← Back to the front page

Most People Picture History Wrong, These Facts Will Set them Straight

Khalid Elhassan April 25, 2020 34 min

Franklin D. Roosevelt - Joseph Stalin — The Big Three of Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill, at the Tehran Conference in 1943. Rare Historical Photos

4. Germany’s Tiger Tanks Were Actually a Bit of a Flop

During WWII, few weapons struck as much terror into the hearts of British, American, Soviet, and other allied soldiers, than the prospect of coming across a German Tiger tank. So intimidating were they that the term “Tiger Fever” was coined to describe the panic that sometimes gripped Allied soldiers when they thought a Tiger tank was in the vicinity.

However, in the grand scheme of things, the Tigers were a bit of a flop. They were over-engineered – or more accurately poorly engineered. They were plagued with bugs, and often spent more time in the repair shop than on the front line. They were also expensive and hard to produce, consuming resources that could have been better spent on more effective weapons.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.