Germany - TheHistoryFiles.com

Growing up in Nazi Germany…

Melita Maschmann was a member of the BDM (League of German Girls). Her autobiography, Fazit: Kein Rechtfertigungsversuch (1963), is a controversial account of her Nazi past. This article shows how, through frameworks of racialised and gendered victimhood, concepts of nationhood are embroiled not only within persistent, competing Nazi ideologies but also within international ideological constellations […]

Air Warfare, Aircraft, Germany

Arado Ar 234B-2 “Nachtigall”

This particular aircraft (WNr 140146) was flown by Hauptmann Kurt Bonow based in Oranienburg during March 1945. It seems that during the last weeks of the War he managed to engage some RAF Mosquito night fighters although he failed to down any of them. Some references mention that a cramped radar compartment in the aft […]

Battle, British, Germany

Landings at Bagamoyo

Balloon ship Manica which was present. British troops continued to push south and towards the coast but it was suggested on 12 August 1916 that the Navy seize the port of Bagamoyo, which the British believed would be heavily defended. Then they heard that it had a garrison of only fifty men. So the British […]

Germany, Small Arms

Early WWII German Semi-Automatic Rifles

Gewehr 41 The Gewehr 41 was Germany’s first attempt at a semi-automatic rifle in the class of the American M1 Garand. The designation Gewehr 41 was given to two different weapons (although they look rather identical, they differ a lot and are not based on each other). A first weapon made by Mauser, the Gewehr […]

Fortification, Germany

German Defences in Italy

Mussolini inspecting fortified positions, 1944. Panther turrets are not of course AFV but their impact on the course of AFV affairs is thought to be sufficiently important to justify a few words. Panther turrets were first met in the Hitler line and were in fact the salient features round which the other defences were built […]

France, Germany, History

Battle of France 1940

The development of the battle plan for Fall Gelb from the original plan developed by OKH. The Battle of France, spanning May 10 to June 22, 1940, was the brilliant triumph of Germany’s Fall Gelb (“Case Yellow”) invasion plan, which brought about the ignominious defeat of the forces of France, Britain, Belgium, and the Netherlands. […]

Doctrine, Germany

Blitzkrieg in the Desert Part I

The first place where this particularly German form of mobile warfare ground to a halt occurred roughly fifty miles west of Cairo, among the ridges and gulleys that stretched directly southward from El Alamein, until one came to the treacherous dunes of the Quattara Depression. In contrast to the massive flat wheat fields of the […]

Biography, Germany

Helmut Woltersdorf

Helmut Woltersdorf was a German Luftwaffe flying ace and night fighter ace of the World War II. Woltersdorf is credited with 24 victories, including 20 Royal Air Force (RAF) bomber aircraft. Woltersdorf flew the Messerschmitt Bf 110 and Dornier Do 215 night-fighter. Woltersdorf initially joined II. Gruppe Zerstörergeschwader 141, based at Padubitz until May 1939, […]

Germany, Weapons

Hitler’s Saw

MG-34 MG-42 The MG-42 was designed during World War II as a replacement for the multipurpose MG-34, which was less than suitable for wartime mass production and was also somewhat sensitive to fouling and mud. It was manufactured in great numbers by companies like Grossfuss, Mauser-Werke, Gustloff-Werke, Steyr-Daimler-Puch, and several others. It is estimated that […]

Battle, Germany, Soviet

German Assault on Moscow – The Final Push

The German offensive was resumed on 15 November 1941 in clear and frosty weather. Reinhardt’s 3 Panzer Group and a part of Strauss’s 9 Army drove in Khomenko’s 30 Army on the left wing of Konev’s Kalinin Front in an attack towards Klin. Stalin’s reaction was immediate. Lelyushenko, who was recovering from a wound he […]