That whole Tank Rider idea looked so good in the propaganda films that the Party decided it worked, went ahead and used it as a standard tactic. Of course, they ignored the ferocious casualty rate but the Party people were the ones making the propaganda, not the ones riding the tanks.
Look at it from the German perspective: here comes a Tank with a couple of machineguns and a cannon. If it gets here, it will do nasty things, so we have to stop it; we'll call in a Stuka and he'll deal with it. But it's got a dozen guys hanging onto it and they are carrying mines and grenades and burp guns rifles and bayonets and sharp knives and pointed sticks and ripe bananas and anything else you or Monty Python can think of. And you don't want that getting in here; it could make life MOST unpleasant.
So the 42 goes RRRRRRRRIPPPPPPPPP RRRRIPPPPP RIPPPP RRRRRRIPPPPPPP and the problem (the problem being 8 Tank Riders with equipment) no longer exists. The PAK-40 or the Stuka then takes out the Tank and all is well...... on one side, anyway.
The Russians, like the French, like to think of war as oceans of blood. When they used the Tank Rider idea, they GOT oceans of blood, but it was their own men's blood.
German casualties on the Russian Front are inflated by a number of factors, including the fact that they were not prepared for a Russian winter.
Russian casualties on that same front are inflated by stupidity, savagery and a Party organisation which provided the NKVD troops to shoot their own men in the back when the Impossible became too much for mere humans...... instead of shooting at the invaders.
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New day new picture 
