1. Hitler’s Mistakes With Super Weapons Helped Hasten His Defeat
The Maus was intended to spearhead German attacks by smashing through opposition and destroying all enemy armor it came across, while impervious to damage from enemy tanks. With 9.4 inches of turret armor, 8 inches of hull front armor, 7 inches of hull side armor, and 6 inches of rear armor, the Maus was immune from Allied tanks, whose shells would simply bounce off the behemoth. However, it was built in 1944, by which time the Allies had complete aerial supremacy over the battlefield. The Maus did not have sufficient armor up top to protect it from armor-piercing bombs or rockets from above.
Ultimately, the Maus was symptomatic of Hitler’s irrational obsession with big things and superweapons. He was indifferent to, or unable to understand, the concept of relative cost-effectiveness. He had trouble grasping other “normal” weapons that could accomplish the same task at a fraction of the cost. Using such normal weapons instead of turning to superweapons would have freed up scarce resources for other uses that could have better served the German war effort. Fortunately, Hitler persisted with his mistakes, which only helped to hasten his defeat.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading
Atlantic, The, October 24th, 2012 – ‘Time Me Gentlemen’: The Fastest Surgeon of the 19th Century
Bartov, Omer – The Eastern Front, 1941-1945: German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare (2001)
History Collection – Absurd Medical History Moments that Prove People Have Always been this Dumb
Clark, Alan – Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict, 1941-1945 (1985)
Cracked – How a Surgeon Once Killed Three People in One Operation
Dungan, Tracy D. – V-2: A Combat History of the First Ballistic Missile (2005)
Erenow – 100 Mistakes That Changed History: A Math Error, 1492
History Collection – 8 Medical Practices From Medieval Times That Will Turn Your Stomach
Extreme Tech – Tech Wrecks: Lessons From Some of the Biggest Hardware Screwups
Gargus, John – The Son Tay Raid: American POWs in Vietnam Were Not Forgotten (2007)
History Net – The Truth About Tidal Wave
Montefiore, Simon Sebag – Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (2005)
Murphy, David E. – What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa (2005)
Pangeanic – The Worst Translation Mistake in History
History Collection – History’s Failed Military Weapons
Searching in History – Tragic Death of Francois Vatel
Tank Encyclopedia – Panzer VIII Maus
Telegraph, The, August 29th, 2007 – Key That Could Have Saved the Titanic
Time Magazine, September 28th, 2015 – How Being a Slob Helped Alexander Fleming Discover Penicillin