Panzer ace
Zaloga argued that the term "panzer ace" is a romanticisation of reality mixed with propaganda, as it is neither possible to correctly determine "tank kills" in the heat of battle, nor to separate individual performance from technological or battlefield advantage.
In contrast, British historian Robert Kershaw argues that the large number of tanks destroyed by some German commanders can be attributed to the skills they gained through years of combat.
[2] Historian Dennis Showalter has suggested that the confidence which the crews of Tigers and the operators of other relatively advanced weapons had in the capabilities of their equipment may have reinforced their ideological conditioning, and encouraged them to take risks in combat.
"[5][6] A 1943 New York Times story also labelled Chinese Major General Hoo Hsien-Chung as a "tank ace" for the actions of a force under his command during the 1938 Battle of Taierzhuang.
[11] The Soviet Military Review magazine notes further: "The tankmen's heroic deeds were popularised over the radio, in special orders of the day, in newspapers and leaflets, and in individual talks with servicemen.
[13] Overall, English newspapers devoted a lot of space to aircraft and naval tallies, human interest stories, and the Eastern Front, but paid little attention to tank combat.
[15] A veteran of the Eastern Front (as a member of a propaganda company), Kurowski is one of the authors who "have picked up and disseminated the myths of the Wehrmacht in a wide variety of popular publications that romanticize the German struggle in Russia", according to The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi–Soviet War in American Popular Culture by historians Ronald Smelser and Edward Davies.
[16] The most famous German "panzer ace", Michael Wittmann, is credited by Kurowski as having destroyed 60 tanks and nearly as many anti-tank guns in the course of a few days near Kiev in November 1943.
In another of Kurowski's accounts, while attempting to relieve the German 6th Army encircled in Stalingrad, Bäke destroyed 32 enemy tanks in a single engagement.
According to Neitzel, numbers of successes by highly decorated soldiers should be approached with caution as it is rarely possible to determine reliably, in the heat of the battle, how many tanks were destroyed and by whom.
[20] The Wehrmacht's intelligence service on the Eastern Front, the Fremde Heere Ost (FHO), routinely reduced the reported number of Soviet tanks being destroyed by 30 to 50 per cent[21] in their own statistics to make up for double counting and repairable vehicles.
[22] At the time of Operation Citadel (which led to the Battle of Kursk) and during the subsequent Soviet counteroffensives in the summer of 1943, German combat units claimed 16,250 tanks and assault guns destroyed.
[23] The historian Steven Zaloga opines that "tank kill claims during World War II on all sides should be taken with a grain of salt".
Though at times the Germans found themselves to be at a disadvantage (initially against the British Matilda II in North Africa and against the T-34 in 1941 in Russia),[31] as noted the Tiger I had an advantage over many allied tanks, e.g.
[32] Successful German tank aces were often in Tigers, including Johannes Kümmel,[33] Michael Wittmann,[34] Hyazinth Graf von Strachwitz,[35] Otto Carius,[36] Johannese Bolter and Martin Shroif.
