Quote Originally Posted by Derfasciti
...the Soviets had much better tanks but were poorly upkept and it's crew poorly trained. How they got those tanks? Search me!
Good question. The Russian tanks were not much better with the exception of the T-34[1], based on an American design that the US military rejected. But some Russian general must have had a good eye to pick up the design - clearly Stalin did not kill all the talent in the Red Army in the 1930s purges. Or is there a tragic story to this too?

[1]The KV-1 was also an amazingly powerful tank for the early war period - there's a story about the Germans spending a whole day trying to knock one out when they first encountered it. But it was not produced in the quantities to have the kind of war-affecting impact of the T-34.