The T-34 rolled out of the KhPZ factory in Kharkiv starting in 1940 and became the backbone of Soviet armored forces for the rest of World War II. Its sloped armor and wide tracks were unusual for the time, letting it deflect shots and cross mud and snow that stopped German tanks cold, and this film traces how that design outpaced better-armed but less practical machines like the Panzer IV and Tiger. Production numbers carry the argument: the T-34 became the most-produced tank of the war and the second most-produced tank ever built, after its own successor, the T-54/55. The film follows the tank past 1945 too, into export markets across the Eastern Bloc, the Middle East, and Asia, where it kept fighting in conflict after conflict. By 1996 it was still in active service in at least twenty-seven countries, a production run stretching to 1958 and a combat record stretching decades beyond that.