"Cleaning up after WWII" Topic

One of the reasons WWII battlefields did not remain littered with vehicles for long was that, with the lone exception of the USA, all of the major warring powers made some official level of combat usage of captured enemy arms during WWII. The most formal was Germany's Beutewaffe (literally, ‘booty' or ‘loot' weapon) effort, which encompassed everything from handguns to fighter aircraft with an official code in the Waffenamt system; for example FK-288(r) (the Soviet ZiS-3 anti-tank gun), SIGew-251(a) (the American M1 Garand rifle), and Sd.Kfz 735(i) (the Italian Fiat M13/40 tank). Captured gear was assembled at points called Sammelstelle and then shipped back from the front lines for disposition.

More here:
link

Very interesting post.

Jim

Agreed. A lot of good stuff there.

Good article! Thanks for sharing.

Thanks!!

Dave

Fascinating! You never really think about the clean up after a world war. Thank you!

Really interesting article – thanks for posting.

Interesting. I didn't read it all the way to the end, but I noticed that the caption on the photo of a bunch of anti-tank guns claims they are British 17-pounders, when in fact they are British 6-pounders (or maybe American 57mms).

Thanks!

Very interesting, thanks. One caveat: it's true that outside of some unofficial salvaging, the US didn't use captured weapons directly. But it's also true that, after disagreeing with the French government in exile about how many French divisions we were to provide equipment for, some of the high-number French armored divisions were given German and 1940 French tanks out of American collection points, as in "anything you can make run, you can have."

Fascinating stuff, and Wow, 1940 tanks in use with the French late in the war! Any good source of information on the Free French use of these old vehicles?

A game pitching them against a German reserve unit with obsolete tanks could be fun.

Regards,
John

That makes for a great read.

Imagine the commercial value now of some of the "junk" that was scrapped for just raw materials. Not surprising after a war like that that folk did just want to be rid of it all….but if only….

I will forgive the countless wrong apostrophe's but well spotted the "17 pdrs". The front one, I think it's an airborne version to judge by its shield and folding train. I see a DD tank too still extant.

There's a little here, Erzherzog Johann:
link

But there's a lot more out there. Going from memory, the US undertook to arm two French armored divisions. Anything with a higher number in 1944-45 was kitted out with captured German stuff (including 1940 French, sometimes modified) supplemented by a smattering of British tanks the British wouldn't give to their own people--a squadron of Centaurs, for instance. I think they tried to keep companies/squadrons uniform for maintenance and logistics purposes. Of course, they're a scale modeller's dream with Free French markings over German paint schemes.

Mostly they were given undemanding tasks--besieging German-held port cities, for instance. But surely much of wargaming is exploring the decisions commanders didn't make in real life?

Oh. And quoting Wikipedia:
"After the Allies had invaded France in 1944, some B1s were recaptured. Several were used on an individual and incidental basis by resistance forces, such as those fighting the German garrison of Paris in August 1944. On 7 October 1944, the Provisional Government of the French Republic formed the 13th Dragoon Regiment of the Free French Forces. The majority of the regiment fielded SOMUA S35 cavalry tanks, but Captain Edmond Voillaume's 2nd Company was equipped with 19 B1 bis tanks, which included a mixture of standard and German modified B-2s. They were stationed in Orléans until 2 April 1945, when they were mobilized for the Allied siege of La Rochelle."

Obsolete tanks were valuable in counter guerilla warfare but dodgy against trained, purely infantry units. Countless examples of how worthless they could then be eg Pegasus Bridge against a PIAT. Once the average fantassin has a Bazooka, a Panzerschreck, a Panzerfaust the crews ist gefucht, to use a non existent German phrase. Not to mention A/T guns by 1944 or those poor devils up against Shermans in Paris 1944, in Renault 35s

Great read and information.

My uncle, who lost an arm and both legs in 1945, had a German POW orderly in the hospital. They became good friends. He was released and returned to Stuttgart. He wrote a letter to my uncle which my family framed, telling him that all returning POWs had jobs. They were hired to clear up of the rubble in there area as well as depots.