Paper Panzers, Berlin ’46, What If Armour, call them what you will, they are the armoured vehicles of World War Two Germany that seldom made it further than a designer’s drawing board. But for some reason they inspire many still. People wanted these to have made it to the field, they wanted a new Tiger, a new wonder tank, something more legendary. Would the Maus have been a success, would the Ratte have been anything more than a Typhoon Pilot’s wet dream ?
Did you ever wonder why there were so many of these, and why it was only in the days after the war that they surfaced as potentially good tanks and armoured vehicles that were just too little, too late ? I think the short answer is that the war ended a lot sooner than was expected. Germany expected the second front, but they also expected to stem it and I don’t think they saw the war being over within a year of it coming. I don’t think they saw the war finishing anytime soon so there was no urge to build the new stuff sooner while the current batch was doing the job. They knew new stuff would be needed, just not quite how soon it was going to be needed.
Contrary to common perception Germany wasn’t a country run on the lines of an ancient kingdom where all knees bowed to the whim of the king. Producers of war material still expected to run a business and to make a profit, they still wanted to be, and were, paid for their products, be that boots or tanks. Just like at any other time there were processes to go through, designs to submit, prototypes to be built and tested, contracts to be awarded.
Also contrary to popular belief Germany wasn’t a country that entered into massed arms production in 1933 and did nothing but build war materials for the next twelve years constantly trying to build more, bigger, better. In fact the level of output in 1939 was less than most comparable countries and the level in 1941 was actually lower than 1939. Germany thought the war was all over bar the shouting at that point. German war material production didn’t peak until 1944 after the Normandy landings when it became clear that the war was turning and that they needed a lot more men and a lot more equipment than they were ever going to have.
So it wasn’t really until then that the plans for the next great weapon, the next wonder tank, the next war winning miracle started to flow from the pens of designers into the hands of those who had the job of chosing what to build. And some were quite good. Some of course were just downright odd and bizarre, but the E series had merit, the Panther II had merit. The new breed of armoured personnel carriers went on to become what was used for the next thirty years as did the MP44, a weapon that almost never made it because it didn’t fit in with Hitler’s building plans. It succeeded because someone cheated the system.
Certainly production of any war materials was stunted by the bombing of industry, and so would have any new vehicle. But that bombing was never anywhere near as effective as has been portrayed, production was interupted, slowed, but never stopped. It went on and new vehicles began to make it into the protoype building stages. But then the war ended and there was no contracts to fill, no-one to pay the bills. So no new tanks.
So if the war had gone on for a few more years no doubt more of these would have made it onto the field of battle. But the war didn’t go on and they were never made, but enough was left to be tantalising. And therein lies the appeal, because there will always remain that unknown factor, that “what if” that has always taunted historians who like to wonder how things might have been if a different path had been taken.
Would the Panther II have made mincemeat of the T26E3 and the JS-3 ? Would the Germans have perfected stabilisation, spaced armour and night vision gear that would have allowed them to put bigger, but lighter tanks onto the field of battle that could fire at night and on the move ?
No one knows, and where speculation rules there are no boundaries to imagination. I suspect that is the appeal of Paper Panzers. On paper they can be perfect, unbeatable, awesome. And no-one can ever tell you a rivet is out of place.
