The terrifying tanks of All Quiet on the Western Front are French St. Chamonds

The terrifying, enormous tanks shown in Netflix’s All Quiet on the Western Front are French Saint-Chamond Assault Tanks, but there’s a catch.

World War One saw the great European armies develop all kinds of new weapons, including mustard gas, warplanes, and submarines as well as innovations to field artillery, machine guns, and grenades.

However, arguably the most terrifying invention of the First World War was the tank; initially developed by the British before their French and German counterparts made their way to the battlefields of Western Europe.

In Netflix’s All Quiet on the Western Front, a group of these war machines are able to break through the German line – these are the French Saint-Chamond Assault Tank.

The French Saint-Chamond Assault Tank

All Quiet on the Western Front shows the devastating power and ferociousness that military technology had advanced to during World War One; in Netflix’s new movie, that is demonstrated best by the French Saint-Chamond Assault Tank.

The Saint-Chamond was the second French tank to see combat in the First World War, with more than 400 units manufactured between April 1917 and July 1918.

However, by the technical definition of a heavily armored turreted vehicle, it is not actually a tank; although considered as part of early tank development by both military historians and engineers.

Weighing 23 tonnes (50,700 lbs) and almost 9 meters in length (29.5 ft), this enormous machine of war needed eight well-trained soldiers to operate but could remarkably still travel at 12Km per hour (7.5mph) – making it a devastating tool for those facing it down with small arms – as seen in the movie.

The tank had a 75mm (2.95 in) gun, which is essentially a French field artillery canon, with an additional four 8mm (0.31 in) Hotchkiss machine guns mounted on its front and sides; the most heavily-armed Allied tank of WW1.

“Their precious 75mm (2.95 in) and speed on roads and moderately flat terrains made them ideally suited as mobile assault guns, to deal with German batteries (Nahkampfbatterien). In the summer of 1918 the Allies were on the counter-offensive and the Saint Chamond found open terrains suitable for it. They fought on, sometimes with other tanks and US troops, until the armistice.” – Tanks Encyclopaedia.

This meant that the Saint-Chamond was a horrific instrument for engaging both entrenched German positions with its near-180-degree field of effectiveness and in the latter stages of the war when fighting shifted to more open ground.

A French Saint-Chamond Tank (Char Saint-Chamond) which was manufactured between 1917 and 1918 during World War I — Photo by: HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

However, the tank had major and consistent issues with navigating the shifting terrain of the Western Front and despite what is shown in Netflix’s new movie, the majority of units were never able to be utilized to their full extent until the latter battles of WW1 due to the conditions.

Interestingly, a second iteration of the Saint-Chamond attempted to fix the issue with its Holt caterpillar tracks but eventually, the tank was replaced as by 1918 “the Saint-Chamond was considered obsolete.”

We also can’t talk about the French tanks of World War One without at least mentioning the now-iconic Char 2C, a literal behemoth of a killing machine.

This super-heavy tank never saw combat on the battlefield but was the largest tank ever made weighing more than 69 tonnes (152,000lbs) with a length of 10.27m (33.7 ft) and a width of 3m (9.8 ft).

Initially sporting a 105mm gun (4 in), before being reduced to a 75mm canon (2.9 in), the Char 2C was capable of firing a 4Kg High Explosive shell at 240m/s – enough to destroy German bunkers and entrenched positions across the Western front had it even seen any battles before the war ended.