Erwin Romsel Weaponry

A weapon that has been with war for almost the entirety of the previous century and all of this one thus far, the tank, has changed warfare in many ways. The advent of mobile armored weaponry all started with the tank, albeit in its most rudimentary of forms. At first, this new weapon did not seem like a game changer, but that did not last forever. The tank evolved into a more mobile and armored piece of machinery, tactics changed to account for these beasts of metal and fossil fuel, and the idea of warfare became even scarier for some. Eventually some battles were fought entirely around the idea of the tank, both sides scurrying about the battlefield, firing shell after shell. Time continued to pass and even more terrible weapons came, …show more content…
One can look to the desert warfare in North Africa between Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps and the Allied forces. Rommel and his vastly outnumbered, but tank-privy soldiers gave the Allies hell for years4. Not even his entire force was German, nor were they mostly composed of tanks, but the times of old guard skeptics had long since passed and the world saw just how much of a game changer the tank truly could be with the right ideas behind it. Of course, some might consider Rommel an outlier, considering that he is lauded as one of the most competent of the German generals, and is even revered by many enemies as a man of great honor . That sort of criticism should not invalidate the actuality of the situation though and the fact that the tank was used in a myriad of other ways as well. The Battle of Kursk in 1943 is another prime example. Some scholars even consider this battle to be more pivotal on the Eastern Front than the Battle of Stalingrad, while it also happens to be the largest tank battle in the entirety of the Second World War2. Kursk took place the year after Stalingrad after it was retaken by the Soviets. A city in what was then the Ukraine, Kursk became a defensive stronghold for the Soviets against what was a last ditch effort of the German armored forces to take territory they had once already held. This battle saw thousands of tanks engaging in combat. The entire battle was based off of an erroneous German plan to make an armored spearhead through enemy lines called Operation Zitadelle2. Luckily for the Russians, they had the help of British intelligence and the time to build up their own armored defense. The end of this battle, saw a definite turning point in the war with German armor reduced substantially in effectiveness when they were already overextended in terms of regular ground troops. Above all, the