In the interwar period, the newly formed Soviet Union provided a refuge for many German engineers and manufacturers. An imaginative and ambitious weapons inventor, Grotte had become interested in large tanks during World War I, but was part of a generation of German armament designers frustrated in their postwar ambitions by the dictates of the Treaty of Versailles, which denied their fatherland an arms industry. Grotte really had designed this behemoth weighing a thousand metric tonnes-about 1,100 tons-that our hypothetical GI saw on that hypothetical day in 1944. WERE THIS SCENARIO NOT FICTITIOUS, it would have marked a dream come true for an engineer-you might call him a mad scientist-named Edward Grotte. A split second later, the sound hits them like a freight train. As the GIs stare at the guns, one jerks violently. It has two guns in its turret that look bigger than the guns on that battleship their troop transport passed last summer. It appears as tall as a four-story apartment building and wider than a boxcar is long. It looks like a tank, but the German infantrymen next to it give it scale. It takes the men more than a moment to wrap their heads around this thing that is definitely not a Tiger. Then it breaks into the clearing and the GIs realize that it’s not closer-it’s bigger. As they do, a dark shape appears and someone says, “That Tiger is a lot closer than I thought!” German troops emerge from the forest, so the Americans take cover. Somewhere in the woods beyond the meadow the grinding din grows so loud it nearly drowns out the noise of breaking tree trunks. The sight of a Tiger tank is unforgettable-a 60-ton monster twice as big as a Sherman and 10 times more frightening. Then they hear the clamor of heavy machinery growing ever louder. The ground is trembling, but there is no sound of artillery. The shaking grows stronger and the men look at each other in confusion. No one can ever forget his first artillery barrage all our young GI can do is mutter “Here we go again.” Coming warily down a hill toward a small meadow, the men in the squad feel a faint tremor in the ground. His regiment had faced scant resistance as it worked its way eastward the past few weeks now the enemy is starting to put up a fight. The leaves are starting to change and there’s a chill in the air. Imagine a young American GI on the front in Europe in late September 1944. The Maus that roared and other exercises in megalomania
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