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KV

2023-01-01T17:00:05Z

2A02:A03F:C17D:A400:310E:5498:388A:7D8D: /* In Real Life */

The KV series is a family of heavy tanks produced and fielded by the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1943. These proved to be nasty surprises for the invading German forces in Operation Barbarossa, as they were practically immune to the guns equipped on the Panzer-III and Panzer-IVs of the time. Only the 8.8cm Flak gun set on direct fire could penetrate their thick armor.

Their battlefield roles were eventually supplanted by T-34s and the IS series of tanks, respectively.

==Mid-War==
===KV-1===

===KV-1S===

===KV-8===

==Late War==
===KV-1===

===KV-1S===

===KV-8===

==In Real Life==
All right. Buckle up people, because just like with his successor the [[IS-2]] there is a lot to be told about this one too!

To understand the origin of the KV series of tanks, one needs to start in the 1920s. The Reds wanted to modernize their armies, and Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail Tukhachevsky drew up a plan to do exactly that. Something of a visionary, Tukhachevsky in his ''Field Regulations of 1929'' (amongst many other things) saw three main roles for tanks on the battlefield, and accordingly the need for three classes of machines:
* Infantry tanks, whose main role is to support the infantry directly. Those need not go very fast and be armed with howitzers and machine guns and be reasonably well-armored.
* Fast tanks, that need to flank, envelop and strike at the enemy's rear: artillery, airfields, logistical lines, and command centers. Speed is of the essence, along with decent firepower.
* Breakthrough tanks, whose role was to go straight for the enemy and blast them to smithereens, needed to be heavily armed.
Now, at that time, the whole concept of [[Baneblade|land battleship]], was ''en vogue''. The T-28 and T-35 are both the results of this philosophy.

During the purges, one of Stalin's many victims was Mikhail Tukhachevsky himself, and the task of developing the tank arms further felt to a man named Kliment Voroshilov. ''Klim'' was alone amongst the remaining Marshals of the Soviet Union (and up to a point, against Stalin's wishes) championing tanks and he was put in charge of equipping the Red Army with better machines. Thus, in 1937, two tenders were put out:
* one to replace the now aged fast tanks, a design that would eventually culminate in the [[T-34]]. (More info on that vehicle's page)
* one for a proper breakthrough tank, with three turrets and enough armor to take a beating.
The latter order proved a tough nut to crack. Ultimately, only two design bureaus dared put a design and prototype forward in 1939: the OKMO bureau with the T-100, and the Kirowsky works proposed the SMK. Both were eerily similar and only sported two turrets one above the other; because three turrets were just too damn impractical to build.

At the start of the Winter war in late 1939, the Soviets decided to test their military equipment. The two designs, performed poorly during the attack on Summa. However, At the last moment, Kotin, a lead engineer at Kirowsky, prevailed on Voroshilov to also take two other prototypes of his 'SMK' along, that sported only a single turret but better armor, which he named the ''Kliment Voroshilov'' tank in his honor. [[Rape|the first battle for Summa didn't go well for the Reds]], but one of the bright sides from this was that the proto KV-1 performed well. The Finns lacked any big AT gun to deal with them and they managed to do relatively well for themselves. Voroshilov (the man) saw the writing on the wall and ordered the single-turret model into production just before having a big fall-out with Stalin and getting sidelined. Thus entered the KV-1.

The KV-1 was by no means a good design: let us not kid ourselves, it was just as problematic to the Russians in 1941 as the late-war heavies were to the Germans: too big, too heavy, too prone to breakdowns, too sluggish; poor visibility and ergonomics, hard to drive (the driver had to sometimes hit the lever with a mallet to switch gears, so bad the transmission could get), collapsing bridges under their weight; and final insults to injury, weighing half the time more and costing almost three times more to produce than the true winner the [[T-34]] despite sporting the same gun. It had however one big saving grace: armor. Lots of armor was evenly placed all around the tank and turned it pretty much into a mobile fortress early into the war. The KV-1 was virtually impenetrable by the early-war German ''Heeresanklopfgerät'' 37mm AT gun except at the most point-blank of ranges, early [[Panzer III]]'s and [[Panzer IV]]'s didn't fare any better; and only the mighty [[Flak 88mm|''Acht-acht'' Flak guns]] could take one out with ease. While few of them made it to the battlefield in the early days of the war, The Germans quickly came to dread encountering the ''Russischer Koloss'' or ''Monster'' due to the insane amount of punishment a KV-1 could take before going down.

When the Germans started upgrading to 75mm and 88mm cannons, the "logical" solution was add more armor and create a new variant called the KV-1E, which for all intents and purposes was pretty much the Russian equivalent of the [[Elefant]]. The complaints were so bad about the tank that Stalin approached Kotin and told him to fix it in his typical Stalin way. Kotin and an engineer named Shashmurin thus created the economy version of the KV-1, called the KV-1S. It was faster, comfier, and more reliable than the E version, but also sacrificed a [[Fail|ton of the armor that made it so infamous in the early war.]] Ultimately the KV chassis was phased out due to the success of the T-34 chassis.

Two interesting but short lived variants of the KV were the KV-2 and KV-85. The KV-2 was [[Fail|functionally a fully enclosed turret mounted 15.2 cm howitzer,]] but it sadly underperformed and was cramped as hell. The KV-85 was also considered for providing competition to the German big cats, but the SU series of Tank destroyers were doing fine and it was found that the T-34 could just as easily mount an 85mm gun, so this project was largely abandoned.

{{Template:Soviet Forces in Flames of War}}

Dictator

2023-01-01T16:55:13Z

2A02:A03F:C17D:A400:310E:5498:388A:7D8D: /* What makes a dictator? */

{{skub}}

So, you want a [[BBEG]], but you don't want to have superhumans in your setting<ref>Or have superhumans in your setting, but want them out of political power for [[Black Rage|one reason]] or another</ref>? Dictators are the obvious answer.

A Dictator is the head of an authoritarian regime, usually strongly personalized. Since authoritarian regimes are generally unresponsive to the needs of their people, and [[wikipedia:political strongman|political strongman]] regimes doubly so, dictators have a terrible reputation, for very good reasons.

There can be some overlap between a BBEG and a Dictator, but there can be some non-overlap. Notably, more than one BBEG has taken on the role of a dictator, but it's possible to have one who is merely an ally of the BBEG, or have a BBEG who is more of a Warlord or CEO than any kind of Ruler.

==What makes a dictator?==

Dictators can be two different things. There's the roman one and the modern one.

A roman dictator was temporary regent of the [[Empire|Roman Empire]] for a limited time. Meaning that if the actual emperor were to, y'know, die without an heir, or that the political situation is so shit that you need someone in charge in-extremis, the dictator would take the lead. Now bare in mind that, in practice and in general, the roman dictator was a judge, and he rarely had ''absolute'' power.

The modern dictator, can mostly summed up as a leader with absolute power over anything. Meaning that the entire country relies on his decision-making, image, leadership, reputation, coordination and '''just about anything else''' to run properly. Of course, for the large majority of History, people who had absolute power over anything (even a region or small colony) were refered to as dictators. Now whether or not they technically qualified as such is an overall different question, but if anyone had complete control over a country, they would get the "prestige" of being referred to as a dictator. Because yes, for a time, a dictator wasn't exactly seen as a bad thing at all.

Until [[Nazi|those]] [[Communism|goddamn]] [[Fascist Italy|assholes]] [[China#Modern China|showed up]].

Imagine, if you will, you have [[/pol/|very controversial opinions]] which wouldn't even pass without shrieks from the ideologues who oppose you in a democratic assembly. Or, you see some peeps as [[Grognard|morally]] [[That Guy|despicable]], and thus you don't even want to have the slightest amount of power or influence. In that case, being a dictator and subjugating the country into obeying your every command has its advantages. There's someone you don't like? Send him to prison without any proof of any foul act or misdeed to his name! There's a very large group of people you really, really don't like for one reason or another? [[Exterminatus|You know what to do]]. You want an entire cult of personality dedicated to you in spite of how horrid, morally disgusting, and butt ugly you are? Here's your ticket.

Now, usually speaking, any country or "political system" can become a dictatorship. All there needs to be is a man who abuses the rules, usurps power for himself, and keeps the populace under scrutiny. However, some systems are more prone to have a dictatorship than others;

*'''Fascism'''; Obviously. The ideology based around might makes right outright advocates for a nation to be entirely led by a single leader.
**'''Nazism''' or ''"National Socialism''; also obviously.
*'''Banana "Republics"'''; Sometimes, the dictator is just a powerhungry general who thinks the current leader is a wuss. Suppose he's in a third-world country, and said country has ressources that could be exploited for great monetary gain. Well, a big massive trust of companies or investors can push a rebellion and finance said general to establish a dictatorship under the promise that he would have full control over the country as long as he keeps giving them exactly what they want. Is this an extremely petty excuse for a regime? Yes. Does it work? You betcha.
*'''[REDACTED]'''; [[Communism|Say there's one ideology that is being spread across the globe like wild fire]] [[Ameritrash|and you wanna prevent that.]] So you start spying on a country that just recently adopted that ideology, you orchestrate a coup and let the guy who was in charge of the coup to lead the country. Hey, as long as those commies aren't in power, we can justify the deaths of millions of innocents by a hostile and self-harming government, right? [[Meme|You'll glow a little, especially if you swear you weren't behind it.]]
*'''Communism'''; Unfortunately, Marx didn't think that his dream of a better society would be used by some of the most corrupted crooks of the 20th Century. Lenin, in the short time he was alive after the 1917's russian Revolution, was actually orchestrating anything, but he at least try to share his power amongst his men. When he died, people were looking for a successor. It didn't took long for Stalin to eliminate the competition and create an entire cult of personality based around him, and do everything in his power to make sure that political opponents or even critics of his regime were [[Commissar|properly disposed of.]] Oh, and let's not forget how he seperated some people into castes and heavily rewarded those who obeyed him the most with fancier things than anyone else. It took the USSR a lot of time to unfuck everything he did. Tankies will deny all of that, of course.
**'''Proletarian Dictatorship''' also qualify, but the power is shared by a council of either technocrats or "representants of the people". There were only a few system like this one, but they never prevailed. Well, [[Capitalism|some external factors might have come into play]].
*'''Religious''': Rare in the real world (arguably, only Iran qualified since 1900), and so, in fictionland, somewhat rare outside stuff that's doing the whole [[Cult]] thing.

==Notable examples related to /tg/==

===[[Battletech]]===

* Stefan Amaris

===[[DC Comics]]===

* Darkseid is usually played as one when he's not directly interfering with the Heroes.

===[[Star Wars]]===

* Palpatine (AKA Darth Sidious) posed as one.

===[[Warhammer 40k]]===

* [[The Emperor|Da BEEEEEEG umie]]
* [[High Lords of Terra|Da BEEEEEEG Bea- Beaur- Be-u-ro-kra-see ov da Imperi-oom]]
* Give or Take 35% of all Planetary Governors of the Imperium of Man
*[[Asdrubael Vect|That Dick]]