Maus Tank: Hitler Wanted This Massive Tank (And It Was a Massive Mistake)

Warfare History Network

Security, Europe

And this is why.

Typical of Hitler’s vacillations on his many super weapon projects, on November 4, 1943, development of the Maus was ordered to cease, and only one was to be completed for further evaluation.

As early as 1941, the German high command had visions of military technology that was far ahead of its time, and many innovative technological concepts were becoming reality. Had some of them been produced in a more expeditious fashion or in greater numbers, most historians agree that they would have doubtless prolonged World War II, if not altered its outcome entirely.

Many of these “wonder weapons” were highly practical concepts and have as their progeny the cornerstones of modern military arsenals— the world’s first assault rifle, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and jet fighters to name a few. And then there were some bizarre concepts, which appear on the surface to be nothing more than an extension of their inventor’s ego. The Maus (German for “Mouse”) super-tank certainly falls into the latter category.

The Panzerkampwagen (PzKpfw.) VIII Maus was a 188-ton behemoth developed by Porsche at the behest of Hitler himself. Impractical does not begin to describe it, and the timing of its introduction was stupefying. Why, when Nazi Germany had lost the oil fields in Africa and was starting to run short of fuel for the vehicles they had, would they introduce a gas guzzling monster that would obviously be very costly and time consuming to produce? This kind of decision making was one of the great intangibles about Hitler, which confounded his staff as much as it does modern observers. Hitler jumped from one fad and crazy idea to another. The Maus was probably influenced by a trend toward producing heavy tanks that many Allied armor developers were experimenting with during the middle years of World War II. Of course Hitler had to go them one better.