So, in case people here don't know, there's this """documentary""" television series called Greatest Tank Battles, which is essentially a Wehraboo wankfest. Every fucking episode has an overwhelming majority of its time devoted to anecdotal evidence by soldiers, with a small percentage actually being devoted to discuss the strategic implications of the offensives conducted by each side. Keeping that in mind, I present to you this colossal piece of shit. Don your biohazard suits and enter into the realm of Wehraboo wankery with me, comrades.

00:17-- "The Soviets unleash wave after wave of tanks on the beleaguered Germans." Okay so, before we start, I'd like to remind those who don't know that this is a typical Wehraboo wankpoint; claim that the Soviets won through sheer force of numbers, and that was all there was to it, aka the myth of the "Asiatic hordes", which is basically reminiscent of Nazi propaganda, used to excuse Wehrmacht war crimes:

[...]Operation Barbarossa was as Hitler claimed a "preventive war", which meant that for Nolte, Wehrmacht war crimes were portrayed as a defensive response to the threat posed to Germany by the "Asiatic hordes".

The entire "Asiatic hordes" myth was, of course, bullshit. The execution of Red Army soldiers for retreating was far rarer than many like to think, and the key to Red Army success was often outnumbering the enemy at the local level rather than on the entire front for an effective, concentrated attack, as was done during, say, Operation Bagration, a masterpiece of deception in which the Red Army successfully fooled the Nazis into believing that they would attack Army Group South instead of Army Group Center, thoroughly exploiting Hitler's paranoia over Romanian oil.

It is also worthwhile to note that even during late 1943-1944, the Red Army faced acute manpower shortages and could not afford to lose its soldiers in "human wave attacks." They would have to utilize deception and quick neutralization of the enemy. Quoting Glantz:

Regarding late 1943 onwards:

[...] it is worth recalling that the Soviets, like the Germans, suffered from severe manpower shortages. The staggering civilian and military casualties of the war, the large factories needed to maintain weapons production, and the demands of rebuilding the shattered lands reclaimed from the Germans all strained the supposedly inexhaustible supply of Soviet manpower. The manpower needed to build new mechanized and artillery units could come only by reducing the number of replacements provided to rifle units. Moreover, because the Soviets were almost continuously on the offensive, they inevitably suffered heavier casualties at the tactical level than the German defenders.

Regarding Spring 1944:

The basic problem was that, even at this late stage in the war, the Red Army forces opposite Army Group Center were still too weak to ensure a crushing numerical superiority. When the Stavka first began to plan the battle, it estimated, overcautiously, that there were 42 German divisions, totaling 850,000 men, opposite the approximately 1 million men in 77 divisions and 5 mobile corps of the 1st Baltic and 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Belorussian Fronts. To achieve a sufficient numerical advantage, the Soviet forces opposite Army Group Center soon received reinforcements totaling 5 combined-arms armies, 2 tank armies, 1 air army, 1 Polish field army, and 11 mobile corps—over 400,000 additional men. The plans also focused on deception campaigns and emphasized destroying the forward German forces as rapidly as possible.^[1]

Clear with that? Good, because the myth of "human waves" is going to be repeated ad nauseam in this farce of a documentary.

00:30--"We have to stop them, because it's gonna be worse if they take over Germany."

Oh, you mean like how Germany attempted to take over the Soviet Union and killed millions of Slavs, Jews and Roma people? I'm pretty sure things can't get worse than fucking genocide. I guess I can't expect better from an asshole who literally served in the Nazi army.

2:09--Another main point you should notice is that these fuckers have only interviewed a handful of former Red Army soldiers, and absolutely no Russian academics. The overwhelming majority of interviews are conducted with former German soldiers and German/Finnish academics. Furthermore, the personal anecdotes of the German soldiers are discussed in great detail (most of which end up being battles which the German soldiers win, curiously enough), while the Red army soldiers make all sorts of generic statements like "this was the turning point of the war", "we kept hammering at them until they died", etc. etc. In other words, the interviews are incredibly biased and designed to show the Nazis in a favorable light, as the soldiers who desperately struggled to save themselves against ruthless "Asiatic hordes."

2:17--The offensive they're discussing is the "Leningrad–Novgorod Offensive" conducted in January 1944. You'd think that the fuckers would at least have the decency to refer to each offensive by its proper name instead of referring to it as though it was some random mass-horde attack.

2:27--Oh FFS, the Soviets DID NOT ATTACK ALL ALONG THE EASTERN FRONT. The Leningrad-Novgorod offensive was a CONCENTRATED, WELL-THOUGHT OUT ATTACK primarily launched against Army Group North near Leningrad. It was NOT a "human wave" attack. The Soviets could NOT afford to merely use "human waves" against a well-defended enemy.

3:20--"The Russians always formed waves of tanks[...] and sent them forward as a huge group, as a blunt instrument"

Sigh. The usage of Red Army shock troops as a blunt instrument had more to it than what this dunderhead of an academic seems to suggest. They were primarily meant to outnumber and encircle the enemy at a set of points and not along the entire battlefront.

The primary target [of deep operations] usually consisted of a geographical objective and the destruction of a proportion of the enemy armed forces. Usually the strategic missions of each operation were carried out by a Soviet front. The front itself usually had several shock armies attached to it, which were to converge on the target and encircle or assault it. The means of securing it was the job of the division and its tactical components, which Soviet deep battle termed the tactical mission.

5:01--Aaaand they've done it. Instead of discussing the strategic consequences of the encirclement at Narva, they digress and talk about an engagement of 2 Stugs against 10 T-34s, in which the 2 Stugs miraculously win (which BTW, could quite possibly be an exaggeration). Quite the documentary they have right there!

8:43--"The Germans, desperate to stop the swarming T-34s" Just a reminder, they haven't stopped with the "human wave attacks" yet.

8:50--Oh geez, they're going to talk about the Tiger. No way this isn't going to devolve into a Wehraboo circlejerk, nope!

12:51--"Swarms of T-34s" Holy fuck why won't this shit just die?

13:00--Using the word "deadliest" to refer to the Tiger I tank? Check. Indeed, a tank so deadly that only 1347 were ever produced, most a large number of them being incapacitated due to maintenance and reliability issues.

Edit: Okay, so I'll some more context. For one, the fact that only 1347 Tigers were ever produced was a serious handicap, because in contrast, the Soviet Union produced 3,854 IS-2s and 2,311 IS-3s, and the British produced 7,368 heavy Churchill tanks, far more than both the Tiger I and its successor, the Tiger II combined. The United States produced 2,212 M26 Pershings, a tank that was comparable to the Tiger. The Tiger simply could not be produced in enough numbers to be an effective game-changer on any of the fronts. Also, since I have no statistics to back it up, I will not claim that most Tigers were incapacitated due to maintenance and reliability issues, though I am fairly sure that such an assertion is correct.

13:15--"All but imprevious to T-34 fire" That is, until you hit it in the side.

When firing APCR shells, [the 76 mm gun] could pierce 92 mm of armour at 500 m.

That's easily enough to penetrate the side armor of the Tiger tank at that range. Furthermore, when you take into consideration that an 85 mm variant was also produced,

The 85 mm gun could penetrate the turret front of a Tiger I tank from 500 m (550 yd) and the driver's front plate from 300 m (330 yd) at the side angle of 30 degrees

Not so impervious anymore, huh?

14:23--Okay, so the T-34, like an idiot, literally circles around the Tiger, exposing itself to enemy fire, not taking the opportunity to hit it in the vulnerable rear when it can, and gets hit. Whuda thunk that idiotic tactics lead to your tank getting knocked out???

19:27--Ya'know, the June 1944 offensive had a fucking name. It wouldn't hurt to call it "Operation Bagration" instead of referring to it as though it was just another wave of offensive attacks.

The rest of the documentary is mostly just a bunch of anecdotes after this. I'll just head over to the last part of it now.

39:51--Hitler was not "spared another Stalingrad" by the encirclement at Riga. Regardless of initial breakthroughs, much of Army Group North was still encircled within the Courland Pocket, and ultimately up to 180,000 soldiers surrendered by the end of the war, almost twice as many soldiers that surrendered at the Battle of Stalingrad.

[1]: Glantz, D. M., & House, J. M. (1995). When Titans clashed: How the Red Army stopped Hitler. Lawrence, Kan: University Press of Kansas.