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Eastern Front T-34 Essay

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“T-34’s Role in the Eastern Front: How the most versatile tank in WWII defeated the Nazis in Operation Barbarossa”
Shubir Shaikh
For: Dr. Aaron Plamondon
History 485
August 8th, 2015

During the 1930’s, the Soviet Union was a massive country that stretched from Asia pacific to edge of Europe. The country’s land bordered stretched for 12,000 miles, which was not defensively ready to protect her borders. Tanks were the perfect weapon for Soviet Union because of the wide open spaces and vast distances between cities. One of Soviet’s war theorists named Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who had extensive knowledge about tanks messaged to Kremlin during the inter-war period, that the Kremlin needs to invest in 40,000 aircraft and 50,000 tanks the Kremlin wanted a chance at defending her borders. T-34 medium tank was a major, technological advancement that shaped the Eastern Front politically. The T-34 drastically shifted the war on the Eastern Front, it shocked the invading German army and prevented Germany from seizing Moscow, Germany was only roughly 20 miles away from Moscow. T-34 was designed mostly by Russian engineers, built in Soviet and used all over the world. J. Walter Christie was an American who was a pioneer in designing tanks. Mikhail Koshkin got a idea of fast tank from Christie’s BT tanks. Koshkin used Christie’s suspension design for tanks. The American tank had to be secretly shipped to Russia; the BT tanks were shipped as tractor trailers to bypass the

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