Armor military intervention A second armistice was signed by Hungary on January 20, 1945 Germany was not permitted to sign an armistice, although several top Nazi officials offered various formulas to the Western Allies without Hitler’s knowledge All such offers were emphatically rejected, as the United Nations Alliance enforced unconditional surrender by Germany The Japanese government agreed to a preliminary armistice with the Allies on August 15, 1945, though that did not stop the Red Army from carrying through with the Manchurian offensive operation (August 1945) Japan’s representatives signed a formal “Instrument of Surrender” on September Although a proviso was agreed whereby Japan retained its emperor system (kokutai) in name, the surrender was essentially unconditional and complete It included American occupation and lesser Western Allied administration of the home islands, and subsequent imposition of a fundamentally reformed constitutional system See also FALL GELB; FALL WEISS ARMOR During World War II the tank came into its own as an offensive weapon This was made clear with the stunning German Blitzkrieg into Poland in FALL WEISS (1939), then again in France and the Low Countries in FALL GELB in 1940, and on a vast scale in the opening months of BARBAROSSA in the Soviet Union in 1941 Tanks also became the major defensive system against enemy tanks, a trend that led to the largest armored battle ever fought at Kursk in 1943, where 12 Panzer divisions met massed Soviet armor and thousands of anti-tank guns The second largest armor fight of the war took place at Falaise in 1944 Topographical features limited use of tanks in mountainous areas such as the Caucasus and Balkans They were also less used in fighting in Asia before 1945 than in North Africa, Europe, or the western Soviet Union Otherwise, tanks were a signature weapon of World War II They came in multiple varieties, from prewar tankettes that proved worse than useless even during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), to fast light versions and solid medium models, to late war heavy and super heavy types that crushed roads and broke stone bridges as they passed Uniquely, the Wehrmacht fielded a small artillery observer tank (“Beobachtungswagen”) The Regio Esercito had the worst tanks in Europe Italian tankettes were fine for crushing unarmed and unarmored Abyssinians in 1936, but they proved woefully inadequate when facing British armor in 1940–1941 They were merely death traps for their own crews when deployed on the Eastern Front in 1942 The L3/35 weighed 7.5 tons, had a two-man crew, and mounted a 20 mm main gun incapable of piercing opposing armor Among lesser Axis armies, Hungarian tanks were only slightly better than Italian tankettes The Toldi III three-man light tank weighed 10.3 tons and mounted a 40 mm gun The Turan II was a 20-ton tank with a fiveman crew that carried a 75 mm gun The Axis states also used captured Czech Skoda Type-36 and -38 light tanks on the Eastern Front The Type-38 was produced for several years after the extinction of Czechoslovakia, while some were still used in battle as late as 1945 Germany’s armor spanned a wide range of capabilities and designs Panzer I and II prewar models were used in Spain and in small numbers by China, but were obsolete by 1939 Panzer divisions attacking into Poland 73