* '''''Panzerschreck'':''' ("Armor terror"; again, more like "tank fright") A reusable anti-tank rocket launcher based off captured American bazookas, and you can almost imagine the Nazi scientist getting one and saying "[[Ork|Bigga is Betta!]]." It was larger than the Bazooka with a 88mm muzzle size (where the first Bazooka was only 60mm), in fact it is still larger than most rocket launchers and mortars in use today. Like the Bazooka, but unlike the Panzerfaust, it could be reloaded, and had a longer range than the Faust. The Panzerschreck has a distinctive steel blast shield in front, this has to do with the larger rocket blowing hot exhaust into the users face and early models without the shield required the operator to wear a gasmask and protective poncho. The Panzershreck was more useful as an offensive weapon than the Panzerfaust since it was capable of easily penetrating the armor of any tank they faced at better ranges thanks to the bigger rocket. But on the other hand it was very much a temperamental weapon that required trained operators so its use was restricted to dedicated tank hunter teams, unlike the Panzerfaust which was simple enough a 10-years old kid could handle one easily.
* '''''Panzerschreck'':''' ("Armor terror"; again, more like "tank fright") A reusable anti-tank rocket launcher based off captured American bazookas, and you can almost imagine the Nazi scientist getting one and saying "[[Ork|Bigga is Betta!]]." It was larger than the Bazooka with a 88mm muzzle size (where the first Bazooka was only 60mm), in fact it is still larger than most rocket launchers and mortars in use today. Like the Bazooka, but unlike the Panzerfaust, it could be reloaded, and had a longer range than the Faust. The Panzerschreck has a distinctive steel blast shield in front, this has to do with the larger rocket blowing hot exhaust into the users face and early models without the shield required the operator to wear a gasmask and protective poncho. The Panzershreck was more useful as an offensive weapon than the Panzerfaust since it was capable of easily penetrating the armor of any tank they faced at better ranges thanks to the bigger rocket. But on the other hand it was very much a temperamental weapon that required trained operators so its use was restricted to dedicated tank hunter teams, unlike the Panzerfaust which was simple enough a 10-years old kid could handle one easily.
*'''''Panzerwurfmine'':''' ("Mine to be thrown at tanks". Yeah, the Germans tend to name things literally like that.) Another attempt at allowing infantrymen to deal with a tank, this is basically a shaped charge with deployable stabilizing cloth fins that was thrown overhand to land on the top a tank and blow a big, nice hole through it. Cheap to produce and very efficient, but it required lot of practice to use so it was only given to trained "[[Tankbustas|tank-hunter]]" teams. The Russians captured some of those, were impressed and promptly refined the German concept into their own "RPG-6" AT hand grenade that was just as cheap and efficient but way easier to use, and so good it was still part of their arsenal when the Soviet Union fell.
*'''''Captured Weapons''''': Due to necessity and practicality, German troops also commonly used enemy equipment from all sides, predominantly Soviet weapons due to their large sweeps during the first stage of the invasion of Russia. To ease supply concerns, some weapons were converted to use their own ammunition like the ''PPSh-41 sub-machinegun'', which was converted from 7.62x25mm to 9x19mm, while some had ammunition made for them in factories.
*'''''Captured Weapons''''': Due to necessity and practicality, German troops also commonly used enemy equipment from all sides, predominantly Soviet weapons due to their large sweeps during the first stage of the invasion of Russia. To ease supply concerns, some weapons were converted to use their own ammunition like the ''PPSh-41 sub-machinegun'', which was converted from 7.62x25mm to 9x19mm, while some had ammunition made for them in factories.
Revision as of 06:00, 28 March 2018
Nazis. History's most stylish villains. They're famous as much for their cool equipment as for their total evilness, and because of its distinctive aesthetic and reputation- they did develop some of the most technologically advanced weapons of the 1940s, after all- it gets a lot of use in games, both traditional and otherwise. Here's a hilariously non-brief overview. As a general rule of thumb (with the exception of the Karabiner 98 which predated the Nazis by decades) Nazi equipment was very advanced in concept and potentially quite strong, but overly complicated and unreliable to the point of being dangerous to its user.
Karabiner 98 kurz: ("Carbine 1898 short" in German.) The standard German infantry rifle during WWII from the old Mauser family (the Mauser action was used in dozens of countries and is still in wide use today). It was beginning to become dated in WWII, given that it was essentially just a shorter version of the venerable Gewehr 98 which armed most German soldiers in WWI. It used 7,92×57mm Mauser ammunition (often shortened to "8mm Mauser"). The rifle's strengths were that it was fairly cheap, very accurate, and reliable. But its drawbacks were that it had a slow rate of fire and only a five-round magazine. The easiest weapon to compare it to in WWII would be the British SMLE rifle, which had a ten-round magazine and had a good rate of fire for a bolt action. Worse yet, the Karabiner 98k also went up against the semi-automatic American M1 Garand which vastly outperformed it in spitting bullets down range. Even then, the gun was generally quite well regarded for what it was and there was plenty of them to go around. It was also the go-to weapon for German snipers who affixed a scope to it. The gun is still in use today actually, it is still the German army's drill rifle, some states still use versions of it as a sniper rifle and it's sometimes found in Iraq and other third world nations where it acts as a cheap marksman's rifle. Of course, it's also an excellent hunting rifle in civilian hands.
Gewehr 43: "Rifle 1943". the German army's semi-automatic rifle. This weapon was developed in response to their invasion of the Soviet Union, where the Germans were shocked to find Soviet troops brandishing semi-automatic rifles (the SVT-40, primarily), drastically out-gunning their troops in firefights. The result was a fairly decent semi-automatic rifle/carbine chambered for the same rounds as the Kar98k. The rifle's magazine was also not built-in in that its detachable (allowing for quick reloads) but still had the option of allowing the shooter to rapidly use stripper-clips when reloading. Much like the Kar98k, it worked well as a marksman/sniper's weapon when affixed with a scope. Unfortunately, mechanically it was far from perfect as it was overgassed — the gas pressure that was tapped from the barrel to cycle the semi-automatic action proved to be too strong for the rifle's quite complicated mechanism, especially when made by unskilled workers from lower-quality steel, resulting in (comparatively) frequent breakdowns and shattered parts, in addition to requiring more maintenance. For this reason, G43 wasn't a very popular weapon among German troops, though its firepower was still welcome.
Maschinenpistole 38/40: "Machine pistol 1938/1940", the MP 40 is a slightly updated variant more suitable for mass-production. The most common German submachine gun through the war used mainly by squad leaders and troops fighting in urban areas. It was also the go-to weapon of specialist units like paratroopers and the SS. Uses a 32-round magazine chambered for 9x19mm rounds and typically comes with a folding wire stock. In general pretty good but only a million of them were produced, compared to the millions of SMGs made by the British, Americans and Soviets. The primary weapon of the Nazis, according to Hollywood at least, where every single German grunt has one. Known for its rather simplistic design; the weapon had only one fire setting (automatic), though its cyclical rate was much lower than equivalent Allied SMGs, allowing aimed single shots at the cost of some room-clearing power.
Pistole Parabellum 1908: "Pistol Parabellum 1908". The Nazis used a bunch of pistols in truth, but none are as iconic of the Third Reich as the P08 Luger with its joint armed breech. It could load an eight-round box magazine or a thirty-two-round drum. The 9x19mm Parabellum cartridge was initially designed for this pistol and is still one of the most common pistol calibers in the world. It was eventually phased out in favor of the P38 as being a standard-issue sidearm due to the Luger being too expensive to manufacture for the entire German army, although the Luger was still available for the troops and officers who could afford it. The Luger was also particularly unique at the time in that it can double as a pistol carbine by affixing a stock and a 32-round drum-magazine to it. The exotic mechanism of the gun meant it had shitty reliability in field conditions, but the gun was made at an age where sidearms were typically issued to specialists, officers, and policemen, who were typically away from conditions that could foul up the gun.
Walther Pistole 38: "Walther Pistol 1938". The Walther P38 replaced the Luger P08 as the Wermacht service pistol just before World War II due to it being cheaper to produce. It loaded a 9x19mm eight-round detachable box magazine. Nerds will recognize this as G1 Megatron's alt-mode. MUCH more common than the Luger despite what Hollywood would tell you, and a decent pistol, if a bit annoying due to its hard-to-pull trigger.
Mauser Construktion 96: "Construction 1896". Popularly known as the "Boxcannon" and "Broomhandle"; it loaded ten rounds from a stripper clip into an internal magazine, although there was also an option for a 20-round magazine and had the added bonus of the entire magazine being detachable instead of being built-into the weapon. The C96 typically loaded either 9x19mm or 7.63x25mm rounds. The C96 was not typically issued to the main German army during WW2; only the Luftwaffe were the known users of the weapon during the war as sidearms for their pilots. It can also be turned into a carbine by affixing a stock to the weapon that could double as a holster, although this was not a particularly widespread modification. Nerds will recognize this as Han Solo's DL-44 blaster pistol from the original Star Wars trilogy, with some gubbins glued to it to make it more sci-fi.
Walther Polizeipistole/Polizeipistole Kurz: "Police Pistol/Police Pistol short". You know this one, it's the gun made popular by Ian Fleming and James Bond super-spy character. The Walther PP is a compact pistol that was typically issued to German police units (Kripo, Gestapo, Gefepo and Feldgendarmerie), but also as a sidearm to military officers. The PPK variant was an even smaller version of the PP, designed for concealed carry in mind (infact it was so small that it can typically fit into the sleeves of most longcoats, making it useful for infiltrators). It was either chambered for 9x18mm or 9x17mm rounds.
Sturmgewehr 44: The "Assault rifle 1944" was the first assault rifle adopted on a large scale. Chambered for the new 7.92x33mm Kurz cartridge, it gave a rifleman the power and accuracy of a rifle with the rate of fire of a submachine gun. As its name suggests it entered the war very late, even though it is only an updated version of the MKB42, which, as the name suggests, came into the war mid-early 1942. In a rare demonstration of common sense, Hitler vetoed its development early on due to logistics (replacing over 10 million '98k' rifles by a new model with different ammo wouldn't be done overday even in the absolute best of case), though he changed his mind later in the war when it became clear a limited impact would be better than none at all. This combined with the fact that producing the Stg44 required the industry to adapt their tooling and recurrent shortages of resources later in the war heavily limited the scale to which they were produced. It also had some teething mechanical issues including fragility of the feed mechanism, which could be jammed if the rifle was knocked over. Anecdote, one of its attachments was the Krummlauf, a curved barrel and periscope for firing around corners. Yes, it worked, but the bullets shattered, causing a shotgun-like spread, and the barrels wore out quickly. Even so the troops who got them loved them for the Stg44 gave them the firepower of a sub-machinegun at about three time more effective range, and it was particularly interesting to the Russians, inspiring a certain gun called the AK-47.
Maschinengewehr 42: "Machine gun 1942". German military doctrine during WWII was built around the machine gun and as such, the Germans developed an exceptional machine gun in the MG 42 (basically an improved but functionally identical version of the earlier MG 34). It was lightweight at 11.7 kg, was belt fed unlike the magazine fed LMGs it usually went against, and it could fire 1,200 rounds per minute while most other machine guns could barely reach 600. That much dakka causes a lot of heat, so the gun was designed for easy swapping of barrels; although even with the barrels being regularly changed it was not uncommon for these guns to fire so fast that a cartridge would ignite before being fully loaded, completely breaking the gun and potentially injuring the gun's crew. Its terrifying rate of fire and distinctive report earned it the nickname "Hitler's Buzzsaw". The MG 42 was the basis for numerous other weapons throughout the Cold War (and is still used in NATO-forces today as MG3, they only changed to NATO-standard-caliber and reduced the firing rate to "real" 1200 rounds per minute, as opposed to the 1500 rpm of the original MG42).
Maschinengewehr 34: The predecessor to the MG 42, it was still in wide use at the start of the war. It had a lower, more controllable rate of fire of around 800-900 RPM, and had a single-shot mode that was removed in the MG 42. Its production went on parallel to the MG 42 because its swing-down barrel-swap method was more compatible with vehicle ball mounts than MG 42's slide-open method, so all MGs seen on German tanks even late in the war were MG 34's.
Fallschirmjägergewehr 42: "Paratrooper rifle 1942", or if a K98k and a MG42 could have a baby together this battle rifle would be it. Created in limited numbers for the exclusive use of German paratroopers. The high-ups realized that the K98k was too long for paratroopers and the MP40 wasn't suitable outside of urban combat, so they wanted something that handled like a carabine and could fire like a machinegun. the FG 42 was designed as a shorter, automatic battle rifle to give paratroops superior firepower, using a side-loading box magazine. Its high recoil made automatic fire inadvisable, as with later automatic battle rifles such as the US M14. While it never really took off, it was quite the solid design and is notable for influencing the design of the M60 machinegun (along with the MG 42) after the war.
Hafthohlladung: (Lit. "Attachable Shaped Charge"). Very soon into the war, the Germans realized they would never have enough tanks and AT guns to go around, so they developed weapons that would allow an infantryman to deal with a tank. The Hafthohlladung was such an early attempt. A big AT grenade with three magnets that allowed it to stick to any metallic surface, it would make a nice hole into any tank it was attached to... Which makes the weapon's main drawback immediately clear: running up to an operational tank to slap a bomb to its flank wasn't exactly safe. The Hafthohlladung wasn't really a successful weapon and saw only limited use, but it paved the way for the next item on the list:
Panzerfaust: ("Armor fist"; literal translation, more like "tank fist") A disposable one-shot anti-armor weapon for use against tanks and entrenched positions. Really cheap to produce, easy to use, lightweight, and able to do a lot of damage to tanks at close range (at most within 150 meters for the later models). And it was really easy to use: hold in crook of the arm, flip a switch up that becomes an iron sights to aim (and arms the weapon), aim, squeeze triggering mechanism and enjoy the fireworks. The basic idea of how they were used was to give one guy in every squad (or more) one of them so if a tank got close to them there was a chance they'd be able to take it out or do some damage. This, which among other things, made allied generals wary about sending tanks out to clear out German infantry forces. That said, Panzerfausts were useless for trying to snipe at tanks from a distance (with an effective range of only 150m, this was about the same range most SMGs only could remain accurate for) and could not be reloaded with another rocket, preventing most troops from carrying more than one shot on their person. In the last days of the war the Nazis gave these to grannies and kids on the off-chance they could destroy an allied tank or when they rolled into town. Looked like a fist in a tube, hence the name. Its general design was later copied by the Russians, eventually used in the RPG-2 and RPG-7 rocket launchers. The concept of the Panzerfaust is still very much alive today in the different existing "Light Anti-tank Weapons" (M72, AT4, MATADOR,...) in use today.
Panzerschreck: ("Armor terror"; again, more like "tank fright") A reusable anti-tank rocket launcher based off captured American bazookas, and you can almost imagine the Nazi scientist getting one and saying "Bigga is Betta!." It was larger than the Bazooka with a 88mm muzzle size (where the first Bazooka was only 60mm), in fact it is still larger than most rocket launchers and mortars in use today. Like the Bazooka, but unlike the Panzerfaust, it could be reloaded, and had a longer range than the Faust. The Panzerschreck has a distinctive steel blast shield in front, this has to do with the larger rocket blowing hot exhaust into the users face and early models without the shield required the operator to wear a gasmask and protective poncho. The Panzershreck was more useful as an offensive weapon than the Panzerfaust since it was capable of easily penetrating the armor of any tank they faced at better ranges thanks to the bigger rocket. But on the other hand it was very much a temperamental weapon that required trained operators so its use was restricted to dedicated tank hunter teams, unlike the Panzerfaust which was simple enough a 10-years old kid could handle one easily.
Panzerwurfmine: ("Mine to be thrown at tanks". Yeah, the Germans tend to name things literally like that.) Another attempt at allowing infantrymen to deal with a tank, this is basically a shaped charge with deployable stabilizing cloth fins that was thrown overhand to land on the top a tank and blow a big, nice hole through it. Cheap to produce and very efficient, but it required lot of practice to use so it was only given to trained "tank-hunter" teams. The Russians captured some of those, were impressed and promptly refined the German concept into their own "RPG-6" AT hand grenade that was just as cheap and efficient but way easier to use, and so good it was still part of their arsenal when the Soviet Union fell.
Captured Weapons: Due to necessity and practicality, German troops also commonly used enemy equipment from all sides, predominantly Soviet weapons due to their large sweeps during the first stage of the invasion of Russia. To ease supply concerns, some weapons were converted to use their own ammunition like the PPSh-41 sub-machinegun, which was converted from 7.62x25mm to 9x19mm, while some had ammunition made for them in factories.
Vehicles
Tanks
German tanks were in general well designed, but in hindsight were overengineered and prone to breakdowns in the field. For example, take their Schachtellaufwerk (interleaved roadwheels system for tracks). The idea was: more roadwheels = weight distributed more evenly over track = less ground pressure = less bogging down and/or tank can be heavier. Great idea on paper, pretty good one when testing prototypes at home... but an absolute hell on the Eastern front where the rasputitza infiltrated between the wheels before freezing and breaking everything. Queue hour after hour of work removing the track and wheels and cleaning them before mounting them again for the maintenance teams after each time the goddamn tank sortied; where a more traditional slack-track system required much less of said cleaning work.
In the end, the true selling point of the Panzerwaffe was not the tanks themselves, but instead the crew members manning them, the mechanics supporting them and the radios installed in every tank that allowed for a level of coordination between tanks, infantry and artillery not seen before the start of WWII (and formed the core of the Blitzkrieg tactic). This along with late war designs occasionally gave German tanks an edge over Allied tanks until production problems and stability issues quickly botched things up.
German tanks are called "Panzer", which when directly translated means "armor" and more specifically is the short version of "Panzerkampfwagen" (Armored Fighting Vehicle). The name is often shortened to just to "PzKpfw".
Panzer I: Designed and produced in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, the Panzerkampfwagen I was the first Nazi tank. It was small, weighing only 5.4 tonnes, and was armed only with two MG-13 machine guns. Some 1,493 were made and were most notable in that they allowed tank crews to be trained and (after being sent to Spain) let tank doctrine be developed that allowed the Nazis to take over Poland. They saw some use at the beginning of WWII, but were pretty soon deemed to be out of date even on scouting missions. Until they were deemed totally obsolete, they were continuously upgraded and specialized, and had several variants including a potential recon paratrooper-tank. Primary Nazi tank of the Condor legion in the Spanish Civil War Mein Herr! Can't ve get somezing better zan zis Panzer I? As with a lot of Nazi tanks, the old PzKpfw 1s were often stripped to the chassis and repurposed for things such as artillery and tank-destroyer roles, though this was relatively rare.
Panzer II: The Panzerkampfwagen II was designed with the experience of the Spanish Civil War. Heavier than the Panzer I at 8.9 tonnes, it was designed as a stopgap, as the Panzer III and IV were experiencing delays in production. It was armed with a dinky little automatic 20mm cannon little better than an anti-tank rifle. Common during the early war, it was made obsolete by the arrival of the Panzer III and IV, and relegated to reconnaissance duties, training, or conversion into open-topped tank destroyers. Much like it's younger brother, it too was pushed through several variants, however instead of trying to upgrade it for main-line action, it was turned into a better scout tank so the Panzer III could take over the main-line role. Primary Nazi tank for the invasion of Poland and France.
Panzer III: One of the two main German tanks of the war, the Panzerkampfwagen III was when Germany was really getting the hang of this whole tank design thing. Introduced in 1939, it weighed 23 tonnes, carried a 37mm anti tank gun, and notably had a turret big enough for three guys. The Panzer III was intended to engage enemy tanks. In Poland, France, and North Africa it did well, even though some French vehicles outgunned them. Against Soviet T-34s it was completely insufficient, even when upgraded to a 50mm gun. Thankfully unlike the French and Russians the Panzer III were all armed with radios allowing them to out-maneuver the un-radioed yet better tanks. Production stopped in 1942, but since they had built 5,774 of them, they stayed in service until the end of the war. The chassis was used to produce the StuG assault cannon (but "Geschütz" is hard to translate to English, it's neither a mere gun, nor a cannon, it's more of a tank destroyer, i.e. a "sniper"-type tank) which would be the most widely produced German vehicle of the war. Primary Nazi tank for the invasion of Soviet Union.
Panzer IV: The most common German made tank, with nearly 9,000 units being built over the course of the war, the Panzerkampfwagen IV was the Panzer III's big brother. The Panzer IV was originally intended to be used against infantry and was armed with a low velocity 75mm gun for blowing stuff up. After the invasion of Russia they switched to a 50mm anti tank gun and later a 75mm high-velocity cannon. After that upgrade, it was in general on par with the T-34 and M4 Sherman in most regards, they had a less powerful engine, but better optics. Unlike Soviet tanks, every Panzer IV generally had a working a radio receiver. It's chassis became the foundation of many German vehicles of all classifications. Primary Nazi tank from 1942 to the end of the war in 1945.
Panzer VI Tiger: Even before invading Russia, the generals of Vermacht sent requests for a tank that could be called "heavy", mostly after seeing French BF-1s in action, however brief or desperate. But, only the shock of encountering previously unknown Soviet KV-1s and T-34s gave a necessary push and resources to the project, as perceived German tank superiority was shattered. The Nazi top brass took this as a challenge to create the ultimate tanks, and the result of said project were "the Big Cats". The first of these was the Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger heavy tank, which entered service in 1942. The nazis had been toying about with the idea of a heavy tank on the backburner before being pushed forward after Barbarossa. Heavy definitely described the Tiger: it weighed 54 tonnes, had a 690 hp engine, had up to 100mm of armor, and was armed with a massive 88mm cannon that could take out T-34 or Sherman from 2 kilometers withe ease; in fact, it could do this to any tank the Allies would have at any point of the war from one kilometer away, barring IS-2s and Churchills VII. Despite this, the Tiger was over-engineered mechanically and somewhat under-designed chassis-wise. It was expensive and labor intensive to build, had reliability issues, and was difficult to support and repair, on top of being slow horribly maintenance-intensive (Enough with the memes, the Tiger was just as fast as the Panzer IV and had better off-road capability.) The Tiger chassis was essentially a metal box, and the design took no advantage from sloped armor, which made the Tiger heavier and slower than it could have been (for the same armor effectiveness). Only 1,347 Tigers were built, and every last one of them made opposing tank crews want to be nowhere near these death machines (Often when attacked by an unseen foe, the crews would think they were under attack by a Tiger, even if it might have been just a well hidden PAK-40 AT-gun.). In one instance a single Tiger destroyed most of the 22nd Armoured Brigade and forced them to retreat (Battle of Villers-Bocage). The Tiger is without a doubt the most famous (and overrated due to the problems listed above) tank of WWII, known even to those illiterates who think only America fought WWII with Germany, and if most video games are to be believed, every Nazi tank was a Tiger. That is however somewhat understandable given just how often allied tankers yelled 'Tiger' when ever they lost a tank to even a regular AT gun. The Tiger and Panther tanks, like a used car, came with an owner's manual, the Tigerfibel and Pantherfibel, and Heinz Guderian, one of Germany's, (Empire,Republic, Nazi, Western) best tank commanders wanted every tank crew to read the manual. But, it was known even then just how many guys actually read the instruction manual for anything. So, it was written as an fun book to read with humor, poetry and naked girls along side the information about how to use the most famous heavy tanks to be fielded in world war 2.
Panzer V Panther: The Panther was introduced in 1943 and is often argued to be the the best tank of the war. It copied many features of the T-34 and improved on them. It was listed as a "medium tank," despite weighing in at 44.8 tonnes. Its 75mm/L70 gun was one of the most powerful tank guns of the war and could destroy any Allied tank. Its frontal armor was more effective than that of the Tiger's. A swift and hard as nails death machine, when it was in working order. The Panther was rushed into service and had even more mechanical problems than the Tiger did due to its rushed design. The Panther was only about 20% more expensive to produce than the Panzer IV and the Germans managed to produce 6,000 of them, though switching over did cost them in terms of other production due to retooling. Along with the Tigers, this was enough to get the Americans and British to make the Sherman Firefly and the Soviets to make up-armored and up-gunned T-34-85s. Along with the aforementioned US and Soviet tanks, the Panther eventually became the inspiration for the post-war main battle tank concept. An upgraded Panther II was planned, but never entered production. Zis vill do nicely! Danke!....Gott im Himmel, zat's a lot of Shermans!
Tiger II: The Tiger II, or King Tiger (from an incorrect translation of Königstiger meaning "Bengal Tiger", but which literally translates to "Royal Tiger"), was the ultimate German Tank introduced in 1944 as a successor to the Tiger. It weighed 68.5 tonnes (more than most modern tanks) and had 150mm frontal armor, which was even sloped (a huge step forward from the boxy Tiger I)! Even so, only 492 of them rolled off the assembly line before the war ended. These tanks were considered to be just as temperamental as the Tiger I, but for different reasons. The designers learned how to fix some of the problems with the Tiger I, and promptly over-built the Tiger II even more after patching the holes, because they thought they had wiggle room or something.
Anything they could steal: From French B1 heavy tanks to Soviet T-34's to American Shermans, the Nazi used every thing they could get their hands on like Orks in clean uniforms (not that Allies were any different: Soviets had several companies armed with Panzers V used as tank destroyers). This became so chronic that the British had a strong rule in place that said any tank which could not be repaired or salvaged was to be destroyed, so the Germans wouldn't pinch it. They deployed stolen tanks pretty much everywhere, and of every type; hell, even Renault FT-17s were used in police roles in some areas.
Panzer 35(t) and 38(t): the most famous tanks the Nazi stole were supplied with by puppet governments all across the Europe were the PZ 35(t) and 38(t). Light tanks, both were Czech designs (hence the (t) for tschechisch) Germany acquired when they took over the Sudetenland and then the rest of Czechoslovakia. While very useful early in the war, the designs were rendered obsolete by 1942 (they simply couldn't compete against a T-34) and the chassis was instead used to produce Marder 2 and Hetzer tank destroyers. A version of the 38(t), called the Stridsvagn m/41, was also used by Sweden. The vehicle's Czech steel was lower-quality than German stock.
Tank Destroyers/Assault Guns
Between the First and Second World Wars, various nations were still messing around with what was a good design for armored vehicles. This is the same time that gave us the British infantry and cavalry tank concept. In response to the super heavy British infantry tanks of the time, the Germans were quick to invent and use an armored doctrine they called Panzerjäger (tank hunters). The concept was to stick a huge gun, too big to put in a proper turret with current technology, onto a vehicle with fixed casement and open top to move the heavy gun around easily. Think like the Basilisk, only built for direct fire. Later in the war, Germany discarded the lighter Panzerjäger tank destroyers and instead designed big heavy tank destroyers, with thick armor and guns big enough to make an ork blush with envy, called "Jagdpanzer" (hunter-tank). Panzerjäger of both types had the advantage of being cheaper and simpler to make than turreted tanks and having lower silhouettes, allowing for easier ambushes, plus it was easy to convert an otherwise out of date, under-gunned tank into a destroyer. The disadvantage was, of course, they had no turrets, so they could be outflanked and had no way to point their guns at any targets that did not drive in front of them.
Panzerjäger I: Remember that little note in the Panzer 1's description on how it was repurposed? Well, this is the end result. What basically amounts to a Panzer I with its turret taken off and a casemate installed instead, it had a nice 4.7cm anti-tank gun but was relatively weak otherwise. There were no vision slits in the casemate, meaning the crew had to peek over the top and get themselves shot in the head (a pressing issue in particular for Anti-Tank battalion 643).
Marder: The Marder 1, 2, and 3 were all very similar tank destroyers, hence why they share a listing. The Marder 1 is based on the chassis of the French Lorraine 37L tractor, the Marder 2 is based off the Panzer II chassis, and the Marder III is based of off the Panzer 38(t) (the "T" means it was Czech in origin, not that it weighed 38 tons). All three were open topped and armed with either 7.5 cm cannons or converted Russian 76 mm cannons they stole early in their invasion of Russia. At the start of Operation Barbarossa, German tanks were again, under-gunned and -armed compared to their enemy's, especially when compared to the T-34, which one German field marshal quipped was the best tank in the world in 1941. But like the battle for France, the Germans had more radios and were able to make massive advances anyway. Still, a better anti-tank weapon was needed, so the Marders were created and were armed with 7.5 cm weapons, but there were never enough of them so they used Russian guns.
Wespe and Hummel: The Wasp and Bumblebee, respectively, and both with a nasty sting. Both were re-purposed tank chassis, but sporting artillery howitzers instead of AT guns (Which makes them technically self-propelled artillery instead of assault guns, but in the end it's a huge gun on tracks so fuck that noise!) the Wespe was based off the Panzer II and sported a 105mm 'light' howitzer; the Hummel was based on a modified Panzer III chassis and sported a 150mm howitzer. They're the real-life equivalents of (and probably the inspiration behind) the Imperial Guard's Basilisk Artillery Gun.
Hetzer: Repurposed Panzer 38(t) with a casemate-mounted 75mm gun. A nice late-war re-design and a dangerous opponent since its small chassis and decent speed made it easy to get in position for a good ambush, and its gun was strong enough to take on any allied tank. The Hetzer lacked in the armour department, though, and couldn't slug it out.
Nashorn: Also called Hornisse, this was a Marder-like tank-destroyer, with a chassis specially designed to mount the fearsome "Acht-acht" 88mm gun. Just like the Marders it was open-topped, but the huge range of its gun made it a dangerous opponent.
StuG III & IV: by far the most widely produce German vehicle of the second world war, the Stug was easily one of the most versatile combat platforms fielded in the war. StuG's, or "Sturmgeschütz" or "assault artillery", were built to combat a problem Germany learned from the first world war: that Infantry lacked the ability to take on fortifications, and the Artillery was too slow to keep up to allow direct fire on these targets. The StuG was the solution: by mounting a 7.5 cm howitzer gun in a fixed casemate on a Panzer III chassis, they allowed the vehicle to roll up with the infantry and blow fortifications in the way to rubble. Of course during the invasion of the Soviet Union the Germans ran into tanks much better than their existing vehicles, namely KV-1s and T-34. In order to quickly counter these threats, the StuG was "up-gunned" (quote marks are there because the guns caliber did not change), to mount a High Velocity 7.5 cm anti-tank gun. In 1943, the StuG chassis was changed from a Panzer III's to a Panzer IV's, otherwise no changes were made. StuG's, despite looking like and being compared to tanks, were not considered tanks and were crewed by artillery men. StuG's are estimated to have destroyed 20,000 enemy tanks in the course of the war, impressive when you consider that just over 10,000 were made, and not all of those were armed with actual anti tank weapons. After the war the Soviets gave a number of captured tanks to Syria where they were used up to 1960s. (There was a self-propelled-gun with a howitzer, too, the StuH 42.)
Sturmpanzer: Known commonly as the Brummbär (Grouch), this infantry support gun was based on the Panzer IV chassis. It mounted a 15cm mortar-sized direct-fire cannon, which fired a combined shell-charge weighing in at over 100lbs, designed to make infantry and buildings explode. It was given this name for two reasons: the tank broke down all the time (way more than any Panzer IV), and the shells were arduous to load.
Ferdinand/Elefant: To put the Ferdinand into perspective, this is a tank that even Hitler though was too complex, too unreliable and too theoretically advanced to use. The Ferdinand is the result of a contest between two of Nazi Germany's top companies, Porsche and Henschel (both of which still exist to day) to produce a heavy tank that could use the 8.8 cm gun. Henschel won the contest and their design became the Tiger tank, but Porsche ended up making 90 of their designs hulls, as Prof. Ferdinand Porsche was Hitler's favourite and so he arrogantly began production before the results came in. It was decided to turn those unused Tiger P prototypes into tank destroyers, and so they bolted even more armor on to them and added a fixed super structure for the gun and thus the Ferdinand (named humbly after Porsche himself) was born. The Ferdinand was a troubled vehicle, rather then one engine it had two and thanks to poor ventilation they often overheated and bizarrely, they did not even connected to the drive train and instead were connected to a set of electric generators. That's right, in 1942, the Nazi's built a 65 ton Gas-electric, hybrid-powered tank destroyer, good for the environment maybe, but maintenance for the thing was a nightmare worse than the Tiger. And before we forget, it did not have a machine gun. Rather ironically (less so for its crew) it could destroy any tank on the eastern front at distances exceeding 2000 meters, but five guys with Molotov cocktails could take it out. So in 1943, 48 of the 50 remaining tanks were converted to have a machine gun, more armor, anti-magnetic zimmerite paste coatings, and a commander's cupola. The modified tanks were named Elefants. Overall, more Ferdinands were destroyed by their own crews after they broke down and could not be towed back to a repair base than were lost to enemy fire. Maybe it is the inspiration for the Shadowsword Imperial Guard superheavy.
Jagdpanzer IV: A Panzer IV chassis mounting a long-barrelled 75mm gun in a casemate mount.
Jagdpanther: A Panther chassis mounting a long-barrelled 88mm gun in a casemate mount. Arguably the best "Jagd-" model combining decent mobility, decent protection and a very powerful gun.
Jagdtiger: Tiger II chassis outfitted with a long-barrelled 128mm (!) naval gun. Pure overkill, and ultimately a poorly-performing design. To put it in perspective, the M1 "Abrams" TODAY has a smaller and shorter 120mm cannon, even if most of its armor busting power comes from the fact it fires modern (and far more deadly) sabot rounds. Even back then, two of the most effective AT guns of the war were the German "Acht-Acht" 88mm gun and the British 76.2mm "17 pounder" gun; both much smaller, lighter and with a better rate of fire than this 128mm monster. Nothing that was actually used on land (at sea is another history) in World War II called for a 128mm gun, not even bunker-busting. (And yes, the Russian KV-2 had a even larger bore weapon, sporting a 152mm howitzer in its fuckheug turret. But is was a (poor) stop-gap solution to grant said howitzer more mobility on rough terrain, never meant to engage other tanks. And the Russians realized it was a bad idea way faster, too.) Add to that, a tank with a 128mm main gun is especially stupid when your enemies on both sides favored zerg rushes of Sherman and T-34's medium tanks respectively that could reliably be taken out by much smaller guns. (Seriously, read Otto Carius' memoirs. His opinion on these is as first-hand as it is scathing.)
Contrarily to what it might looks like, this is not a mock-up of a 40k Vindicator but a real combat vehicle.Sturmtiger: The Sturmtiger is one of the most striking example of Nazi "mad genius" given form, this assault gun could almost belong in the "Wunderwaffe" section. As you can see from the picture, it looks like a Vindicator which is not a coincidence: both vehicles' role is to rumble up to a strongpoint and obliterate it with extreme firepower. Very quickly, the Germans realized that fortifications were a major pain in their Aryan butts to deal with and that static artillery was too slow and vulnerable to keep up with their Blitzkrieg attacks. So at first they relied on airplanes, but as their opponents started to contest the skies, they fielded self-propelled howitzers that would rumble up 'close' to the bunker/building/... and blast it to pieces. The Sturmtiger... The Sturmtiger is what you get when the point where you should have stopped putting bigger, larger guns on tracks is long passed, yet one still keeps going... and somehow manages to make it work. Based off of the Tiger 1 chassis, it sported a 380mm rocket launcher adapted from a Kriegsmarine depth-charge launcher as main gun; and only because the 210 mm howitzer they intended to use first wasn't available. Although it sported a gun that could obliterate anything in front of it, the Sturmtiger suffered the same problems as the Tiger itself. Overbuilt drivetrain, maintenance-intensive and prone to breakdowns Schachtellaufwerk to keep ground pressure of the tracks tolerable and underpowered engine. On top of that, the rocket was so powerful that in order to not break the barrel of the gun or kill the crew, the exhaust gasses from launching the depth-charge rocket had to be vented out of a number of tubes that went back up the barrel.
Airplanes
Messerschmitt Bf 109: This plane is credited with more kills than any other fighter in the history of man due to the tens of thousands of communists it has sent to hell in burning metal coffins. It is also the most produced fighter of all time. The variants of the 109 and the Spitfire competed with each other throughout the war for the title of "World's Best Fighter" as they were both continually upgraded. The 109 was small, very fast, a good turner, a god tier climber, and was inexpensive to produce and maintain. The 109's speed and climb rate made it a top tier energy fighter.
When the Nazis applied their sense of style to aerospace engineering, the result was the Fw 190D-9, the second sexiest son of a bitch in the sky, second only to the SR-71
Focke-Wulf Fw 190: When first introduced, the Fw 190 was hands-down the best fighter on the planet, due mostly to its very powerful radial engine. The 190A-3 was rocking 1,700 horsepower at a time when the Spitfire V had 1,450. As the war dragged on, BMW failed miserably to improve the engine and the 190 dropped in effectiveness until it was given a completely new engine in the Dora variant. The 190 was horrifically fast at low altitude, had extremely powerful armament, outstanding high speed handling, and had the best roll rate of any plane in the war. However, it was a very poor turner. This set of attributes made the 190 one of the best "boom and zoom" fighters.
One of Germany's attempts at packing enough dakka in explosive form
Heinkel He 111: The main German bomber from beginning to end, it was developed in the 1930s; the Nazis called it a high speed passenger jet to get around the Treaty of Versailles. It was first put to its real use in the Spanish Civil War. The He 111 was a twin engine medium bomber, cheap to make and maintain and able to carry up to 3,600 kilos of bombs. Early on it performed very well and was one of the most effective bombers in the world but after 1941 the British and Americans began building larger and longer ranged four engine bombers like the Lancaster and the Flying Fortress in large quantities. The german engineers had a plan to counter these with an enhanced version of the HE 111 called the HE 111-Z that consisted of two 111 fuselages fused together on a central wing (which is just as retardedly awesome and awesomely retarded as it sounds) therefore gathering twice the bombs and weaponry of a regular bomber while being powered by 5 engines. They did manage to make it fly but it remained a prototype.
Messerschmitt ME-163 Komet: Before the Nazis mastered jet engines, they toyed around with rocket-based fighters instead. The Komet was a tiny, zippy little fighter plane, and the first plane to travel faster than 1000 kph. It was also the first and last rocket-powered fighter, as they only succeeded to shoot down about eighteen allied craft at the cost of ten crashed Komets. This was because despite being far faster than anything the allies could field, the komet proved very temperamental: it was difficult to control while building speed, its fuel dangerous to handle, its landing gear could bounce off and smack the plane, its cannons were too slow to keep up, and it was vulnerable as it glided back to earth. Still, for its time, it was the only fighter capable of threatening the allies' high-altitude bombers, until the ME-262 came about.
The ME-262: Nazi Germany's state of the art sky shark
Messerschmitt ME-262: The Me 262 was the world's first operational jet fighter and possibly the most advanced aircraft of all in WWII. It was very fast, able to achieve a speed of 900km/h (in comparison, a P51 Mustang had a top speed of about 700km/h) and carried four 30mm cannons. Quality suffered due to a lack of high quality steel, which severely limited the shelf life of their engines to twelve hours. Even so, it was an effective against bombers. Much like every other advanced Nazi weapon, it arrived too late (in part due to delays involving the Nazi top brass) and in too few numbers to influence the course of the war, though it spurred development of jet aircraft on both sides of the Iron Curtain postwar. The Japanese built a rather similar jet fighter in the Nakajima Kikka, but that never got beyond prototype.
The "Volksjäger" aka. "Spatz" or "Salamander". Tiny. Deadly.
He-162: With a max speed of 900 kph, 2 centerline 20mm cannons, and a 39 lbs/ft^2 wingloading, the He-162 was almost invincible in combat. Where the 262 was an interceptor, the He-162 was designed as a cheap, easy to build and fly air superiority fighter. It was also designed to be piloted by children. Developed as a Volksjäger (”people's fighter”) the He-162 was a last ditch design meant to be piloted by the high school aged Hitler Youth as Nazi Germany had almost completely run out of regular pilots at the time. Amazingly enough despite the incredibly short time between design and full production, it turned out to be a solid design; both cheap and easy to build (most of the frame was made of wood) and a dangerous opponent (allied testing after the war showed that a large number of them would have been a major pain in the rear to deal with). The only point where the "Spatz" didn't deliver was the 'easy to fly' part; like all early jet airplanes it required an experienced pilot at the stick.
Ships
As a general rule, Hitler dumped most of money into the Heer (army) and Luftwaffe (air force), leaving the Kriegsmarine (navy) out in the cold, so to speak, so they were not overly fond of him. (Although Hitler realised he wouldn't be able to build up a navy to rival the English quickly so he prioritised planes and tanks over ships to seize land and industrial capacity at first, which kind of made sense.)
U-Boote: U-Boote, which are shortened the version of the word "Unterseeboot" or "underwater boat", are submarines. They were used in devastating effect to cut off Britain from supplies from the outside world by having "wolfpacks" of U-boats patrol around shipping lanes and sink down any enemy ship they found. Their other uses involved seeking and destroying enemy battleships, placing automated weather stations all over the world (helpful for Kriegsmarine ships) and dropping off a substantial number of spies in Britain and even America, most of which got caught-and subsequently replaced by Loyal British spy's (read about some of the ways the British Bamboozled the Nazi's in world war 2 some of it, like the moment the Germans gave a British agent the Iron cross, is just hilarious). They were so terrifying to Winston Churchill that he spent most of his naval planning on working out ways to subvert or destroy the U-boat wolfpacks. As a consequence of all this, they worked very well in the first years of the war, sinking huge (and i mean HUGE) numbers of ships with very few boats (only about 15 boats, at most, were out at sea at any given time in the first year or so). Being such an absolute pain in the arse, the British thus invested a fuckton of money and manpower into hunting and killing said U-boats, and finally got very, very good at it. Right when more and more U-boats were being produced, as German high command finally realized their potential, the British began sinking ever more of them (Example: in all of 1941, 35 boats were lost, in 1943, 244 boats were sunk, with 41 in May alone). Admiral Karl Dönitz, unlike Hitler, loved the U-boats, and built one of the largest structures on earth (at the time) to house them: the German U-boat pens in captured France. U-boats were invented in the first world war, and there unrestricted campaign of sinking any ship, even those with US citizens on them (even after the German government made a very public warning to the US that boarding a ship to England was a very bad idea), that approached England led to the neutral though leaning allied American to join the first world war and for them to be the last straw on the German back to end it.
Bismarck and Tirpitz: A pair of battleships so large and well designed no other battleships could sink them. Memes aside, those were the largest ships built by the Nazis, but they were neither the biggest or meanest or most modern ships of World War 2. Germany's building skills had suffered under the limitations of the Versailles treaty in the inter-war period, Bismarck and Tirpitz were the best they could build on a relatively short notice of five years and with a ten year technological gap to fill on the go. Both ships were envisioned as commerce raiders sinking transport ships and disrupting allied supplies, not to slug it out with the Royal Navy. This being said, while no superweapons capable of turning the war on their own they were far from worthless. Sinking the Bismarck required an entire Royal navy fleet, six battleships and battlecruisers and two aircraft carriers, along with a number of cruisers and destroyers in a running battle over several days. And the Bismarck was alone. Tirpitz was similarly tough. The RAF spent most of a year bombing Tirpitz with everything in their arsenal, including the British Tallboy earthquake bombs. 5,400kg, fortification-destroying earthquake bombs could not destroy the Tirptiz despite scoring direct hits until a final bombing raid by 32 heavy Lancaster Bombers managed to score a hit on one of the ammunition magazines.
Graf Zepplin: The Nazi's sole attempt at building an aircraft carrier. Never completed.
Wunderwaffen
Wunderwaffen. One thing that caught the the imagination of the world and started the "Superior German Engineering" meme. This is the place any of the "Nazi Super science" stuff goes. You want lighting guns? Wunderwaffen. Super tanks? Wunderwaffen. Moon rockets? Wunderwaffen. Hitler in a giant robot spider powered by the souls of the damned? Wunderwaffen.
The truth is, as usual, a lot more nuanced. Yes, the different wonder weapon projects were on the bleeding edge of technology when envisioned, next generation devices which most of the scientists of other nations had been toying with but had yet to reach prototype much less combat stage (because they were, unlike the Germans never that desperate enough to use untested machinery with teething issues in battle). Yes, the Germans pioneered a lot of things that were afterwards acquired and adapted by the Allies and the Soviet Union. The problem was, during the war, the technology to make said Wunderwaffe efficient weapons (a real guidance system for the V1 and V2, for instance) simply wasn't there yet, and the Germans never managed to close the gap.
In the end, most were nothing more than a drain on Germany's already strained resources. With the British/American juggernaut on one side and the tidal wave of the Soviet Union on the other, Germany was in bad. In his desperation, Hitler authorized many things that gave him a glimmer of hope to be produced and made. As you can imagine with two hands strangling Germany, one smelling of vodka and the other apple pie, these weapons were made with a shortage of resources and time and the lack of quality only exacerbated the technological shortcomings. They were rather dismissively called "voo-vah" by Allied troops, and they actually thanked Hitler for authorizing the waste of resources and ultimately shortening the war.
Take the infamous Tiger 1 and 2 tanks, for example: both are sometimes considered the best tanks of WWII, but both were over built and overly complex compared the T-34 or Sherman tank, which, while inferior individually, were made in (much, much, MUCH) greater numbers due to being simpler, easier to build and (even more importantly) to maintain in the field. While we're talking about the Tiger, it's important to also note that the Tiger was also the most primitive tank of the war, since unlike the T-34, which had revolutionary sloped armor, it was just a metal box with big gun on it.
V1 flying bomb: The V1 is considered as an early version of the cruise missile and was used in the bombing of England, since a city was pretty much all they COULD accurately hit (and even then). The V1's used an early version of a Pulse jet and they were quickly called "buzz bombs," "doodlebugs," or "farting furies" to discourage people from calling them "robot bombs," which gives the impression that they were unstoppable. Fun fact about the V1: it uses the same fuel as a type of beetle uses to defend itself. It was infamously known for cutting its engine as it dived (due to a fuel flow error), leading to it suddenly becoming silent just before it smashed into the ground. Its entire "guidance computer" was nothing more than a simple gyroscope system to keep it level and flying, plus a small spinning propeller in the nose that would set the flaps to dive the V1 into the ground once it revolved a certain amount of times (calculated to have covered the distance to the target city). Far too inaccurate to be used against a military target, the V1 was ultimately a gigantic waste.
V2 rocket: The V2 was the world's first ballistic missile and spacefaring craft. The scientists that developed it, including Werner von Braun, went on to work for NASA and developed the booster rockets on the Saturn V launch vehicle (Nazi science really did put a man on the Moon in the end). Unlike its brother the V1, it was utterly unstoppable by AA; not a single inbound V2 was ever shot down by anti-aircraft fire, owing to it moving at 3 times the speed of sound. It was the first vehicle to ever reach space, from a vertical test launch in 1943, and after the war it was very frequently reused by the Americans (with extra shit often strapped on top) as an early spacecraft, with grainy images returned from suborbital flights in space as early as 1946. Less of a waste than the V1 but even so, without a decent guidance system it had a hard time hitting England as well as the dubious distinction of being the only weapon which killed more people in its manufacture than it did enemies.
Horten 229 and Horten 18: While technically Nazi aircraft, they really deserves to be here, not up in Aircraft. Commonly known as the "Nazi stealth fighter," this twin-turbojet flying-wing fighter was found in a secret workshop hangar by invading American forces. Nobody knows for certain if the Horten 229 was originally built for stealth, but it's all-wood construction and smooth radar-fouling shape, coupled with radar-absorbing paint on the outer shell makes a fairly clear case for a stealth aircraft. The concept that the 229 was build around was the "3x1000": 1000kph, 1000km range, 1000kg bomb payload. This, in 1943. During test flights, it outperformed the Me. 262 while using exactly the same engines. It was probably going to be used to fly through or knock out the British radar array in a second, never-realized "Battle of Britain 2: Electromagnetic Boogaloo." The Horten 18 was an even bigger flying wing, with a huge wingspan and 6 jet engines. This one was designed to be an intercontinental bomber, intending to hit American cities as the western front made Hitler angrier and angrier. The Horten 18 was never built, but the 229 was rather successfully test flown. Both planes looks quite a bit like the modern B2 stealth bomber, which isn't much of a surprise considering the Americans hauled the Horten 229 prototype back home to be studied in a secret airforce base (where it is today).
Maus: The Panzerkampfwagen VIII Maus ("mouse") is the largest tank ever built. A 200 metric ton monster with a 128mm (5 inch) main gun, and a 75mm co-axial gun in the turret, it crept along at a blistering 13 kph and sucked down liters of gas per kilometer. The most amazing thing is that (beyond not cancelling the project on sight like anyone withing hailing distance of sanity would) they actually managed to build this tank. Five were ordered, but only two prototypes and one turret were built. It was originally going to be called the Mäuschen (Little Mouse), but because the Germans liked schadenfreude more than irony, just Maus stuck. Realistically, neither front's tanks would have had the firepower to penetrate the Maus, only extreme-caliber anti-tank guns and artillery fire would have done the job, however it was so big that there was no road or bridge big enough to take it so it had to have special snorkling gear to get past river. Its extremely slow speed and massive size, however, likely would have made it prime bait for bombers (which is one of the reasons why modern militaries don't use heavy tanks anymore). While neither side had anti-tank weapons strong enough to penetrate its armor, it's more then likely it would never get there even if it was built. It's not quite a Baneblade, but they were getting there. The Nazi's really didn't want anyone to get this monster, so they blew up the complete first model. The second Maus, armed with the first one's turret, was towed back to Russia by invading forces, and currently resides in the Kubinka Tank museum for all to see.
Ratte: The Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte ("rat") was an even larger tank, or "land cruiser", since it was essentially a naval warship on tracks. Never actually built, despite being ordered by Hitler. The Rat was to be a 1000 metric ton tank, mounting a naval turret with two 280mm guns, a 128mm anti tank gun, eight 20mm FlaK cannons, and two 15mm aircraft cannons, surpassing even the Eleven Barrels Of Hell of the Baneblade. It would have been so heavy that it would have destroyed every road it used, capable of wrecking a town just by running through it, and it would have collapsed every bridge it crossed. It needed two U-BOAT motors to get around, or maybe EIGHT 20 CYLINDER ENGINES. Not surprisingly, Albert Speer canned the project (mostly because a single bomber dropping a 500kg bomb on top of the thing would fuck its day up immensely), which is a great shame because A- Building and maintaining such a monster would have posed a noticeable strain on Germany's logistics, thus accelerating their defeat and B- It would have made the most awesome museum piece in the known universe.
Karl-Gerät The Karl-Gerät is one of the very few real world weapon ever built that is BIGGER then its 40k equivalent. Karl weighs 124 tons, is armed with a 60cm (24 inch) gun that fires a shell that weights more than a ton, that can hit a target between four and ten kilometers away depending on the size of its shell. This thing was the largest self-propelled gun ever made and it could give even a (admittedly small) Titan pause for thought. These things were actually used in combat to decent effect in Warsaw, but had mixed results in other deployments. it fucked up any target royally, but the Gerät was so big and slow that it had to be disassembled and put on special tractor trailers to move around (one hell of a logistic operation) and and was moved any real distance by train. Its shells were carried by special turret-less Panzer IIIs. Surprisingly one of these things survived the war and was captured by the Russians. It's currently in the Kubinka Tank Museum along side the only Maus heavy tank in the world and assorted other war trophies.
Schwerer Gustav: An excellent example of the brilliance and impracticality of Wunderwaffen, Schwerer Gustav was a railway gun that resembled a cruiser fucking a freight train and an artillery piece, built in the late 30's to defeat the Maginot Line. Two were built, the other called "Dora." It is a descendant of the German Empire's 1918 "Paris gun," a smaller gun ("only" 238mm's) built in World War One to shell Paris from Germany, 120 kilometers away (a range so far they had to account for the curvature of the Earth when firing the damn thing). Gustav was designed to defeat any fortifications in existence; as such, it was the largest-calibre rifled weapon ever used in combat, the heaviest mobile artillery piece ever built in terms of overall weight, and fired the heaviest shells of any artillery piece. It fired 80cm (31 inch) shells, weighing 4,800kg to 7,100kg up to 48km. The AP shells could penetrate 7m of reinforced concrete. It completely succeeded in its job of defeating any existing fortification, but at the same time was completely impractical: it required two specially-laid parallel railway tracks to move (yes, it was a railway gun too big for the railway), took 54 hours to set up for firing, and had a rate of fire of 14 rounds per day. Since building a gun that fired shells that wouldn't fit through the front door to your house wasn't excessive enough for the Nazis, plans were made to mount the Schwerer Gustav 80cm gun on a 1,500t self propelled artillery platform (the Landkreuzer P.1500 Monster) with two 15cm howitzers and multiple 15mm autocannons as secondary weapons. Unfortunately, both guns were scrapped near the end of the war. The Schwerer Gustav, overall, was the biggest (if the strange rocket exhaust powered V3 listed bellow is not counted) motherfucking gun on the planet. The weapon likely could have blown a Titan away if its shields were down, and much science-fiction set in WW2 features the gun (notably, in Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series, the gun is used to blow up two landed alien spacecraft from sixty kilometers away).
V3: If you thought Gustav up there was nutty wait to you here about the V3, a gun that's as big as a 40k titan. The V3 was an attempt to make a gun that could shoot across the English channel, and there were a number of sane guns that could do this including railway guns and big bunkers built with battleship battery's. but they could only shoot between the narrowest point between England and continental Europe. The V3 was built to shell London from France. I said early it was a s big as a titan, and I was not being sarcastic, (though it would only be as big as a knight, which despite being the smallest titan is still bloody big) from breach to muzzle the gun was 130 meters or 430 feet long with a bore of 150mm or 5.9 inches across. Rather then use a single big explosion to propel the shells, the V3 used rocket motors mounted in pairs, set so there exhaust would thrust a 140kg shell out of the barrel like a reverse bolter. This set up allowed it to fire a shell out to 165km and put London well in range. Of course like all of the Nazi Wunderwaffen, in practice it sounded good but was actually kinda shit. the gun was so big, remember 130meters that it had to be built in a hill meaning it was impossible for it to change target after being built, and after all the time you spent building the damn thing, by the time you were done it might no longer be useful to have, such as what happened during the Nazi Operation Nordwind. Further even if you ignore the logistical issues compared to other period artillery the V3 was just plain shit. The 16"/50 caliber Mark 7 guns of the USS Iowa class battleship, had a caliber of 16 inch or 406mm, and fired a shell that weighed 1,225 kg, so over twice as big around and almost exactly nine times as heavy, and the Iowa had nine of them, and it could move. and to put the cherry on the HMS sound plan, by the time the first five guns were finally built to shell London, the British airforce destroyed them with Tallboy Earthquake bombs. If anything proves how silly the idea of Nazi Super Science is, let the fate of the V3 super gun stand testament to how many times Hitler's scientists, and Hitler himself, had been hit with the stupid stick growing up.
N-Stoff: Someday, somewhere in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute there was an Evil Overlord that was unhappy about the quantity of flammen his flammenwerfer could werf - so he got around and took two guys named Ruff and Krug to play around with some flourine and some chlorine. Now, if you studied something about chemistry, you may realize that using "flourine" and "chlorine" in the same sentence does not spell good news for anybody, but you know, Nazi Evil Overlords... What they discovered made their commissioners - yes, the same ol' boys who thought gassing millions was cool - go NOPE!, and when you discover something that's too crazy even for Crazy Nazi Science standards you know you're in for a treat. Indeed, Chlorine Trifluoride (as the compound is called) proved to be pretty good in burning bunkers to the ground - and by "burning bunkers" we mean the whole bunker, as in the motherfucking concrete is on FIRE! - plus it doubled as a chemical warfare agent, giving off corrosive and toxic fumes. N-Stoff (translating to Substance-N - yeah, they kinda failed the naming here) burns at a raging 2400 degrees Celsius - twice the temperature of lava and almost enough to BOIL steel - and can set fire to things that shouldn't burn like glass, wet sand or asbestos (the same substance that they used to make fireproof stuff out of). When 900 kg of it was spilled by accident on a concrete floor, it caught fire by itself and burned away 30cm of concrete and 90cm of gravel. I don't think there ever was something like Enuff Dakka for flamethrowers, but Substance N came close to deliver it. The Nazis never used the stuff, as it was too dangerous an incontrollable, but it later found its use in the semiconductor and nuclear industry - after being dubbed a bit too violent to use as rocket fuel. Also, Sly Marbo uses Substance N to spice up his Catachan Take Away.
Misc
The Distinctive Stahlhelm. The Germans lucked out helmet design during WWI
Stahlhelm: The many variants of the iconic German helmet were derived from the medieval sallet during the Great War. The purpose of these helmets was to keep shrapnel out of one's head. It was better than it's contemporaries by better protecting the sides and back of the head as well. Not to be confused with the spiked Prussian Pickelhaube. Used by all kinds of German troops but the Fallschirmsjäger (paratroopers) as it is impractical to jump with it. Paratroopers had a special version of the helmet that removed the front and back flanges, giving it a much more streamlined appearance.
Stielhandgranate: Often called "stick grenades" or "potato mashers," these are those grenades on sticks you see the Germans always using. The Stielhandgranate is what is called a "offensive" grenade known now as a "concussive" grenade. The difference is an offensive grenade uses explosive pressure waves to kill an enemy, thus allowing you to use it while advancing without getting a face full of shrapnel, while a defensive grenade (like the US "pineapple" grenade) uses shrapnel to kill an enemy, affecting a much larger area but also putting you in the blast radius, hence they were designed to be thrown over the wall of a fox hole or trench line at advancing enemy troops while you keep your head down. The reason the Stielhandgranate has the stick is to give you more leverage when throwing it as compared to a round grenade.
Nebelwerfer: A family of weapons whose very name means "Fog/Mist Thrower"; they were listed as smoke screen launchers before the war (to get around the Treaty of Versailles), but in truth were rather deadly artillery pieces designed to deploy chemical munitions, though in the extent of the war they never did (actually they did in Crimea), probably because Hitler had survived gas attacks in the last war and drew the line at using them himself and the fact that using chemical weapons would invite retaliation. These types of weapons included some mortars, but, more importantly, rocket artillery. In Germany between the wars, there was a fair bit of interest in new rocket designs (as conventional artillery was strictly regulated/forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles) and the Nazis knew they had use for that. These rockets were inaccurate, but you could easily fire a whole bunch of the things off at once for a good saturation bombing, though thanks to the smoke you had to scoot away or the other side would drop their own artillery on top of you. The rocket based system made a very distinctive sound. The Germans nicknamed the thing "Heulende Küh" (Bellowing Cow) and US troops would come to call them "Screaming Mimi" and "Moaning Minnie".
Goliath: A remotely controlled mini-vehicle on treads, stuffed full of explosives. They were driven up to an enemy tank or a bunker and then blown up. (Games Workshop stole the idea and design for the Imperial Guard Cyclops.) Good idea, but the execution was lacking since Radio Control wasn't good enough yet. They had a cable like some sort of bargain remote-controlled car which limited their range dramatically, and cutting this would utterly defeat the weapon. (At least it's not as bad as the Russians and their kamikaze dogs, but I digress...) On the flip side, American soldiers often made great fun with captured Goliaths by riding them around as the tiny thing could carry quite a load.
Flammenwerfer: A werfer zat werfs flammen. Your standard flamethrower in both name and function, though there wasn't much use for it - There were no real line wars like in WW1 where people sat in comfy little (hell) holes and took potshots at each other. not to say they weren't used. but unlike the trench wars of WW1 most of the fighting was mobile rather than static. For added nastiness, some bigger ones were mounted in Flammpanzers, able to shoot hundreds of liters of sticky, burning fuck you over distances exceeding 50 meters.
8.8cm flak gun: Known as the "Acht-Acht", this is THE German gun of world war two, and it sums up the German experience in the first part of the war; of never being truly ready but by being very clever and doctrinally flexible. The 88mm was designed as an anti-air weapon (Flak standing for Fliegerabwehrkanöne, or AA gun) built to throw a high explosive shell as high into the air as it could so that it could explode somewhere in the same ballpark as the enemy plane and put one piece of shrapnel into something important and bring it down, which is a role it preformed throughout the war. However against the heavy allied tanks such as the British Matilda 1 and French B1, the German tanks of the time had no ability to penetrate their frontal armor The the 8.8 cm flak guns however, thanks to the high muzzle speed required to fire their explosive shell so high into the air, were able to deal with enemy tanks at unparalleled ranges at the time. So the guns were pulled to the front by a certain Erwin Rommel during the battle of Arras, the barrels lowered, a French-British tank-heavy counterattack stopped; and it snowballed from there. Germany quickly pushed to have both a proper PaK version of the 88 (Pak standing for Panzerabwehrkanöne, or AT gun) that had a lower profile, was easier to move around and had a shield to stop stray bullets from decimating the crew; and a tank armed with the 88 as it became clear that against the soviet union, tanks were only going to get stronger. Which is why the Tiger I is a metal slab with a huge gun: its job was to get an 88mm gun into the battlefield as fast as possible. Using AA guns as AT guns was such a good idea that the US did the same thing with their 90mm AA gun converting it into a anti-tank weapon for the M36 tank destroyer and the Pershing tank; and so did the Russians with their 85 mm gun for the upgunned versions of the T-34 and KV-1. The Imperial Guard Basilisk cannon looks almost exactly like the Flak 88.
The S-mine: The Sprengmine (jumping mine), or, to use the name US soldiers gave it, "Bouncing Betty", was one of the most widely used and most effective, weapons of its class. It was a mine that when triggered 'bounced' about three feet into the air before exploding at about waist height in an 'air burst', able to inflict casualities (The military definition of the word meaning more then just dead) at up to 140 feet. And it had a tendency to not kill you, but maim you. Later in the war, some were made out of glass and even pottery, with minimal metal parts, to make them even harder to find. Suffice to say, they still havent found all of them... 1.93 million S-mines were made and it was widely copied after the war, these things are still killing people to this day as old mines forgot about are stepped on and the explosive proves itself still good. While the S-mine is hardly unique in that regard (Unexploded US aircraft bombs and shells make up the bulk of what they still find in Germany, around 2,000 pounds year according to the Smithsonian) land mines, like the S-mine, are still dug up by the truck load in North Africa.
Pervitin: Not a traditional weapon as such, but a key element in how the Nazis blitzkrieg tactics were so effective, Pervitin was a methamphetamine drug that provided the base recipe for today's crystal meth and which was distributed to all members of the Nazi military. Its powerful stimulatory effect enabled them to fight harder for longer, and was essential in the breakneck races from the border to the battlefield. With all of the Nazi troopers hopped up on this drug, which later incorporated cocaine for increased effectiveness, Nazi forces could keep fighting effectively well after their enemies were worn out. At least until their supply lines were cut and addiction/withdrawal symptoms crippled them all, that is.
