I've been trolling around the net and the forums and came across a quote from Gadge who mentioned that the German soldiers used to tie captured Sten's to themselves to stop them being pinched.
I thought this sounded a bit weird, so I did a quick bit of Googling, and apparently the Germans used to do it quite a bit, and even had their own armoury references for different bits of captured kit.
Now, taking down notes for an armoury is all well and good, but how often would the Germans use captured weapons in combat?
And I don't just mean finding something on the ground and using it, I'm on about swapping a captured weapon with their current one and keeping it with them.
I think I've seen at most 1 photo with German soldiers wielding allied kit, but that looked a bit too posed to be believable. Does anyone have any references to this sort of thing?
There was a link to a WW2 forum on here (which I can't find), which had a long picture thread on this subject. There were simply loads of pics - not staged - of Germans using captured weapons - Czech, French, British, US, Soviet - you name it.
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Some Russian weapons - pistols and sub machine guns - were particularly popular I understand - 
Here is some pics
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... f053a47001
If its passed 9 there is a 95% chance im pissed.
good pics lewis
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good pics lewis
Why thank you Heer Joseph.
If its passed 9 there is a 95% chance im pissed.
happened to an institutionalised level.
You have to remember that the German army was far from the mighty war machine that the films portray.
It was 80 per cent horse drawn and horrifically poorly equipped for anything other than the polish and french campaign (and the french campaign was close)
Germany panzer arm was largely obsolete compared to the French tanks at the time, they just used theirs better. (mass formations rather than penny packets supporting infantry)
Without entire regiments being equipped with captured czech p35 and p38 tanks the german forces in poland and france would have consited larlgey of obsolete machine gun armed panzer 1 and lightly armoured Panzer II. Very few panzer III and IV were ready in time.
After overunning france the superior French tnaks were utilised and some saw service up until 1945 (somua and renault light tanks and Char bis converted to flametrhower tanks.)
Captured artillary especially french and russain was pressed inot service and in fact the luftwaaffe field divs used a massive ammount of captured ordnance.
After the initial succeess in Barbarossa their were enough captured t34s to equip whole companies.
Equally in the desert war captured British armour was used extensivley by both sides.
Basically german industry was in the shit trying to produce stuff for a war or garrison duty on about six fronts (west, east, med, africa, northern europe) so it used as much captured stuff as possible.
The war ministry gave all captured kit offical designations usually wiht the country of origin in parenthesis after the name.
E.g. Bren carriers captured at the fall of france were re-equipped with three panzerschreck anti tank launchers and called 'panzerjager bren (e)' (e for english).
At Arnhem the ss recce commanders vehicle was a captured Britsh armoured car and Rommel himself used a captured Dorchester ACV called 'morritz'.
Cold weather kit was in massivley shirt suply in the reich so a lot of US and russian kit was captured despite the fact soldiers knew they would be shot for wearing it in russia an even in the west post battle of the bulge. A
As for small arms, again frequent use of kit but generally for logistics reasons only kept while their was a stock of captured ammo.
The 1 carbine appeared popular with Germans as did the PPSH and sten.
So in answer to the question - all the time even to the point that it became official policy.
Of course this doesnt mean that every landser wore a gi over coat, carried a ppsh and rode on the back of a captured T34...
edit: aye excellent research there lewis.
"I think we are in rats' alley - Where the dead men lost their bones."
Here is some pics
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... f053a47001
Yes! That's the link. Cheers Lewis. 
You've got nothing to ein, zwei, drei, vier
Great pics Barcey -
Thats actually my real nickname well not exactly my nicknames Barky! because of my last name. lol
If its passed 9 there is a 95% chance im pissed.
At Arnhem the ss recce commanders vehicle was a captured Britsh armoured car and Rommel himself used a captured Dorchester ACV called 'morritz'.
A name which happens to be the same as the one given to Baron von Richthoven's Great Dane.
In the African Campaign Rommel also ordered that all critical items like water were moved by captured American trucks.
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I think gadge sums it up well. It was only after Speer was appointed head of armaments that German industry became a little more like the west, the underlying philosophy of german industry at the start of the war as that of smal workshops and craftsmen. Whereas thanks to mr ford the americans were already tooled up for massive mass production. Also because the way the 3rd reich was run with factions competing against each other there was no effective standardisation on stuff like bullet calibre etc atc.
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Neils bang on there.
If you consider that at the *best* point in the war the Reich had 69 ( yes *sixty nine* ) different makes of armroured vehicle in service the logistics of supplying that is madness (at times there were much more than that in service compounding the problem). There was some standardisation of parts but instead of having common supplies warehouses ended up stocking bits and pieces for everything.
Lets look at US key main battle tanks 1939 - 45
Lee
Stuart
Sherman
Pershing (and only 26 of these saw service)
(their are others but they are the main ones)
Compared to the germans running.
PII
PIII
pIV
Panther
Tiger
TigerII
P35(t)
P38(t)
t 34 (in numbers enough to require logisitcal support)
Similarly with small arms
If you consider that most allied small arms used .303, .45 or 9mm whereas the germans used a shedload of different calibres (admittedly a lot in captured kit)
Soldiers win battles but logistics win wars.
"I think we are in rats' alley - Where the dead men lost their bones."
Another reason for massive use of captured kit was the allied blockades.
The germans in the last years of the war were nearly entirely out of petrol, rubber, leather and copper.
This meant no electric turret systems in their own tanks as there wasnt the wiring, wood soled boots, belts and hat visors and non loadbearing 'leather' items being made out of pressed cardboard and synthetic fuels.
What the could make in the latter years was often shoddy as factories were working under carpet bombing conditions or manned by forced labour who would deliberately sabotage stuff.
Hence allied kit was often simply better.
As quick example i saw a field test of g43 sniper variant and the scope was actually off/faulty by manufacture being a 45 made one.
"I think we are in rats' alley - Where the dead men lost their bones."
Another reason my learned friend hasnt mentioned is that, espially in the sieges(Stalingrad, Caen, Antwerp.......) The only ammo was for allied weapons, with the exeption of the sten 9mm rounds nothing was inter changable so they had to use the weapons that their was more ammo for. This also go's for the allies (Hence why I started with an MP40 at Phoenix)
