Doctrine of tank employment.
Forget everything else and all the answer that will say “soviet bad, crapy tanks, sent mass to die without brain, uhhh, oggghh”…
The doctrine of the Germans and Soviets were the only modern doctrine. Japan, France, UK, Italy and the US kept using WWI theories.
In Germany, Russia, France and UK was a movement of army theoreticians that saw the game changing tools that the tanks were, and more combined with the Aviation.
While in France and UK those officers and advocates of the tanks as independent combat forces, were silenced and told to shut up, in the Soviet Union and Germany they were enthusiastically heard and given room to test and develop the future of warfare.
That was specially tested in the Spanish Civil war (SCW) were different tank employment concepts were used along technology and tank concepts.
From the SCW it was very clear that slow infantry support tanks were useless and lagged behind other tank types that then had to abandon their roles to support the infantry since the other tanks were still on their way when troops made large advances.
Multi-turreted and multi-cannon was also useless, over-complex, unreliable, costly to produce, heavy and with low mobility.
Soviet Union: Their tanks were designed and organized to operate inside the Deep Battle Doctrine:
Deep battle envisaged the breaking of the enemy's forward defenses, or tactical zones, through combined arms assaults, which would be followed up by fresh uncommitted mobile operational reserves sent to exploit the
strategic depth
of an enemy
front. The goal of a deep operation was to inflict a decisive strategic defeat on the enemy's logistical abilities and render the defence of their front more difficult, impossible—or, indeed, irrelevant. Unlike most other doctrines, deep battle stressed
combined arms
cooperation at
all
levels: strategic, operational, and tactical.
If you read that, you can see that is identical to what people call “Blitzkrieg”, a term that was made up but WWII british newspapers and the german NEVER used.
It is the same the germans used, because the theory development in both countries reached to the same conclussions, including the results of the SCW.
Thanks to sanctions and prohibitions to Germany after WWI, they developed everything in secret, and tested tank forces in the Soviet Union, in the Kama Tank school and took lessons from the soviet military.
In this doctrine, the sock forces, that will attack the enemy weak spots, are a Combined Arms Force. Independent combat tank units attacking the enemy lines and advancing to reach the enemy rear supported by heavy artillery support, air support and protection and mechanized infantry that followed them.
Later the Soviets tested in real life this against Japan, in the Khalkin Gol battle, with absolute success.
So the doctrine of employment for the soviet tanks were that, attack the enemy, break them, and keep penetrating their territory leaving weak enemy live units to be dealt latter by the advancing infantry.
So following this they designed their tanks leading to the successful BT series, T-34 series, and KV/IS series.
Soviets organized their tanks in Tank Corps. Depending the year 2/3 Tank Regiments, 1 light reccon regiment, 1 Motorized Rifled Infantry, 1 assault/antitank regiment.
True is, they had then specialized tanks to act as “assault guns” that were meant to destroy enemy fortifications. This tanks latter were employed successfully as anti tank units when the Soviets were in problems in 1941 and latter with the heavy armored Tigers, leading to the development of specialized tank hunter units (the SU-series), known in english as Tank Destroyers.
Germany: Practically the same that the russians. But with a major emphasis in crew training.
We can divide the german tank doctrine in a pre and post Barbarossa.
Initially Germany deployed tanks as the soviets. Independent attack units in a Deep Battle doctrine and combined arms operations.
Yet the Germans used 2 designs of tanks. Battle tanks with a fast velocity cannon, and support tanks, with low velocity high caliber guns. The first were meant to deal with enemy armor in their attacks and the latter follow them destroying enemy fortifications, machine gun position and give support to the mechanized infantry.
The Panzer III was the first and the Panzer IV the second.
German armored units were organized in Armored Divisions, depending the stage of the war; 2/1 Panzer Regiment, 1 Mechanized Infantry Regiment (later reinforced with more batallions per each), anti aircraft guns, towed artillery and support units.
They also used specialized assault guns for fortifications. The Stug III. Latter up-gunned and used as anti tank. And anti tank motorized cannons, like the Marder.
In the invasion of the USSR. They had to use the Pz IV to deal with the newer soviet tanks because the punny 37 mm cannon of the Pz III couldn’t penetrate it. The designed for tank combat Pz III became obsolete and the Pz IV evolved to be the war horse of the Wehrmacht and, despite its flaws and defeat, the best tank in history. It fought in all fronts and accepted lots of modifications and upgrades fighting even after WWII in the middle east.
By this point the german tank doctrine abandoned the support “derp” design and went fully for combat units a la jack of all trades. They focused then in crew protection since they had less people than the tanks they could produced, and better cannons, to deal with more enemy numbers and their increasing protection.
France: they kept their army with an structure, thinking and doctrines from WWI waiting another static war, discarding the maneuver warfare.
France fielded separated doctrines for tanks. Infantry tanks and tanks to face the enemy. Despite having the largest tank force in Europe. Most o the French tanks were included in Infantry divisions for infantry support. In battle they had poor coordination with infantry and serious problems to execute coordinated advances.
The Tank Divisions were few and despite having armor and cannon in advantage to the earlier germans, they failed in operational levels unable to keep with the employment doctrine of the Wehrmacht.
UK:
The British lagged behind the Soviets and Germans in tank employment doctrines despite having realized the usefulness of the tanks.
By WWII they fielded slow well armored tanks with large cannons as infantry support tanks, the Infantry Tanks. And the Cruiser tanks, less armored, faster and with small high velocity cannons. As the french, their employment doctrine was based in WWI and couldn’t face the evolution of that day battlefields. Infantry ironically were useless for the job, as the french, but did well facing tanks thanks to their armor and guns, while the Cruiser tanks were completely useless with ineffective guns and mobility.
Latter the british improved their designs reacting to the german superiority and improving mobility, firepower and protection.
US: The US was the most primitive tank force in terms of employment doctrines. Following France, they focused on Infantry support tanks. Enemy armor had to be dealt with the aviation and artillery. This probed wrong against the German designs and warfare. Early Shermans, and M3 were absolutely useless in the roles they had been designed and had to face the German Pz III and IV with their superior guns. The poor M3 Lee was employed by the british against the german with relative success using its infantry support hull mounted cannon against the Pz IIIs, while the 75 mm of the Shermans were completely inferior. Latter the British up-gunned them with the 17 pounder.
With the time the US adopted a similar 76 mm cannon and improved armor and ammunition of the Sherman creating specialized combat tanks to face german armor.
In another side, the US decided to counter enemy armor with Tank Destroyers, the Gun Motor Carriage, that would act in similar ways to the German Tank Hunters and Soviet Anti Tank self propelled guns. But in this case, the US Army focused mobility and firepower, ignoring armor.
This units had a great development after the african campaign.
The US also experimented with dedicated Heavy Tanks to deal with the german heavy tanks. But only the M26 passed the prototype stage and none saw combat.
One of the design requirements of tanks that kept the size en weight of the US tanks is that they had to be shipped to the combat zones and use old weak european bridges or none in the pacific. That kept the heavy tanks development in cage along the fact that the US saw those tanks to expensive while they could field more Shermans and replace without problems the loses.
Japan: They were the most primitive and focused exclusively in infantry support, despite some developments.
As the US Japan had to ship their tanks to the combat zones, mostly had terrains with bad or null infrastructure. The enemies faced in their theater had no modern tanks neither and were primarily infantry.
So they doctrine was simple, infantry support tanks.
Latter they had problems facing the US light tanks with they lights high velocity cannons and then the Sherman that was superior to any Japanese tank.