This book is dedicated to one of the iconic combat vehicles of World War II - the heavy tank destroyer Sd.Kfz.186 Yagdtigr. Created as a purely defensive weapon, these giant self-propelled guns performed not so much military as psychological functions: they frightened the enemies of Germany and instilled in the Reich population a belief in the invulnerability of the German "military machine." However, they did not help the Nazi political elite very much - the latter ended up in the "dump of history," and the surviving armored "mastodons," more similar to characters from the ancient German epic about the Nibelungs, are now exhibited in the largest museums of the countries of the Anti-Hitler coalition.