Technological revolutions brought new kinds of weapons to the battlefield: the machine gun, the airplane and the tank, born of the need to break the apocalyptic stalemate at the front.
From 1919-1939, strategists mulled over the disasters of WWI. Germany refined the idea of Blitzkrieg and led the world in developing tank war tactics. After a dry run in Spain, the German Army swept through Europe.
The battle of Kursk was the turning point in World War II. It was the largest clash of tanks in history, where the Soviet army repulsed an attack by the German Wehrmacht's seemingly invincible Panzer and Tiger tanks.
Hitler's massive winter counterattack through the Ardennes threw the confident Allies into disarray and swung the advantage temporarily back in Germany's favor.
After WWII many military experts predicted that the age of ground troops and tanks was past - soon, all war would be fought with long-range missiles. Then the Korean War began - the first of many superpower proxy wars.
On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel to reclaim territory lost during the 1967 Six Day War. The results was one of the most ferocious armored battles in history. This is a double-length episode.
Facing overwhelming firepower, the North Vietnamese intermingled their forces with the Americans to blur the lines of battle. Their guerrilla war tactics canceled out US technological superiority.
The bloody, brutal, ultimately doomed Afghan War played a large part in the anger and disillusionment that led to the collapse of the USSR. The key difference between Vietnam and Afghanistan was the lack of media coverage at home.
The Gulf War was the greatest conflict of armored forces since WWII, and the Kuwaiti desert was well suited to tanks. A combined-arms assault from air, land and sea turned Iraq's quick victory into a costly defeat.
The future of armored warfare was glimpsed on February 26, 1991 at the Battle of 73 Easting, when a small US armored division defeated a brigade-sized force of Iraq's Republican Guard.
