So I was playing around with Company of Heroes 2 the other day and played as the Red Army against the German Wehrmacht.
I pitted an IS2 and a T34/85 against 3 StuG III Panzers. I thorougly lost the battle while there was still 1 StuG left on the battle field. Considering the IS2 being of of the two most expensive tanks in the game, I started to wonder if this idea of the Red Army's tanks were actually that bad?
I am not asking if the German Panzer divisions have been glorified in media, both Tv and games, since we all know that, that is the case. What I am asking is if game designers have been unfair to the Soviets and what their tank army was able to accomplish.
OH! Something I know!
Russian tanks were pretty bad, but you have to remember that EVERYONE's tanks were pretty bad. Tanks were still fairly new and everyone was still trying to figure out how to build good tanks.
To elaborate on this, here is a page about common WWII myths and the important take away from this is the trials that the Americans performed on the Russian tanks at Aberdeen. In the original Aberdeen report the US army finds that the Russian tanks have some really amazing features, and some really poor features, but at the end of the day they both had something they could learn from one another. The are some blog posts about the trial, and how certain things weren't tested right that go into a bit more detail but I think the take away is that 'these tanks aren't really that bad.'
When looking at historical records from the Russian side, they don't report Germans as being invulnerable to their anti-tank guns and vice versa. Testing also shows that at average engagement ranges Russian tanks could penetrate German tanks..
IIRC France ended up with both Sherman and Panther tanks after the war, and had units that operated both. They didn't view the Panther as any better than the Sherman, and there were certainly situations where the Sherman was the preferred tank, and some where the Panther was superior. Generally this was due to the Panther's super gun and poor optics (Lack of a combined commander/gunner sight) that made it better for defensive long range shooting.
CoH 2 is not a military sim, and units are largely balanced based on modern perceptions of how strong tanks would be. If CoH was accurate to WWII you would end up with a game like Men of War (which is difficult to play, and has a steep learning curve, but certainly worth checking out if you want accuracy!). Namely, Russian tanks and German tanks would kill each other off a lot more evenly, rather than being so lopsided in favor of German tanks.