Warum waren die Panzer aus dem ersten Weltkrieg so schlecht?

On the one hand, it was the general state of development of the technology. The necessary mechanics had to be reinvented in the shortest time from scratch, there were no models. The available materials were inferior to current standards. The same applies to the technology with which the materials were processed. The engines were huge, weak and unreliable. Nothing could be automated, everything had to be served by hand.

On the other hand, it was because nobody really knew what exactly the tanks should be used for. There was no clear development goal. Instead, there were fundamental discussions. It was clear that one was looking for technical solutions to somehow get away from the war of positions that apparently no one could win. How? There were various ideas for this, but no one knew which of them could work at all. It was all experimental.

In principle, the first series-built tanks were only the direct successors of prototypes that had proved themselves. In practice, it was found that the most important ability was to roll over the defensive systems constructed against infectious attacks, to strike gaps in the attached front line and to force the return from the war of positions to the war of movement. That’s why the big, heavy, slow, English tanks were so successful. In the last phase of the war, the much lighter, significantly faster, French tanks were more successful, but they would not have been able to break through a front line completely fixed in the 1917 style.