Sommaire pour Issue 16 de Iron Cross

Stalingrad 80th ANNIVERSARY It is certainly the case that the number of myths and legends surrounding the Battle of Stalingrad reflects the scope and scale of the German defeat. In their book The Myth of the Eastern Front, historians Ronald Smelser and Edward J Davies show how memoir writing by German generals in the 1950s shaped the general image of the Eastern Front in the Western eyes: “They conjured up a black-and-white world, in which Hitler incorporated evil and they, virtue.”[i] Two men, however, played a leading role in all of this: Franz Halder and Erich von Manstein. The so-called ’diaries’ by Generaloberst Franz Halder, chief of staff of the Army High Command (OKH), were extensively re-written by Halder himself after the war, with a view towards exculpating himself in the…

Born in 1901 in Oedingen in the district of Meschede, Josef Arens grew up in Gelsenkirchen, living on the Hammerschmidtstrasse in the Bulmke-Hüllen district where his father was a caretaker at the Carl-Friedrich-Gaus-Gynmasium. Too young to have served during the First World War, the young Josef nevertheless aspired beyond the menial job of his father – albeit that this was at an extraordinarily difficult time to find employment in post-war Germany. Nevertheless, Josef enrolled at the Gelsenkirchen School of Applied Arts and went on to further train as a commercial artist. In that capacity, he had to meticulously draw machinery components – training which would stand him in good stead for his later work as a war artist. Studying art in Wiesbaden and Münster until 1926, Josef Arens’ talent was…

The Heinkel He 162 Volksjäger (or People’s Fighter) was a single-engine, jet-powered fighter aircraft developed under the Emergency Fighter Programme and designed and built quickly at the end of the war. It was made primarily of wood because metals were in short supply and were being prioritised for other aircraft. The Volksjäger was the official name for the design programme competition which was won by Heinkel’s design. Other names given to the aircraft include Salamander, which was the codename of its wing-construction programme, and Spatz (Sparrow), which was the name given to the aircraft by the Heinkel company. The aircraft was notable for its small size; although almost the same length as a Messerschmitt Bf 109, its wing was much shorter at 7.2 metres (24 ft) as opposed to…

As with other issues regarding the Great War, the root of Germany’s aero engine problems lay in her isolation from the world’s resources, whereas the Allies had access to unlimited resources. A related issue was also the greater size of the prewar French automobile industry because the automotive industry was the basis of aero engine production. At that time, there were only minor differences between engines for automobiles and the primitive aircraft engines of the day, and automobile engine manufacturers were able to transition to producing aircraft engines relatively easily. Prewar, France also had a much larger automobile industry than Germany, and France was able to maintain this key industrial production advantage throughout the war and able to produce twice as many aero engines as Germany. Britain, meanwhile, was slow…

When the Luftwaffe first went to war in 1939, the standard MG 15 7.92 mm machine gun was the standard on-board defensive weapon carried by most multi-crewed aircraft (See Iron Cross, issue No.1). Flexibly mounted, that gun was a versatile and useful weapon, popular with gunners, but hampered by the rather cumbersome ‘saddle drum’ ammunition and a supply of just 75 rounds distributed on each side of the magazine. And with an expenditure rate of just 4.5 seconds per drum, it meant that the gunner was kept busy changing drums at what might be a critical moment during an attack by enemy fighters. It also meant that a large number of bulky ammunition drums needed to be stowed in the aircraft near the gunners station. Typically, this could be up…

In this new publication, the story of the Luftwaffe’s attacks on the British Isles is covered through fascinating and insightful content which looks at all aspects of those air operations, bringing that story to life through hundreds of images. Many of those images are colourised, while others are original and contemporary colour images from the period. In total, over 180 of the photographs reproduced in the publication are in colour. The story of the Luftwaffe over Britain has never been told in such an all-encompassing and engaging manner before now and the publication will appeal widely to the general enthusiast, the specialist, and those with any interest in the history of the Second World War. Order yours by calling 01778 391180 or visit www.militaria.ma/luftwaffe-over-britain…

In this image, the Imperial German High Seas Fleet (Hochseeflotte) is photographed at Wilhelmshaven during the First World War, the ship in the foreground being the dreadnought, SMS Helgoland. The Hochseeflotte was created in February 1907 when the Home Fleet (Heimatflotte) was renamed. Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz envisioned a force powerful enough to challenge the Royal Navy’s predominance with Kaiser Wilhelm II championing the fleet as an instrument by which he could seize overseas possessions and make Germany a global power. By concentrating this powerful fleet in the North Sea, with the Royal Navy dispersed around the British Empire, Tirpitz believed that Britain would not challenge Germany if the latter’s fleet posed such a significant threat. The primary component of the Fleet was its battleships, typically organised in eight-ship squadrons,…

In June 1940, Major Wolfgang Falck, an officer formerly of 2./ZG 76 and latterly the Gruppen Kommandeur of I./ZG 1, was tasked to form a night fighter unit for the defence of the Reich. The preferred night fighter was the Messerschmitt Bf 110 – along with the Junkers 88 C-2, the latter having been operationally tested by Z.St/KG 30 in Norway. In addition, there would be two versions of the Dornier 17 put into use as night fighters: the Dornier Z-7 Kauz I and the Z-10 Kauz II. Then, in August 1940, II./NJG 1 was formed and commanded by Major Karl-Heinrich Heyse, an experienced bomber pilot who had fought in Spain and who had commanded the Heinkel 111 equipped 2./KG 55 until the end of January 1940. Two of the…

The story of German prisoners of war captured in Russia is a very different one to that of those who were captured by the Americans or British - the first prisoners of war in Britain being German aircrew who were brought down over Britain and from crews of German ships and submarines that had been sunk. Initially, there was not a requirement to cater for large numbers of prisoners of war in Britain until success against the Italians and Germans in North Africa. This resulted in large numbers of enemy prisoners being captured there, and particularly after the surrender of Axis forces in North Africa in 1943. Many more prisoners were also captured after the Allied invasion of France in June 1944, and as the numbers of prisoners increased, so…

One of the most popular and widely-read soldier’s autobiographies to appear during the post Second World War period was The Forgotten Soldier by the late Guy Sajer, published in 1967 as Le Soldat oublié, followed in 1971 by the release of the English language edition. According to Sajer’s harrowing story (since published in over a dozen languages and selling millions worldwide), he was a French citizen of mixed German /French parentage who served in the Wehrmacht as a teenager and was shipped to the Eastern Front. Here, he fought against the Red Army from the winter of 1942 until the end of the war as a member of the Grossdeutschland Panzergrenadier Division. Shortly after his capture by the British near Lauenburg in May 1945, Sajer was transferred to a POW…

In 1944, responding to a switch in U-boat operations to single boat incursions into UK coastal waters, the Royal Navy adopted a plan to lay deep minefields under the shipping lanes of the western coastal approaches to the UK and English Channel to sink and deter U-boats from attacking shipping. At the end of the war, it was known that the yield in terms of U-boats destroyed in these fields was just three: U260, U242 and U275. This prompted a debate after the war as to whether the huge effort involved had been worth it. However, in the decades that followed, hydrographic surveys and scuba divers continued to find more U-boat wrecks in the proximity of these minefields. As a result, we know today that those minefields were far more…

Collecting medal and document groupings can be one of the most rewarding fields in the militaria hobby. Groupings, perhaps more than anything else, give us a window into the totality of the original owner’s military experience. The awards, documents, and personal effects of a particular individual, when taken together, exude an aura which affords the collector or historian genuine insights into that individual’s life. This is true even if the original owner of a grouping was a common soldier, but when the grouping is that belonging to a significant historical military figure, then its importance becomes all the greater. Erhard Milch could be regarded as one of the ‘second tier’ personalities of the Third Reich, and while he is not as generally well known today as figures such as Hitler,…

When the Lashenden Air Warfare Museum first opened its doors in 1970, the newly formed team of volunteers paid a visit to a bomb disposal unit at Fort Clarence in Rochester, Kent, potentially to acquire historical objects for display. There, while preparing several other artefacts for transport back to their Kent-based site at Headcorn aerodrome, members came across what was clearly a V 1 rocket in a state of disrepair. The infamous German weapon had suffered from several years of exposure to the elements, its tail section and fin having collapsed, and its derelict wings being found discarded behind a nearby building. Curiously, this V 1 had a cockpit – albeit one that was incomplete and badly rusted. This discovery, the volunteer group quickly realised, comprised the remnants of a…