while light tanks cleared the flanks. Then the identical vehicles fought in the scorching sands of North Africa, landed in Italy, held the line in Normandy, and retreated all the way to Berlin.

No other German tank could boast such a track record. The Tigers and Panthers appeared too late and early models such as the Panzer 3 became obsolete and were discontinued. At the same time, the Panzer 4 itself underwent continuous changes, going through a dozen modifications from a SF A to J. Its armor was reinforced. It was equipped with increasingly powerful guns.

Shenen anti-cumulative screens were added and by the end of the war on the contrary its design was simplified for the sake of production speed. The electric drive of the turret was removed. The number of viewing devices was reduced. It was not a legendary tank but a working tool that was constantly patched up and adapted to the changing conditions of war.

Moreover, the Panzer 4 chassis became the basis for a whole family of combat vehicles. From the Stui4 assault guns to the Verbalwin self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, the platform designed in the mid 1930s proved flexible enough to carry weapons its creators had not even considered. Inside these machines sat people with very different destinies.

Bruno Fzen, for example, was born in Canada to a family of German Menanites, moved to Germany in 1939 at the age of 14, and in 1944 found himself as a Panzer 4 gunner on the Eastern Front, a citizen of an Allied country inside a German tank, firing at Soviet troops. After the war, he returned to Canada. He worked as a consultant at the Ottawa War Museum until the end of his life, leaving behind rare memoirs about what it was like to fight inside this machine.

His memories are devoid of heroism. He describes the mud, breakdowns, fear of Soviet attack aircraft, and constant uncertainty. In one episode near Chernipy, his crew waited an ambush by the road for several hours, not knowing whether the Soviet column would appear and whether they would be able to fire first. This was what the war was like for thousands of Panzer 4 crews, not as aces or in pursuit of glory, but simply trying to survive.

But if the Panzer 4 was the workhorse of the Vermacht, the Red Army had its own people who knew how to turn that workhorse into prey. Dimmitri Fedorovich Linenko was born in a Kuban village with the telling name of Fearless, and he fully lived up to the name of his homeland. In October 1941, when German tank columns were rushing towards Moscow, he commanded a platoon of T34s in Colonel Katakov’s fourth tank brigade, and he was 27.

On the 6th of October near the village of Pervy Vaughn in the Oral region, a battle took place that showed what a skilled commander in a professional machine was capable of. Labrinenko’s group of four T34 tanks encountered a German column consisting of several dozen armored vehicles from the Vermach’s fourth tank division.

Instead of retreating in the face of superior forces, Linenko used the terrain and struck from ambush. When the battle was over, 15 German tanks were burning on the field and not a single T34 was lost. Labernenko personally scored four vehicles in that battle. He did not seek out chivalous duels. He fought like someone who wanted to win, not become famous.

General Le Yoshenko later recalled how the lieutenant carefully camouflaged his vehicles by placing logs in false positions that looked like tank barrels from a distance. The Germans opened fire on the dummies, revealing their positions and wasting ammunition. When they got close enough to be sure they’d be hit, Linenko hit them with fire from his ambush.

It should be noted that early T34s lacked a commander’s cupula, and the tank commander himself served as the gunner. Lavenko personally destroyed each of the 52 tanks. During 2 and 1/2 months of continuous fighting near Moscow, he fought in 28 battles and replaced three tanks lost in combat. 52 German tanks and self-propelled guns were destroyed, most of which were Panzer 3 and Panzer 4 tanks, the backbone of the German tank forces at that time.

No other tank commander in the Allied armies surpassed this result during the entire war. On the 18th of December 1941, immediately after the liberation of the village of Goruni near Vololamsk, Lranenko climbed out of his T34 to personally report to the brigade commander about the destruction of the 52nd tank.

A few minutes later, a German mine exploded nearby and a fragment hit him in the head. The best tank ace of the Allies died at the age of 27. However, he would not receive the title of hero of the Soviet Union until 1990, half a century later. Lyenko was forgotten because he died too early. But there was a tankman who was overlooked for an entirely different reason.

He lived almost until the end of the war, destroyed more tanks than anyone else in history, and still did not receive his country’s highest award. Lavinenko’s tactics almost mirrored those of the best German tankers. No frontal attacks, but ambushes, no ostentatious heroism, but calculation and patience.

And among these German tankers was a man whose name was supposed to become a symbol of the Panzer Rafa. But it never did. Kurt Kispel began the war in June 1941 as a simple Panzer 4 gunner in the 12th Panzer Division, part of Army Group Center. Together with his commander, Lieutenant Helman, and his friend Alfred Rubble, he fought his way through the encirclement near Minsk and Smelinsk, the battles near Lennengrad, and the offensive on Moscow.

By January 1942, he had already destroyed 12 Soviet tanks. And his commanders quickly realized that Kispel possessed a rare gift, an almost supernatural ability to accurately judge distance and hit targets with his first shot. Later, he would set an unofficial war record by hitting a T34 from a distance of 3,000 m, a shot that most tankers would consider impossible.

After retraining on the Tiger in 1943, Kispel continued to increase his tally. At Korsk, he destroyed 27 Soviet tanks in 12 days of fighting. By the end of the war, his total tally had reached 168 confirmed victories, more than any other tank commander in World War II on either side of the conflict, including Vitman himself.

He was the only non-commissioned officer in the tank forces whose name was mentioned in the official Vermach reports. He was nominated four times for the Knights Cross, the Third Reich’s highest military award, and four times he was denied. The reason was simple. Npel categorically did not fit the image of an Aryan hero required by Nazi propaganda.

He wore a beard and long hair in violation of regulations, had a tattoo on his neck, and was utterly unable or unwilling to hold his tongue in front of his superiors. Once at a railway station near Kov, he saw an Inzat group officer beating Soviet prisoners of war and beat the officer himself. Only his impeccable combat record saved him from a court marshal.

According to Rubble, Kispel never sought personal glory and willingly seated victories to other crew members in controversial situations. Joseph Gerbles, who personally oversaw the creation of a cult of tank aces around Vitman, never once mentioned Nispel’s name in his diaries. Germany’s best tank commander proved completely unsuitable for propaganda because he refused to play by its rules.

On 28th of April 1945, 10 days before the end of the war, Nispel’s royal tiger was hit in battle near the Czech village of Ostice. A piece of shrapnel hit him in the head and he died from his wounds without regaining consciousness. He was 23 years old. For several decades, his grave remained unmarked until 2013 when Czech searchers identified the remains by his army dog tag.

Nispell, Labrinenko, Fzen, thousands of unnamed crews. They are all part of a story that the propaganda of both sides chose not to tell. Stories about who really carried this war on their shoulders. In July 1943 near Kursk in the largest tank battle in human history, Germany threw about 2,500 tanks and assault guns into battle.

Almost 70% of all armored vehicles on the Eastern Front. Of these, only 146 were Tigers and another 200 or so were Panthers on which the German command had placed special hopes. Operation Citadel was supposed to be a triumph for the new German weapon. The Panthers were specially reserved for this strike. Instead of a victory, it was a failure.

The vehicles broke down on the march, caught fire without a single hit, and got stuck in the mud due to an illconceived transmission. By the end of the first week, most of the Panthers were in repair parks or burning out in the neutral zone. And again, as always, it was the Panzer 4 crews who had to fight. This ratio remained the same until the very end of the war.

The Tigers won the battles that made it into the news reels. At the same time, the Panzer the Force carried the front, remaining in the shadow of its own propaganda. Several thousand heavy tanks became legends while 8,553 workh horses turned into statistics that only experts remember. And this oblivion continues to this day in any ranking of the best tanks of World War II.

The Panzer 4 invariably gives way to the Tiger and Panther. Even though it was the backbone of the Panzerafa from the first to the last day of the war, we still look at that war through the eyes of Gerbles without even realizing it. But that is the main lesson. Wars are not won by miracle weapons or heroes from propaganda posters.

They are won or lost by those who do their job day after day without expecting glory or rewards. Nispel and Leenko never met, but they fought in the same way, without showing off, without chasing recognition, with the cold calculation of professionals who understand that the last thing a soldier wants is a fair fight.

Both died before reaching the age of 30, and both were forgotten by their country’s propaganda. One because he did not fit the desired image, the other because he died too early. History remembers Tiger and Wittmann, but the war was fought by Panzer 4 and thousands of nameless crews about whom no one made news reels.