After WWII ended the French navy experimented with grafting German technology into new French naval weapons, with varied results.
(French navy personnel with a WWII German Junkers Ju-88 during postwar weapons tests at Fréjus-Saint Raphael, France.)
(The WWII German Hs-117 Schmetterling SAM and its postwar French naval offspring, the Maruca.)
East Germany, formally the German Democratic Republic or DDR in its German acronym, existed for 40 years, 11 months, and 4 weeks. The brief lifespan of East Germany’s military, the National Volksarmee, is well-documented and studied by military historians. It only used a limited amount of ex-WWII kit for a short while.
However the nation had paramilitary forces which did use WWII weapons for a longer time: the Grenztruppen (border troops), the Volkspolizei (national-level police), and the KdA (a second-rate militia). They have received less historical attention.
(Officer of the East German Volkspolizei with a WWII German StG-44 assault rifle.)
(East German Grenztruppen with WWII Soviet PPSh-41 submachine guns during the 1960s.)
When I began wwiiafterwwii almost seven years ago, this was one of the first subjects I intended to cover. At that time Iraq was still a current topic, and I thought it would be easy to document the 98k’s history there.
As it turns out, the WWII German 98k in Iraq is complex and full of caveats; poorly-covered by substantive sources. So it took a tad bit longer than planned to complete. Hopefully this subject is still of interest.
(A 98k rifle captured by the US Marine Corps during the post-2003 occupation.)
(A heavily-modified Mauser rifle captured by American troops.) (photo via Silah Report)
(A 98k manufactured by Mauser Werke in 1940. This was a WWII German, post-WWII Czechoslovak-refurbished, then ex-East German gun – an indirect route not uncommon for Iraqi 98ks. The jeem marking on the receiver and barrel is Iraq’s property marking.) (photo via gunboards online forum)
The guns arming WWII warplanes were usually of limited general interest, just a component of the overall aircraft and leaving service with the planes they were installed in. Germany’s MG 151 on the other hand, had an extremely long and varied career after WWII, being used in any number of roles in the air, on the ground, and even on the sea; all around the world for many decades.
(MG 151 being serviced on a Luftwaffe fighter during WWII.)
(French MG 151 crew on a “Pirate”, or up-gunned H-34 Choctaw, during the Algerian War.) (photo via tenes.info website)
(Image from a 1980s South African VHS video promoting Vektor’s helicopter mount of the MG 151.)
The most famous German surface warship to survive WWII was the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, studied by the US Navy after WWII and then expended as a nuclear target.
The only large WWII German warship to see active duty in its intended role during the Cold War was the light cruiser Nürnberg, which served on in the Soviet navy.
(The light cruiser Nürnberg of the WWII German navy.)
(The Soviet light cruiser Admiral Makarov, the former Nürnberg, during the mid-1950s.)
Sudan has seen so much warfare over the past 100 years that it is sometimes hard to tell when one war ended and the next began. What is often called the country’s “first civil war” ran from, depending on when the start date is counted, 1955 to 1972. Even in the latter stages, it was dominated by old WWII weapons. This conflict is today overshadowed by the “second” war which was much more violent and fought with Cold War-era weapons.
(Mossad agent David Ben-Uziel; nom de guerre “John”, with Anya-Nya in southern Sudan around 1970. WWII firearms shown are Bren machine guns, a MP-40, a Sten Mk.II, and SMLE rifles.)
(Anya-Nya with a WWII British SMLE rifle in the early 1970s.)
(A soldier of the Nile Provisional Government with a WWII German MG-34 in 1969.)
France restarted domestic production of the Junkers Ju-52 transport after WWII. Although intended as a quick, cheap stop-gap solution, the AAC.1 Toucan fought in three post-WWII conflicts and quietly served as long after WWII as the famous original Junkers did before and during WWII.
(Junkers Ju-52s of the Luftwaffe training Fallschirmjäger during WWII.)
(A French air force AAC.1 Toucan – the post-WWII French copy of the Ju-52 – flies over a burning Vietnamese jungle during the Indochina War.)
(A French air force AAC.1 Toucan in Africa during the 1950s Algerian War.)
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Shanghai was famous as China’s international city, a busy trade port with notorious underworld . During the latter part of the 20th century, the city languished through Mao’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, before once again becoming a world-class city leading in finance, technology, and culture at the turn of the millennium.
There was a very brief time after WWII, only four years, when the city was under the Kuomintang (KMT), or nationalist Chinese government. What makes this period interesting militarily, was the unusual combinations of WWII weaponry fielded there, and a now largely-forgotten American military presence in China.
(Officers of the Shanghai Police Department monitor a political protest in 1948. Equipment includes a stahlhelm M35 helmet and Arisaka Type 38 rifle.)
(An abandoned Mitsubishi Ki-21 “Sally” bomber sits opposite American C-46 Commando, C-54 Skymaster, and C-47 Skytrain transports at a former Japanese airbase near Shanghai after WWII.)
(Soviet-made T-26 and American-made M3/M5 Stuart tanks of the nationalist army together in Shanghai during 1949. An irony of this last battle is that the nationalists were partially equipped with Soviet gear and the communists were partially equipped with American gear.)
The country of Yemen, currently (2018) in the midst of yet another civil war, has had a long involvement with guns of the WWII era. While the AK-47 is king of the battlefield, some old WWII weapons are still in use.
(The now somewhat-famous Yemeni “ripcord T-34” in November 2016.)
(Houthi fighters brandishing weapons in 2015, including to the left a WWII British Enfield No4 Mk.I rifle.)
Since starting wwiiafterwwii, I have wanted to do something on this topic but was unsure how to approach it. I am interested in how WWII weapons performed in battle against Cold War replacements. But also, it is fascinating to consider how they ended up where they did after WWII……how did a Garand built to fight Imperial Japan end up in the Somali desert in the 1970s, or how did a Waffen-SS sturmgewehr end up in 21st century Damascus?
(An ex-Wehrmacht NbW 42 Nebelwerfer with Interarms markings in the 1960s.)
wwiiafterwwii 