Panzer of the Lake

Panzer of the Lake refers to a popular image macro series, depicting a photograph from World War II, of a soldier standing before a submerged Panzer III tank.

The captions of the image macro usually include the phrase “O Panzer of the lake what is your wisdom?” asked by the soldier, to which the Panzer replies with a humorous remark.

Thy truths torment me, o panzer of the lake

The first time the photos of the soldier standing beside the “Panzer of the Lake” were posted online can be tied to the military history site, Feldgrau.

They posted numerous archive tank photographs on February 22^nd, 2017, one of which was the one, serving as the basis of a multitude of image macros later.

It first appeared on 4chan’s /k/ board on March 21^st, 2018, where a user commented “O panzer of the lake, what is your wisdom?”.

A screenshot of the 4chan post was reuploaded on Tumblr the same day.

The final “Panzer of the Lake” format was uploaded to the r/animemes subreddit by Leakyz-Beakyz on July 30^th, 2018.

Within a few days, the format spread across the web, appearing on several subreddits, as well as Twitter and other social media sites.

The most likely contender for the location of the tank is considered to be the Meuse River in northeast France, as revealed in the video of ConeOfArc on March 19^th, 2021.

• Reddit – r/history
• Urban Dictionary – Panzer of the lake