“THE DEVIL IS COMING!” - German soldiers shouted in panic when they saw the FIRST TANKS on September 15, 1916 in the battle on the river. Somme. On that day, the attack of 32 British Mk I tanks made it possible to break through the German defenses and capture fortified points, which the British infantry unsuccessfully stormed for more than a month. A new book by a leading Russian specialist restores the true history of the birth and combat use of this “miracle weapon,” which made a real revolution in military in fact. Did you know that the first tanks had the inscription “Caution, Petrograd!” — for reasons of secrecy, they were passed off as water containers allegedly ordered by Russia, and Russian journalists initially translated the word “tank” literally as “tub.” Did you know that at the dawn of tank building these vehicles were divided into “male”, “female” and “hermaphrodite” (the first were armed with cannons, the second with machine guns, and the third had mixed weapons), that tanks did not owe their birth to the British Minister of War, Lord Kitchener , who called the new product shown to him “an expensive, ridiculous toy,” and to the First Lord of the Admiralty, W. Churchill, who took the newly-minted “miracle weapon” under his wing. The future prime minister's instinct was not deceived - in less than three years, the first tanks, nicknamed "diamonds" for their characteristic shape, have come a long way from dubious exoticism to the new "GOD OF WAR".