Original subtitles

I'm James Holland, and one of the things that's always really fascinated me

about the Second World War is the interplay between man and machine.

In this series, I'm going to go inside the Nazi war machine.

Travelling across Europe, I'll explore the extraordinary machines they produced

and uncover rare archives to understand who built them, how they evolved, and

why they're technically brilliant designs.

were militarily flawed.

The magnificent fighter planes no rookie could fly.

The first time you fly a Messerschmitt 109, you just have to take that leap of

faith. The power of the panzers. If I had come up against this, I would have

been terrified. But I'm about to learn one of the biggest cons of them all.

The weapons that couldn't cope with mud or sand.

80 years ago, we did equality, which you can't beat today. We probably lost the

war. We used so much good stuff.

The U -boats that were floating bombs.

That was a suicide command.

Absolute horror.

A journey through the heart of the Nazi war machine.

I've long been fascinated by the Second World War, but I have to admit, as a

boy, it was the weaponry that really caught my imagination.

The myth I grew up with was that German kit was best, whether it be a tank,

whether it be a fighter plane, or even a humble rifle like this, the K98 Mauser.

I'm going on a journey to discover what was myth and what was reality, and

whether weapons like these really could have won Germany the war.

That is an amazing bit of metal, isn't it?

I'll find out why Nazi quality control delayed vital weapons production.

I mean, it is just an astonishing waste of time, money and effort.

Reveal the secret flaws they tried to cover up.

After more than two years of fighting the war, this is an absolutely

admission.

How interference from the very top meant a game -changing weapon failed to reach

the front line.

And what they needed was just a little bit of extra firepower.

And why Hitler was dead against it.

The bedrock of any fighting force is its infantry.

When Hitler invaded Poland and France, The shock and awe of the Blitzkrieg was

provided by the tanks of the Panzer Division and the dive bombers of the

Luftwaffe.

But it was the infantry unit, 80 % of the Nazis' fighting force, who provided

the boots on the ground.

So the range and quality of weapons issued to these soldiers was key to

the success or the failure of Germany's push for world conquest.

But this is my store. This is where I keep overflow books, uniforms, bits and

pieces, maps, a whole host of things. But perhaps my most prized possession is

this. This is a German MG34.

It's probably one of the finest weapons ever built, and perhaps the apogee of

German engineering on small arms from the Second World War.

The thing about it, though, is obviously over here in the UK, you can't actually

fire this. This is deactivated. But you can still fire small arms in Germany.

And that's where I'm headed. I'm going to be testing pistols.

In the target.

Submachine guns.

An assault rifle.

Whoa! And, of course, yes, machine guns as well.

Because only by firing them can I uncover both the strengths and the

of the engineering design of these deadly weapons.

It's just so beautifully made.

I'm going to begin in Aachen, the westernmost city in Germany.

It's a rather pretty spa town, but bordered as it is by both Belgium and

Netherlands, It was of the utmost strategic importance during the war.

This is the frontier town of Aachen, the first to fall under the full weight of

Allied military might.

It was the first German city to be liberated by the Allies in October 1944,

only after massive casualties on both sides.

Infantry troops fight in the streets for a week in a grim house -to -house

battle.

Today it's home to an old friend of mine.

Stefan Kurlin, who's going to join me for much of my journey through the world

of Nazi weaponry.

For a start, he owns an astonishing personal collection of small arms.

Goodness me, Stefan, look at this. I've never seen so many Lugers.

That's the reason why you're here today.

That's absolutely extraordinary.

This is pistol wallpaper over here. Yeah, I decided instead of wallpaper, I

some pocket pistols.

Stefan's been collecting and trading guns for over 30 years.

He's very particular about what he collects. They have to be fully

and in original condition.

The water PPK. The PPKs or, you know... Look at that, these are the original

boxes. Yes, that's hard to find, the original matching number boxes.

He's got around 1 ,700 weapons in his personal collection.

many of them predating the Second World War.

I have Lugers here.

Oh, my goodness me.

Am I allowed to pick one of these up?

Yes, yes.

That's an Imperial war Luger.

So what age is it? Let's have a look, see what it's got the date on it.

1913.

Parabellum P08, Luger.

was first manufactured in 1908, and yet was still in use by the German army well

into the 1940s.

It's one of the most iconic handguns ever built, and very precisely

But by the start of the war, it was largely superseded by the Walther P38.

Yeah, so we have here, for instance, like P38.

Yeah. So this replaces the P08, which is the Luger.

Yeah, that Luger was too expensive, and we chose more for the P -38. It's much

cheaper to produce, yeah. Right.

The P -38 had several advantages over the Luger.

It was smaller for a start, and cheaper to produce in the numbers needed at the

beginning of the war.

With a range of 30 meters, it proved so reliable that it remained in service

with the German military and police until 2004.

Stefan and I have moved to his local firing range.

where I'm going to get my first chance to assess its capabilities.

So 1943.

Yes, it's a fighter.

And this is Bakelite on the outside? Yes, Bakelite. I mean, it's really well

designed, isn't it?

Right, and this fires a 9mm? It's a 9mm Luger, yes. OK, so these are pistols and

these are well made, well manufactured.

So we're allowed to have a fire of some of these? Yeah.

In Germany, I'm able to fire a range of Nazi small arms.

Put the magazine in.

As a historian, I strongly believe it's important to get a feel for original

material firsthand.

Pull it back? Yes. We're going to start with the P -38.

Okay, go. Aim, aim, aim the target.

The P -38 feels comfortable to handle, and even though it was cheaper to

manufacture than the Luger, it's clearly still well -engineered.

Well, yeah, I mean, I'd be amazed if I hit the target once on that. And you

could feel every time you shot that it was sort of snapping upwards.

You didn't hit the target. I have to tell you the truth, yes?

No! You can't win the war. I tell you what, from the same round you got, you

one.

And what I'm beginning to discover on this journey is that for the Nazis

throughout the war, it appears that producing high -quality pistols was more

important than getting the numbers out to the front line.

And one of the things that...

I found is a document from the German archives, which is incredibly revealing,

because this charts the number of pistols manufactured in Germany in 1943

1944. And what it shows is two lines on this graph.

So the top line is how many are produced.

The bottom line is how many are then sent to the front or sold on. And the

discrepancy is really quite astonishing.

For example, if you look at November 1944, 89 ,000 pistols produced, just a

little bit more than that.

but just 30 ,600 being sent on.

In December, the discrepancy is even greater. 90 ,000 produced, just 25 ,500

sent on. So what is going on here?

Well, what's happening is that the pistols are being produced, then they'd

tested, and then they'd be sent back, and the whole thing would be completely

disassembled and inspected again.

And even if there was the tiniest flaw, either that part would be removed or the

whole thing would be melted down and they'd start again.

It is ridiculous, over -engineering and over -attention to detail, and

particularly at this late stage of the war. It's just astonishing.

And I'm afraid to say, it's not just related to pistols, it's a whole host of

other small arms too.

It even applied to one of the defining weapons of the German army in World War

II, the devastating submachine gun.

This is the Maschinenpistola, the submachine gun known to the Allies as

Schmeisser. In its various models, it was to prove one of the most effective

small arms of the entire Second World War.

So this is MP -14. You can kind of either aim it, it's very balanced, or

shoot it from the hip, sort of spray and pray, as it was known. But this is

close quarter stuff. It's like a pistol. I mean, the ranges are, you know, very,

very small. This is house clearing, that kind of thing. That is when you're

using this weapon.

The model number of all German weaponry indicates the year it was first

manufactured. So as the war progressed, the machine pistol MP28 became the MP38

and then the MP40.

That evolution and the thinking behind it is a fascinating demonstration of

the strengths and the weaknesses of German weapons design and Nazi

priorities.

And here, look at that.

Schmeisser. Ja.

Unsurprisingly, Stefan has examples of all these weapons and has given me a

crash course in their differences.

So, Stefan, why is this one so much more expensive than that one?

That's the pre -war, it's carved, and we did this from one piece of metal and

cost five or ten times more time and three times more money to produce it. So

this is a solid bit of metal which has then been tooled out, hollowed out, and

the grooves put on. I mean, you know, that is just...

purely for aesthetic reasons, taking out a bit of weight and, you know, just to

make it look good.

Whereas this is stamped metal.

Yeah, mass production. Mass production, and it's much cheaper to make.

I can completely see that.

But, you know, it underlines that, you know, this is just completely pointless,

isn't it? I mean, you're not going to mass produce weapons like that. No, no.

It's hard to expensive, and the problem is...

you don't have the time. If this takes three, four times the time, how can you

start a war with... You need mass production stuff. Yeah, you do.

Seeing the quality of the handcrafted detail on the MP38 in particular makes

wonder why it took so long for the Germans to realise that they couldn't

war with such incredibly refined weapons.

So I've come to Hamburg.

The city was one of the centres of German weapons production throughout the

and at the end of July 1943, it was on the receiving end of Operation Gomorrah,

one of the Allies' most devastating bombing operations.

For more than five relentless years, these Allied bombers have been pouring

destruction upon the vital centres of the Nazi war machine.

On four missions over eight nights... The RAF sent over 3 ,000 heavy bombers

hammer the city.

These first pictures of Hamburg reveal the indescribable destruction wrought by

repeated air attacks.

80 % of Germany's second city was destroyed.

Nearly 43 ,000 people were killed and over a million left homeless.

Today, the city is the home of Hartmann & Weiss, a company producing handmade

sporting guns.

To take me back to the origins of their craft, I'm meeting up with one of its

founders, Otto Weiss.

This is probably one of the finest military rifles ever been made, and this

over 100 years ago.

You can see how smooth this operates.

Oh, yeah, that's really smooth, isn't it? But is it possible to fire this and

see what it's like to fire?

I'll have a look if I can find some ammunition for this.

The K98 Mauser, of which this is the predecessor, was

adopted as the standard infantry rifle of the German army in 1935.

And although other small arms were introduced during the war, It remained

active service throughout.

Wow.

What I've got to say, it's incredibly smooth.

This 100 -year -old rifle set the gold standard for the production quality of

the K98.

Oh, it just clicks in beautifully, doesn't it?

Right, see if I can improve things.

OK, let's see just how badly I've done.

The K98 was a single -shot bolt -action rifle like this, simple but effective.

So what have I got, five shots?

It had a range of 500 metres, more with sniper scopes, and some 14 million were

produced between 1935 and the war's end.

Well, could have been worse. You don't need to take a shot of that target.

No.

So Otto, during the war, how good was the quality of German engineering

of weapons?

All the designs, I think, were pre -First World War. As the war went on,

had to hire people who were not so skilled anymore and so the quality, of

course, went down.

But as the quality went down, a surprising thing happened.

Because the really good quality was actually for some seasons too

good. What, because they were so finely produced? The fittings were so good.

During the wintertime, when the Russians were fighting there, the soldiers

sometimes couldn't move their rifles anymore.

Why? Because it got ice and snow in it. And even in Africa, they had a little

bit of sand in there.

It didn't work anymore, yeah.

What Otto is telling me is totally counterintuitive but utterly

that even the humble rifle was so finely crafted it couldn't cope with ice, mud

or sand in battle conditions.

Germany had developed blitz warfare, mechanized warfare, armies on wheels.

The German tradition of war was to fight its battles fast, strike hard with

overwhelming firepower, and win the war rapidly.

So you can afford your hand -tooled, exquisitely

designed weapons.

But if

you're drawn

into a long, attritional war with extended supply lines, it's a different

matter.

Odessa, fiend of an heroic siege of more than two months, held up the whole Nazi

trust into the Crimea.

I've headed back to Aachen and Stefan's shooting range.

I want to see if I can spot any differences in quality between the pre

models of machine guns and the ones made during the war.

You feed it in like this? First up, the MP28.

Aim the target.

Yep.

Oh, this is really nice.

The MP38.

That is very impressive.

It's just so beautifully made.

If you're only fighting wars that last a few weeks, you can afford to make

weapons like this.

Click 10. And two years later, the MP40.

Aim the target.

Yep.

Oh, my goodness. That is super smooth.

James, the target.

Please, the target.

You're getting better.

Wow. It just feels very smooth.

very solid, and it just feels like it's not going to let you down. And you hit

the target, I'm proud about you.

Well, I have to say, in my untrained hands, I thought all three of these

submachine guns were pretty impressive.

I suppose, if there was any, the MP40 clinches it for me, but, to be honest, I

wouldn't want to face any one of them in battle.

Those submachine guns were, however, designed to operate at short range.

And the German military needed a weapon that would have an impact over a much

greater distance.

They came up with this.

The Sturmgewehr.

The kind of first proper assault rifle that was issued to the front line. And

really is incredibly innovative for the era.

It came about because what they were discovering is although they had rifles,

rifles have incredible range, but you would very rarely use them at the

of their range unless you had sniper scopes or something. And that actual

for the most part, combat was happening at about no more than 300 yards or so.

What they also noticed was that the Russians were using an incredible number

submachine guns.

And what they needed was just a little bit of extra firepower and a little bit

more lead in the battle zone.

So they wanted something that would operate like a rifle, but at greater

than a submachine gun. And this is how this came about.

The Sturmgewehr could fire its 7 .92mm bullets some 400 metres, compared with a

mere 80 for the MP40.

But innovative as it was, it took an age to get into production, and at least in

part its slow development was because Hitler was initially against it.

He felt that it required a different ammunition.

He felt that rifles had worked in the First World War and before, that to

up on this would be expensive.

They didn't have the materials, they didn't have the time, they didn't have

machine tools to make vast numbers to replace the K98.

So he was against it.

First of all, they kind of changed the name from machine carbineur to machine

pistol.

But Hitler found out, and eventually he said, OK, fine, you can research this a

little bit more, but I don't want this to go into production.

When he finally saw it being fired, he was, of course, converted, because

always liked innovation, and said, no, this is a Sturmgewehr, an assault rifle,

and they've been called assault rifles ever since.

The truth is, they were just a little bit too late and a little bit too small

numbers to actually make much of an impact.

The greatest effect it has is on its legacy, because out of this came, of

course, the AK -47.

The AK -47, the Kalashnikov, was created by the Soviets in 1947 and aped many

features of the Sturmgewehr.

I'm going to find out why it's still in active use today with Ben Simmons, a

former major in the British Army.

He served on numerous tours to Afghanistan.

and got first -hand experience of the Kalashnikov in action.

Ben, I'm holding the Sturmgewehr 44.

You've got an AK -47.

You can see where Kalashnikov got his inspiration from, can't you?

Well, certainly. There are a lot of things on these which appear similar at

first, but actually Kalashnikov made a much more robust weapon.

As was always the case with the Germans, massively over -engineered. The biggest

problem they had at the start was they had a wooden buttstock, and they had a

spring that ran all the way through here.

Because they milled that hole to perfection, as soon as they took this to

Russian front and it got cold and wet, that wood would expand and it jammed the

spring. Whereas the AK -47, massive gaps between all of the parts here, so that

this can be dunked in sand, mud, grit, dirt, anything else, and will still

continue to fire. These are very robust.

The German weapons designers had come a long way in the journey from the K98

rifle to the Sturmgewehr.

But the Allies also had to face a weapon whose rate of fire surpassed anything

seen before.

The MG34 machine gun.

This is the real stuff.

Captured German film showing their automatic weapons in action.

These are the weapons we're up against in the European and Mediterranean states

of operation.

The MG34 was a truly fearsome infantry weapon.

It produced an immense weight of fire and a terrifying noise previously

on the battlefield.

How do they sound?

Well, here's their 34.

It was an incredibly intimidating weapon to face.

Firing up to 900 rounds a minute, it introduced an entirely new concept in

automatic firepower.

And it was a remarkable piece of engineering.

This is superbly engineered, isn't it? Yes. Look at all the detail on this. I

mean, just look at that there. I mean, this is just not something that you can

just knock off, is it? Yeah. I mean, it's absolutely second to none. I can't

believe 80 years ago, we did a quality which is, you can't...

Be it today, it's unbelievable.

Even the ammunition belt is extraordinarily detailed.

The US Army made its belts out of canvas, much cheaper and easier to make.

Germans used metal.

We used the good stuff, yeah?

Yeah, but, you know, it's... Too much of it!

Yeah, that's the problem. We probably lost the war, yeah? We used so much good

stuff. Too much good stuff and not enough mass produced.

Like so much else we've looked at, the MG34 was produced to a quality of

engineering that made no sense in prolonged wartime conditions.

And in the course of my research, I've uncovered some evidence that at the very

top of the Nazi high command, it was dawning that this concentration on

over quantity was completely unsustainable.

You know, every so often when you're pouring through...

countless numbers of folders in archives, every so often you come across

of absolute gold. And this document here is one of those.

It's dated the 3rd of December 1941, so this is about 36 hours before the Red

Army counterattacks against the Germans just outside Moscow, and just a few days

before Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into the Second World

War.

It's actually signed off by Adolf Hitler, although...

signed on his behalf by General Thomas, who is the head of the Economic

Division. And it's on this second page here, in this paragraph, this is the key

bit, where they admit that up until this point, they have been making highly

technical, highly engineered, and Schoenheitlich, beautiful, aesthetically

pleasing weapons up to this point, quite knowingly. Now, this is an absolutely

incredible admission.

after more than two years of fighting the war.

What are they talking about?

Well, I reckon they're talking about things like this. This is the MG34.

And you've only got to look at it. It's just an absolute work of art.

Deadly, yes, but an amazing bit of engineering.

But is it what you want in the middle of a long, drawn -out attritional war

where numbers actually count a little bit more?

And I've got another document here, and it's really interesting because it lists

here the weight of steel that is used for the construction of each of these

weapons. And if you take the MG34, for example, the amount of steel needed to

make one is 49 kilograms.

The finished weapon weighs 11 kilograms.

And that's because they're starting with a solid bit of steel.

And then they're having to kind of drill it out.

And so it's no wonder that the MG34 takes 150 man -hours. Now, the British

which is the kind of rough equivalent, takes about 50. So you could have three

Brens for every one MG34.

And it's just not an efficient way to fight the war.

A brilliant weapon, very amazing, but perhaps just a bit too amazing for the

task that's been given them. And they are still making these MG34s.

right up to the very end in 1945.

The engineering response was to come up with a new model, a new production

method.

In 1942, the MG42 was introduced.

The latest German machine gun is the MG42.

New production methods which employ pressings, riveting and spot welding.

Give it a less finished appearance than the MG34 without affecting its

efficiency.

Made out of stamped metal, the new design required considerably less

and less high -grade steel.

An astonishing three -quarters of a million were produced between 1942 and

Same type of feed mechanisms are used.

It took 75 man -hours to build, still more than the Bren gun.

but half that of the MG34.

And loading is accomplished in the same way.

It also had an even faster rate of fire, a frightening 1 ,400 rounds a minute.

23 bullets per second.

For an Allied rifleman facing a German machine gun nest, it was a truly

terrifying prospect.

In this test, each weapon will fire 30 rounds.

The U .S. Army training film did their best to debunk its fearsome reputation,

testing it here against the American equivalents.

There's a lot of lead down there.

Let's go see how much of it hit the target.

16 hits for the German .42.

For the American light .30, 22 hits.

The German gun is good, but ours is better.

But the very thing that made the MG42 so devastating was also its greatest

weakness. And another thing about that high rate of fire.

It eats up ammunition.

And that meant its gun barrel got very hot, very quickly.

I'm unable to experience the full rate of fire since in Germany today,

firing is forbidden, and all of Stefan's machine guns have been converted to

semi -automatic.

But even firing just single shot, it produces a significant amount of heat.

Don't burn your finger. Yeah, but it's amazing. Already that is really hot.

I can just about touch that.

23 rounds per second when it's firing at kind of full whack.

I mean, that's phenomenal, isn't it? I mean, you can understand how very

that would go red hot, then white hot. Because if you fire too many rounds too

quick... Your barrel's going to... Yes, the barrel is gone and... You can't do

it. It's gone, yeah.

And that meant the barrel itself had to be changed.

Not always an easy task under fire.

To change the barrel, a barrel change lever hinged on the right side of the

barrel jacket is provided.

The MG42 was designed with an internal removable barrel, so the machine gun

crews carried no less than six spares, which they changed over when things got

too hot.

So it enables you to put down an incredible weight of fire, but the flip

side of that is you do have to constantly change the barrel all the

of course the barrel has to be cooled, otherwise you can't fire accurately.

It's important to understand that there is a difference between actual rate of

fire, which on the MG42 was around 1 ,400 rounds a minute, and practical rate

fire, which is the rate of fire you can do in a minute without it all going

kaput. And, you know, it was verboten in the German inventory manual to fire

more than 250 rounds consecutively. Otherwise, you're spending your whole

changing the barrels.

I mean, there is a reason why.

Modern machine guns don't fire at the same rate as the MG42 did during the

Second World War.

It remains one of the defining weapons of the Second World War and was quickly

capitalized upon by the Russians.

At the end of the war, the original technical drawings for the MG42 were

captured by the Soviet.

This meant the German firm Rheinmetall had to reverse engineer an MG42 into

became the almost identical MG3.

It's now in use in over 30 countries around the world.

So, Ben, although there were problems with the MG42, in actual fact, the

is pretty enduring, isn't it? Because there's a version of this weapon still

being produced today.

Yes, so the MG3 is still in service with the German army at the moment, and

obviously lots of the design points from this have influenced things like the

M60, which was in service with the US, and the GPMG, which is still in service

with the British today.

OK, so what is the difference between an M3 and an MG42?

Well, practically not a lot. I mean, they function in exactly the same way. A

lot of the parts are actually interchangeable. They're essentially the

weapon. But presumably not quite the same rate of fire that it had in the

No, I mean, that was one of the weak points of the MG42, is the high rate of

fire will cause it to overheat.

We're talking 1 ,400 rounds per minute, something around about that.

This version...

slowed down to about 800 or 900 rounds per minute, much more manageable, meant

it didn't overheat nearly so often.

But that's still pretty decent, isn't it? Yeah, still very good. I mean,

all you really need. I mean, anything more than that and you're having to

far too much ammunition.

Yep. So how do you kind of reduce that rate of fire, if the design is much the

same? So with this, it's heavier parts, stronger springs, so... Just slows it

down. Just slows it all down, yeah.

And what about the barrel in here? I mean, is that made of a different metal

today?

Well, at the time in World War II when the Germans were manufacturing the MG42,

they had no access to things like manganese, which enabled them to make

stronger metals.

So they went for much cheaper stuff like carbon steel.

So actually the MG3, the reason why it's still in service today is because it's

a much better version of the MG42, which is a pretty good gun to begin with.

It's time we moved on to something a bit bigger than these infantry weapons.

The firepower of Nazi field artillery.

The threat posed by Allied tanks, first on the eastern front against the Soviet

Union, and then the Allies in the west, led the Germans to come up with a new

type of artillery.

Designed to pierce enemy armour with larger high -velocity shells,

Anti -tank weapons were developed both for supporting the infantry... This is

the result of our tank destroying weapons, is the boast.

...and for specialist artillery units.

And that's what we're going to take a look at now.

Surprisingly,

Not everything the Nazi war machine produced was over -engineered and

complicated.

Take, for example, the Panzerfaust anti -tank launcher.

This is just breathtaking for its simplicity and is exactly what you

expect from the Germans. They could do it if they really had to. So what you do

is, you know, this is a hollow charge. It's just a simple...

steel tube. There's nothing more to it than that. It's a one -shot wonder.

You lift this up, and you can see it's got kind of ranging on here, but as the

warning on here says, you don't want to be firing this more than 60 meters. In

fact, you don't really want to be doing it more than about 15 or 20 meters. I

mean, this is almost a point -blank range thing. You hold it like that, you

and you literally just press down on this.

This bit of it then comes out in here are some fins which expand as it is

released from the tube. That hits your target, explodes and causes really a

pretty large amount of damage.

The key, though, as I said, is to get as close as you possibly can.

So this is jumping out of a hedgerow, firing it point blank at the side of a

tank or something like that. And, of course, therein lies the rub.

You know, this is almost a suicide weapon. Not quite, but not far off it,

because the only way this is going to be effective is if you're really, really

close to your enemy.

And the problem is, if you're incredibly close to your enemy, you're also

incredibly vulnerable as well.

Back from Germany,

I'm now at the Weald Foundation in Kent, which houses a vast collection of

restored Nazi war machines.

You know, one of the main anti -tank weapons they had. What a collection.

This is absolutely amazing.

On the Eastern Front in 1941, the German army came face to face with the almost

indestructible Russian T -34 tank.

They needed a weapon that had the power and velocity to take it on and win.

The answer was the PAK -40 anti -tank gun.

This was a low -silhouetted, easy -to -conceal weapon that could fire its 75mm

armour -piercing shells up to 5 miles.

It required a crew of six.

History hasn't been especially kind to the Pak 40.

It's earned a reputation for being cumbersome in the field, so I'm going to

that out with the Weald Foundation's enthusiastic band of brothers.

One of the criticisms about the PAK -40 is that it was kind of too difficult to

manoeuvre and too slow to get into position.

I'm not sure I believe that, so I'm quite interested to see how long it's

to take us to unhitch it, open up the fork and get it into position.

The clock is ticking.

The speed with which these anti -tank guns could be deployed in the field was

vital. Any delay in taking out the enemy meant the difference between advance or

retreat.

So the Pak 40 had to be easy to manoeuvre if it was to pull its weight

battle. I'm lining that up, up a little bit, round a little bit,

shove it in, where's the firing button?

Well, I'm sorry, but that was less than a minute. It was.

Less than a minute.

The driving force behind the Weald Foundation is Mike Gibb.

The point, I think, Mike, is this is a really versatile weapon. It's high

velocity, it's an anti -tank gun, it's not massive at all. And the thing is

there is if you are offloaded or unloaded in the wrong spot, then you've

that very wide traverse.

Jeepers, I'm still going here. Yeah.

God, your whole herd is about to go.

I think that's really impressive. For me, this is a really, really top piece

kit. Because it's all very well having a powerful gun, but you need to be able

to manoeuvre it, you need to be able to use it practically, and this is

something you can do.

You know, five of us were able to manoeuvre this really, really pretty

Yep. And we're not trained for the job. No, we're not.

And we're a little bit long in the hoop as well. Yes, exactly, yes. We're not as

young as those guys would have been.

The Pak 40 had other strengths as well.

It became the staple cannon on the artillery's tracked anti -tank vehicle,

Sturmgeschütz 40, or StuG.

Conveniently, Mike has a working example of one of these as well.

The first thing that strikes you is just how low the profile is, and yet you've

got the big 75mm anti -tank gun on it. This was a very, very potent fighting

machine.

These would normally be operating in tandem with the infantry.

They had such a good reputation amongst the Panzergrenadiers that often when

they'd run out of ammunition, they were told to keep driving on even without

ammunition because it gave everyone around them that feeling that they would

far more effective. It actually had quite a talismanic effect on the troops

operated with them.

To protect the gun from mine, the Germans developed a unique anti

coating.

The Germans developed this anti -magnetic mine paste, which, when

through the outside of a vehicle, would result in the magnetic mines which were

being used at the time, by the Russians primarily, to not stick on the

superstructure.

But the paste, a mixture of sawdust, pine resin and petrol, brought its own

problems.

The German crews were talking about these bursting into flame when they

actually been penetrated. So the rounds hadn't even gone through the side. So

what's happened, the kinetic force of the round hitting it has caused sparks.

even just a tracer. Tracer, yeah. A tracer round. It ignited the fuel and

all just gone whoosh. So this stuff is only partially successful.

It stops you having mines on it, but...

Correct. It causes a whole load of other problems. And because of all of that,

this was discontinued then, just after mid -1944.

Gone.

This is one of the problems I've come up against time and time again.

There you go.

As the war drew towards its close, the Nazi regime simply didn't have the time,

the manpower, or the resources for research and development.

So they were just having to take a punt and hoping that it would work.

The Pak 40 with its 75mm high -velocity shell was a very effective weapon.

But of course the Nazi regime couldn't let it rest there.

As usual, they had to go one bigger.

I'm off to the Tank Museum of Bovington to meet the Pak 40's successor, the Pak

43, which is mounted with a massive 88mm cannon.

The first thing that strikes me is just how big this is. I mean, it's enormous,

isn't it? I mean, look at it. Look at the size of these wheels.

This huge, long gun. I mean, this can hurtle a shell at a kilometre a second.

what's that? About 3 ,400 feet.

You know, that is some velocity.

The 75mm PAC gun, the PAC -40.

I mean, that can do about 3 ,000 feet a second, 2 ,900 feet a second. So not a

huge amount in it. Obviously, a slightly smaller shell, 75 millimetres rather

than 88 millimetres. But a fraction of the size. So much easier to put into

position. You know, you could tow that in with a horse if you needed to.

Not this.

So whether this has the kind of practicality by the latter part of the

not sure. But if you can get it into position...

then this is going to really cause some damage.

But overall, I wonder whether it's just a bit too big.

We've looked at a lot of different weapons in the course of this episode.

From tiny handguns to massive anti -tank...

Back in Otto's workshop, it's time to take stock.

I suppose what I've learned is that the quality of German engineering when it

comes to weapons cannot be doubted at all. I mean, you look at this Mauser and

it's just... The craftsmanship is incredible and I can't stop thinking

mechanism of the MG34 and the MP38.

Absolutely wonderful pieces of engineering.

And yet perhaps it was just too good. Perhaps it was over -engineered. And

interesting that although later in the war they're introducing cheaper MG42s

right at the end the Sturmgewehr, it feels just a little bit too late to help

the Germans.

Their legacy is still being felt because...

You know, out of the Sturmgewehr came the Kalashnikov, still being produced in

vast numbers to this day, and a version of the MG42 is still being used as well.

So there is a legacy for those weapons, but they didn't work for Germany in

World War II.

The German weapons designers and engineers have certainly left their mark

history, but I have to say, the gap between the legend of the mighty Nazi

machine and the reality for the infantry on the ground...

has been well and truly uncovered.