In the autumn of 1916, tanks arrived on the Western Front—and Germany had none. In this episode, we explore how the German Empire responded to the sudden appearance of Allied armor, why their high command hesitated to build tanks of their own, and how a civilian engineer pushed through the bureaucracy to create Germany’s first and only operational tank of the First World War: the A7V. From design challenges and industrial limitations to fire control systems and final production, this is the story of a tank born too late to change the war—but not too late to make history.

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