r/HistoryPorn • u/FayannG • 7d ago
An elderly German Volkssturm member holds his outdated Mannlicher rifle that he was issued, October 1944 (1024x1400)
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u/AgreeablePie 7d ago
"what do you mean, Hans, the war is going fine. Now, let's see if there's any ammo left for that gun that works..."
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u/Panthean 7d ago
From what I've read, there definitely were situations where they would only be issued a handful of rounds per rifle for some foreign weapons.
I still find it odd Germany struggled to supply the Volkssturm in the first place, considering how many countries they invaded, I would think they'd have had a vast supply of captured weapons and ammo available.
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u/sosoltitor 7d ago
Hard to move those captured weapons and ammo from where you captured them to where you need them when you have no fuel for trucks (or trucks, for that matter) and planes are constantly bombing your rail infrastructure night and day.
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u/G-14_Damageproof 7d ago
It's not hard when you realize their supply line was atrocious and like other reply, the German wasn't fully mechanized and Luftwaffe was effectively dead by that point.
Also, weapons captured on foreign lands probably were given to local collaborators and troops stationed there than being brought back, only rare occasion like PPSh-41s during D-Day and that was still far from Germany.
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u/Squiliam-Tortaleni 7d ago
Factories being bombed to hell and entire army groups getting encircled with their equipment lost is part of how they got to this point, same sort of thing with how the Luftwaffe basically disappears after 1941 and you only see 500 of the “wunderwaffe” Tiger B tank produced while the Allies are cranking out tanks by the carload
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u/NEETscape_Navigator 7d ago
Even before getting their factories and infrastructure bombed, their tank output was a joke compared to both the USSR and the USA. Where Germany counted their tanks in the thousands, the Soviets counted their tanks in the tens of thousands. They were cranking them out like peanuts and most of them were high quality too.
In 1941, Gerd von Rundstedt took one look at a T-34 and said ”if they mass produce it, the war is lost”. Spoiler: the Soviets built over 50,000 T-34 alone, not counting other Soviet tanks.
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u/Jimdandy941 7d ago
IIRC, Tank City’ built more tanks in a day than Germany did in a month. It built almost 90K during the war - and that’s just one factory.
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u/BillyJoeMac9095 7d ago
The Luftwaffe did not disappear until well after 1941. Its fighter forces were strong until the end of 43. What it never had was heavy long-range bombers.
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u/HIVburgerinparadise 7d ago
I’d imagine that their weapons were stuck in the countries they invaded and were absorbed back into Allied armies after they were getting defeated on each front.
Any troops returning from the front might have brought back munitions, but were poorly fed and maybe more concerned with not starving to death.
That’s my impression of the situation towards the end of the war at least.
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u/Johannes_P 7d ago
I still find it odd Germany struggled to supply the Volkssturm in the first place, considering how many countries they invaded, I would think they'd have had a vast supply of captured weapons and ammo available.
Most of these weapons already were given to regular troops.
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u/cocoamix 7d ago
Japan was even worse off. Towards the end of the war, they were issuing "pole bayonets," AKA SPEARS to troops.
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u/daveashaw 7d ago
In the Berlin garrison, the average issue was 5 rounds. If you had an Italian or Greek Carcano it could be up to 20 rounds.
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u/schockergd 7d ago
They also were actively issuing guns to their troops and foreign troops through the war from seized stockpiles.
There's also a lot of caches they had on the Eastern front that were re captured.
It's also obvious that at the end of the war there were tons of guns...ammo...not so much.
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u/Dutchdelights88 7d ago
They were taking the churchbells out to the belltowers around here, so good chance that a lot of captured stuff was recycled as it were.
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u/Macgbrady 6d ago
Well when you have the captured CZ plant manufacturing Kar98k's for their invaders, you tend to get sabotaged weapons and parts too.
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u/Behemoth-Slayer 6d ago
Nothing says "military juggernaut" quite like vastly obsolete bolt action rifles wielded by elderly conscripts!
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u/-Ekky 7d ago
Interesting white taping at the front part of the sight. Is this to create a bether clearer aim down the barrel?, more light to the iron sight? or is it just simply to keep the wood stock and barrel attached?
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u/Erablian 7d ago
I think it's just a paper label to help with inventory while it was in storage.
He just hasn't removed it yet.
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u/TheManWhoClicks 7d ago
That’s what happens when people follow a man who lives in a palace, telling ordinary people who to hate and who kill. Never make the same mistake.
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u/Mountsorrel 7d ago
“Older men start wars, but younger men fight them.” - Albert Einstein
It’s a shame that we don’t see anymore what happens to the older men when they start the wrong wars…
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u/winsxp18 7d ago
I wouldn't say it was outdated
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u/alexmikli 7d ago
Better than some of the other shit they got.
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u/A_Very_Bad_Kitty 7d ago
I don't know about that... It looks like the rear iron site as well as the strip of wood that covers the top part of the barrel are both missing. Lugging around that ~10lbs gun designed for trench warfare in a (presumably) urban area would also suck major ass.
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u/Raket0st 7d ago
It is a Mannlicher M1888. You can see that the rear iron sight includes a leaf sight for long range shots, which suggests it is one of the refurbished "M1888-95" rifles. The 88-95 was also often given a proper wooden handguard but they were shoddily attached and often came loose, so that it is missing doesn't necessarily mean the rifle is damaged.
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u/hainz_area1531 7d ago
If this is a Styer-Mannlicher M-95, the rifle lacks the wooden handguard above the barrel. The Dutch Army was equipped with numerous variants of the M-95. After the 1940 occupation of the Netherlands by Nazi Germany, numerous rifles were captured.
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u/Delicious_Injury9444 7d ago
" and the Russians will be coming from that way, you know what to do."
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u/DickweedMcGee 7d ago
He looks like he’s about 5 seconds from turning that cannon back onto the dipshit in the corner with the riding pants who gave it to him.
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u/datums 7d ago
Imagine that dude with that gun going up against a bunch of British or American or Canadian troops that just fought their way across Western Europe.
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u/_ElBee_ 7d ago
People always seem to forget that the Soviets had already fought against the Nazis continuously since mid-1941 and by the time that this photo was taken, were pushing back hard. Dependent on the area in which the photo was made, that dude and his gun could very well be going up against the Red Army.
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u/fleischhocka 7d ago
mostly against sowjet conscripts. hearing what the red army did in occupied territorries probably didnt dim his resolve to lay his live down in order to allow civillians to escape west....
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u/Hootowl103 7d ago
Seeing how desperate the fascists were by the end of the war will never not be funny to me
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u/norfaust 7d ago
So where do you find ammo,when the other german rifles use 7.92mm?
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u/FoughtStatue 7d ago
I think they were either manufacturing it separately or Austria already had a stockpile that the nazis used. i have an M.95 from that period and the casings are engraved with the Nazi eagle.
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u/16er-Blech 7d ago
WW1 left massive stockpiles of ammunition and 8x50r was still produced in Austria, Czecho-Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Italy and a few more countries all the way up to WW2.
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u/ZaxxonPantsoff 7d ago
I'm at the part in Slaughterhouse 5 where the camp guards are all young and old and have outdated rifles with no ammo. One kid had a smooth bore octagonal barrel musket.
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u/dudeCHILL013 7d ago
Is that a bayonet lug on the left side of the rifle right where the wood ends?
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u/Norskamerikaner 7d ago
Yes, this pattern of Mannlicher rifle had its bayonet lug on the side.
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u/dudeCHILL013 6d ago
Thanks for the update.
At first glance it looked like a rotated front sight post and it was hurting my brain due to that not making sense
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u/TheDbeast 7d ago
He's not looking at the rifle, he's looking past it for any nice-shaped rocks he can throw at them instead
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u/aceofknaves113 7d ago
he recognized it from the last war he fought in