German tanks were generally garbage
Wait, what? Over-engineered, yes, but garbage? Not that patriotism is appropriate when talking about the Nazi killing machine, but the German tanks from WWII are usually held to be fine examples of German engineering...
That's a popular misconception based on early historians taking SS bragging and official propaganda at face value, a few pop-history books written by people who served behind the lines and got most things wrong, and interviews with veterans that not only had 50-70 years between them and the fighting when interviewed but suffered significantly from the "any gun pointed at you seems a thousand times bigger than it really is". Once you break it down, the closest thing the Germans had to a good tank was the Panzer IV, which was at least
able to fight if the crew had decent tactical skill. The I and II were basically glorified armored cars that the Poles and French destroyed with ease (832 out of ~2700 German tanks were knocked out during the invasion of Poland, or
20%! This, mind you, is against an enemy that is outnumbered 3:1, was attacked from two sides at once, and suffered complete strategic and tactical surprise; with ~800 out of ~2500 being lost in the invasion of France), the Panzer III had no room for upgradeability and was thus rendered completely and utterly obsolete soon after production, and the Panzer IV was, at best, a third tier tank (behind the M4 Sherman and the T-34, it is arguable on which of those was the best tank of the war) due to armor that was not only relatively thin but completely unangled, poor strategic performance, and unacceptably large profile.
Those were the "good" German tanks. The Tiger I was probably the worst fighting vehicle ever made - being far heavier than the engine could support, requiring three to four times more logistical support than the Panzer IV, and armor that, while decently thick, was still slab-sided, meaning that even the base model T-34 and Sherman had nearly as much effective armor, all in an extremely easy to spot, easy to hit package. The only good feature of the tank was the monstrous gun, which was usually still a downside - the vast majority of targets could be penetrated just as easily by the 75mm guns in service that were much smaller (which would have required a smaller turret to mount, which would not only have been lighter but made the tank smaller and thus the whole thing lighter) except for extreme-range shots that only occurred with any commonality during one period of the war. For the most part, that massive gun was nothing but a liability, restricting the vehicles movement due to the awkward gun handling, and rendering it more difficult to engage at the close ranges most fighting took place at. The Soviet response to the vehicle (after the laughing stopped) was to cancel all plans for equipping the T-34 upgrade project with the 57mm anti-tank gun instead of the 85mm anti-infantry gun or the IS with a 100mm antitank gun instead of the 122mm anti-infantry gun, as the Tiger was no real threat. Meanwhile, while popular myth states that you needed 5 Shermans to take out a Tiger, the reality was that Tiger vs. Sherman battles (mostly Soviets using Lend-Lease vehicles) ended up with Tigers taking 4 or 5 as many losses. It's true that commanders usually USED 5 Shermans to engage a Tiger because that was the standard platoon size (and thus the fewest tanks that would ever make up a tactical unit) but it wasn't a "quantity vs. quality" reason. They simply always had that many.
The Panther was no better - while the front armor was extremely difficult to penetrate with the ammunition available (high performance ammunition had been relegated to the back burner after US tanks were massacring Tigers and Panthers in the Italian campaign) in France, the side armor was so thin in places that obsolete anti-tank
rifles left over from the last war could take them out, and the gunner had a very hard time finding targets because he had no periscope, making the issues of having far too big a gun that the Panther shared with the Tiger even worse, and the engine was even more inadequate compared to the weight of the vehicle (in this case, it was Hitler's personal fault - the Panther started out as a direct copy of the T-34 and evolved into what would have been a superb tank (which exists in World of Tanks as the VK 30.02D), but Hitler ordered more frontal armor (which necessitated thinning out the side armor) and a bigger gun (which needed a bigger turret and added a shitton of weight) to be added) so it was even less reliable even in the ideal versions produced by France after the war (which the French hated and discarded within 5 years).
The Tiger II was the culmination of this trend. Even MORE overgunned, and even MORE overweight (although since the armor was not only thick but sloped and well distributed, it was actually useful), the only thing that makes this not the Worst Tank In History is that it really was very hard to kill with available weapons, allowing it to do serious damage from the position it broke down in until heavier weapons were brought up or you were able to outflank it.
The genuinely
good vehicles that Germany built during the war were the casemated tank destroyers and assault guns - the Jagdpanzer, the Hetzer, the StuG. These were small enough to actually conceal, and carried a gun small enough that it didn't get in the way, all in a package that was decently mobile and had just enough armor to take a badly aimed shot. Not to mention that you could build and support 8 Hetzers for the resources of a single Tiger.
There is one period in the war where the enormous range of the German Tiger and Panther was actually of benefit - the reconquest of France in 1944. In this campaign, the Allies absoultely had to take immobile fixed targets (bridges vital to retaking Paris) and HAD to cross wide-open flat fields to do so, allowing the Germans to use their monstrous guns at extreme range. Of course, the Jagdpanzers or even towed AT guns could have done the same thing much cheaper.
To sum it up (numbers pulled from nowhere, but this is the actual trend:
If you're shooting at 80mm effective armor, it doesn't matter if you have 90mm penetration at a given range or 150mm - you penetrate either way.
If what's being shot at you has 70mm penetration, it doesn't matter if you have 50mm or 70mm effective armor - it won't save you. COnversely, if what's being shot at you has 45mm penetration, it won't penetrate either way.
If you're too heavy to move without breaking down because you're carrying way more armor and gun than you need, you're committing a very expensive form of suicide by going into combat.
There was never ONE period in the war where the Germans had better tanks than the Americans, British, or Soviets. The best they ever managed was a technical parity coupled with better tactical performance.
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