Well I belive the Americans were the last to adopt it during the 70's, possibly late 60's. The idea that Heavy Tank were replaced my MBT's is a common misconception, they served alongside MBT's and eventually died out due to their extra armour not being that useful. With Russia they continued Heavy Tank development as did the USA. Eventually the Centurion (a cruiser tank) replaced the Conqueror as the Universal tank and the Conqueror stayed on as a heavy tank. Even with the earliest MBT's under the british Universal tank doctrine, the Conqueror was suppose to have recon, SPG, bridgelaying, AA and Heavy variants. However even then Heavy tanks were never replaced per se by MBT's. Medium tanks were directly replaced by modern tanks and MBT's. However despite light tanks mostly being replaced by medium tanks, even in recon roles in the US army, light tank development separated and continues to this day due to ease of transportation and ease of use in amphibious and airborne missions, with recon taking the back seat until the 60's + 70's. T-34/A32/A20 were replacements for the BT series, the M3 Lee was a replacement for Stuarts (well also technically UK cruisers) and the Panzer III + IV were replacements for the Panzer II. Britain by ww2 doesn't even use the heavy and medium definition, many cruisers and infantry tanks could fill both roles (more so the mid war infantry tanks). In both cases, outside of the British Vickers Medium tank, the vast majority of nations medium tanks were the direct evolution of what we'd now call light tanks, or what are light tanks in the HOI4 tech tree.
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