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THIS DAY IN HISTORY: 

Ferdinand Magellan Sets Sail to Circumnavigate Globe (1519)
In 1518, Spanish king Charles I approved navigator Ferdinand Magellan's plan to sail to the Spice Islands by a western route. On the way, Magellan crossed the "Sea of the South" and renamed it the Pacific Ocean because of the calm crossing. His ambitious voyage proved definitively the roundness of the Earth and revealed the Americas as a new world, separate from Asia. Though Magellan is often credited with being the first to circumnavigate the globe, he never actually returned to Europe.

Never understood why the GIs didn't insist for the same.The Sherman was lighter/faster/reliable than enemy tanks just put the bigger gun on. The M1A1 artillery piece was magnificent along with the 105s/155s.Sure the Germans had the venerable 88(8.8) but across the board US doctrine was much more successful than that of the Gerries
Viewing the Italian campaign, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel commented, “The enemy’s tremendous superiority in artillery, and even more in the air, has broken the front open.”  During the Normandy campaign, Rommel added, “Also in evidence is their great superiority in artillery and outstandingly large supply of ammunition.”  By any reasonable standard, especially during the latter part of World War II, the American artillery arm was very clearly superior to that of the Germans.

And the Wehrmacht way over did it in number of tank designs,making logistics/maintenance a real nightmare.The could have stuck to the one Stug design and perhaps the Panzer IV. That would have been more efficient,cost effective and easier to produce en masse than nit picking with designs that may have been a bitch to fight but more often than not broke down or ran out of gas getting to battles

Cincy already partially answered but the Sherman was a pre-WWII design. When it was designed most everybody treated and designed tanks as infantry support so they only needed armor against Infantry weapons and only needed armament against pill boxes at most.

The anti-tank weapon was a thing called a Tank Destroyer which was lightly armored but heavily armed to take out enemy tanks.

Wartime experience showed that this didn't work out in practice. Tanks were forced into the anti tank role for which they were ill-equipped while tank destroyers were both vulnerable to tank rounds and ill-equipped for the infantry support role into which they were often placed due to rapidly changing circumstances.

I used to agree with the typical criticism of the German tank designs as being overly complex thus reducing German tank numbers but their strategy actually makes sense. Tanks weren't their main limitation. Their main limitations were fuel and trained tank crews (part of the reason for their shortage of trained crews was due to a lack of fuel for training). Anyway, if you are limited primarily by a lack of fuel and secondarily by a lack of tank crews then it makes sense to utilize what limited fuel and crews you do have in the world's most advanced tanks.

Not really I didn't book mark the channel but Germany wasted time on too many designs and variants.Tigers where like 52 freakin' tons,Ran out of gas a lot,tranny and drive shaft problems because of excessive weight.Could have kept spitting out stugs,and the 4s were more than enough to square of with what the allies had. Sherman could of been upgunned yet lost none of it's reliability or little speed

Not even close.
This site has a chart that shows global productive capacity in about 1937. 
[th][size=+1]Country[/size][/th]
[th][size=+1]% of Total Warmaking Potential[/size][/th]

United States
41.7%

Germany
14.4%

USSR
14.0%

UK
10.2%

France
4.2%

Japan
3.5%

Italy
2.5%

Seven Powers (total)
(90.5%)


It was actually worse for Germany and Japan because the US still had a lot of depression-era slack in 1937 while Germany and Japan were already operating on more of a war production basis.

Even just using the figures above though, the combination of the UK and the USSR could out-produce Germany by roughly 5:3 and once the US got involved that ratio was more like 5:1.

The T34's were clearly superior to the Mark IV while the Shermans and British tanks were roughly equals with the Mark IV. Look, you can't win a war with comparable equipment when your enemies can make 4-5 times as much equipment.

The only plausible path to victory when you are being out-manufactured by 4:1 is to build substantially better equipment.

I get where you are coming from because I've made a similar argument myself. Someone will extol the virtues of the German late-war tanks and denigrade Shermans and I'll point out that Shermans are a lot better than anything the Whermacht had when you provide the Shermans with something like a 5:1 numerical superiority.

That makes it seem like the Germans should have built more Mark IV's to keep closer to numerical parity but that wasn't a viable option for at least three reasons:

• As laid out above, they utterly lacked manufacturing parity so even if they had maximized their numerical production they would still have been outnumbered by at least 4:1.
• Their biggest limitation (until they started running out of people late in the war) was a lack of fuel. As of 1940 the US produced around 2/3 of the world's petroleum. The USSR and Venezuela were next at around 10% each. Next came Iran, Indonesia, and Mexico at around 2-3% of global production each. Next was Romania which was the Third Reich's major supplier with about 2% of global production. Note that all of the large producers were either at war with Germany or inaccessible to Germany due to unchallenged Anglo-American control of the Atlantic. Thus, even if the Germans could have built enough Mark IV's to maintain numerical parity with their enemies T34's and Shermans, most of those Mark IV's would have been parked for want of fuel.
• Initially due to the fuel crisis and later also due to a simple lack of people, the Germans lacked trained tank crews. Thus, even if they had managed to build enough Mark IV's to maintain numerical parity and if some heretofore unknown diety had gifted them sufficient fuel to actually operate them, they'd have been operated by untrained kids from the Hitler Youth going up against well trained and experienced Soviet, British, and American tankers.

No, building more Mark IV's would absolutely not have been a viable strategy for the Germans.

A similar argument is made regarding aircraft. The Germans built some phenomenal planes during WWII especially their ME262 jet. I've heard people argue that they'd have been better off expending their resources building more Bf109's and FW190's instead. This argument suffers from the same flaws as you argument that they should have built more Mark IV tanks. At the end of the war the Germans had plenty of planes and tanks, what they lacked were pilots, tank crews, and fuel.

I have no idea what direction you're going in.I'm talking tanks/Armor - Guys Like chieftain,axis forums.Glantz,Zaloga,Zwartz have stated the Reich could have trimmed down their line up.I'm not refering to numbers produced just ridiculous numbers of silly designs of not only tanks but all sorts of armor - for practical,all-pupose uses.The GD Tiger were great on the wide open eastern front they had a hell of a time in the more diverse European landscapes with ravines,rivers,valley's hills,mountains. Many bridges they couldn't cross because of weight.Also the Wehrmacht could ill afford to feed gas guzzlers later in the War.Panzer IV and Stugs could have been Made in greater much numbers and cost effective

I agree they could have built a lot more tanks. My point is that without crews or fuel those tanks would have been worthless.