"WW2 Cossacks in German Service" Topic

Crusader Miniatures announced WW2 Cossacks in German Service in 28mm

Main page
crusaderminiatures.com

Amicalement
Armand

Very nice!

What space guns are those supposed to be??? Mp40 – I don`t think so :)

Yes, they are dreadful. The horse tack looks wrong too going by photos I've seen from that period.

Yes they have the typical Crusader chunky weapons, but some people like them that way. The riders look better than the dismounted sculpts.

Yep, quite like the mounted figs :)

Glad you like them my friend!.

Amicalement
Armand

While I agree that the dismounts are somewhat "bulky", that is not an uncommon event in miniatures. Given that most miniatures are designed for somewhat less than delicate handling on the game table, I find little to criticize in the practice.

And besides, it ain't my scale.

So why am I even commenting? Well, I find it interesting that Cossacks in German service are such a popular topic for miniatures makers.

On the one hand I am generally in favor of lots of variety of infantry figures. Cavalry too. More is better.

But it seems that this one topic gets much wider play than their numbers and importance / impact would warrant. It seems, to my (admittedly un-scientific) sampling, that there are more producers of Cossacks in German service, than of:
– Japanese cavalry
– French cavalry
– Romanian cavalry
– Italian cavalry

There even may be more manufacturers of Cossacks in German service than of German cavalry!

And at least one producer (in MY scale) provides Cossacks in German service, while they do not offer Cossacks in Russian service!

I mean, what gives? Why is these guys such a big deal?

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

No idea Mark. As it happens I think Crusader are the only firm to do 28mm Cossacks in German service, while 2 do ordinary German cavalry. There was a Kickstarter a while back to produce Japanese, Russian and Italian cavalry, but not sure how that did. I would love to see Romanian and Italian cavalry in 28mm, both of which served in significant numbers on the eastern front.

This is a minor nitpick, but one I wish sculptors would pick up on…

See how the straps for their equipment, including those MP-40s, goes under their shoulder-strap?

German uniforms don't work like that. The button that holds the shoulder strap down is a pain to use. Instead, there's a gap between the shoulder strap and the neck; the strap goes there, and if it slides down a bit it rides down onto the button:

Like so:

No one is going to unbutton their shoulder strap, put the sling through it, then re-button it. It just doesn't work like that.

The mp40 strap should definitely be on top of everything.
The Y straps might not.

Not sure this link will work. Here goes.

Front left:

link

Also from:
link

see this

That's the thing about the German army in WWII – you can find photos of rare exceptions to everything. Army guys wearing SS camouflage, SS wearing Wehrmacht insignia, you name it.

You'll find far, far more photos of soldiers wearing Y-straps outside of their shoulder insignia than photos of them with the Y-straps buttoned under them.

So – what should a sculptor model, the very rare exception or common practice?

I didn't search masses of pictures.
Most weren't clear enough so there were maybe 4 or 5 looked clear and i could see the straps.
Maybe those i found were somehow inherently biased.
Shrug.

There's a book on cossaks in German Service. In Russian, but you have real pictures there:
link

My ISP gives a virus warning for that link. Consequently I didn't venture further.

not in my case…
anyway, I'll try to cut some pics from the book: