German army fights underground Nazi war machine hidden in Kiel pensioner's cellar The German rozzers raided a villa in a wealthy suburb of Kiel on Wednesday (July 2), and found a Nazi tank from 1943 hidden in the cellar, alongside a torpedo and "other weaponry". The Local reported that the raid took place under the orders of the town's prosecutors, who suspect the villa's owner held the Nazi-era weaponry …
Really? Does not sound like scarper to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Abbeville
Their performance in the first gulf war does not sound like scarper either. In fact if memory serves me right they were the _ONLY_ ones to engage Iraqi armour directly armour to armour within cannon range and they steamrolled over it by all means. Compared to them yanks just drove down a shooting alley opened for them by A10s without ever firing a shot in anger.
"The sight of the German Army would have made it scarper"
Jeez, not this francophobic historically inaccurate rubbish again! It was actually the Maserati Supremo MkII, the most famous of WW2 Italian tanks, that had one forward gear and four reverse gears. They were actually very well designed, could do 65mph while advancing in a rearward direction.
Ahem. OK I'm outtahere...
> They were actually very well designed, could do 65mph while advancing in a rearward direction.
We proud English would never build an armoured vehicle with the gun pointing backwards so that it could run away faster.
IIRC an Archer wasn't so much a tank destroyer as a motorized anti tank gun with escape capability. Ambush, shoot, scutter away. And, repeat.
AT guns were good at first contact but would not do well against sustained infantry or artillery attacks once they were spotted and were stuck on location. The Archer was meant to avoid that. No idea how well that weird idea worked out but AT guns were pretty much gone by the 60s.
what do you call engagement range? I personally fired 4 swingfire missiles at an engagement range of 3km in my 102 (2 separate engagements), I'd call that engagement range personally so I can attest that brits didn't sit back for A10s. And yes, I missed all 4 times in both engagements so no beer for me (I still say at least 1 was on target but our scorpion had bugged out so no confirmation).
Legal niceties? The probably had a warrant for Nazi memorabilia that wouldn't work on tanks and torpedoes so had to get a warrant for those after tripping over them on the first visit.
They could have adopted a more lax approach and got the whole thing thrown out of court.
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Was he doing anyone any harm? Or is this just the over sensitive German war guilt.
Yes your nation committed genocide on a never seen before or after scale but its over now,If this about your conscious, get over it, believe it or not your history and these preserved items are apart of that history, forgetting your past you may end up making the same mistakes one day we wont have these looked after relics, that day will be a sad one
This sort of like the guilt and now outrage in the USA about the Confederate Battle Flag* being flown..
There's a big difference. The Confederate battle flag had all but vanished from sight until the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s, trying to desegregate schools in the South. That's when the battle flags re-emerged, coincident with brutal violence against civil-rights activists, especially blacks. Surely it was the intent of those who raised the battle flag over government buildings across the South to symbolically declare their belief in White Supremacy. The Civil War was fought over slavery. Anyone who tries to mush-mouth it into a fight for "states rights" is a GD liar or a fool. And the Confederate flag was the symbol of those who fought to continue enslaving black people. Your German collector isn't flying a Nazi flag, is he?
Regardless of what many white Southerners say -- and some of the less-enlightened ones may believe it -- the Confederate battle flag has become inextricably tied to racism, White Supremacy and violence against blacks. That's the "legacy" and "heritage" of the Confederacy. It's become a symbol far more powerful than a Panther tank, and it's past time for it to go back in the cellar.
Sounds like the nuthead 2.5 miles down the road (next village) from me who has a Churchill tank parked in his yard. AFAIK nobody is bothering him. He is not paying road tax on it and as far as I know it does not have a valid MOT and insurance :)
Nobody bothers other nutheads either. I nearly crashed into a wall of an old house in the Czech republic last year. I was driving peacefully down the road and from behind the bend came out a WW2 Willis with a twin Erlicon 50 cal mounted in the boot barrels pointing straight at me (the incoming traffic). I nearly lost control there and then.
My granddad used to own a WW2 BMW bicycle with a sidecar (it was supposed to be mine when I grow up, but my older cousin destroyed it by smashing in it). In full SS regalia with markings, nazi crosses, etc (AFAIK it was abandoned after a mechanical problem by the guys assigned to arrest him and execute him on the spot in 1944 - two weeks before the country was liberated). The only thing the milicia (on the other side of the iron curtain) made him do was to remove the machine gun and hand it in.
And so on. They should just leave the history buff alone. He is harmless.
He was investigated due to (potential) involvement with "Art from the Nazi era", that typically means stolen art. Thats why the police turned up at his place. He had a shitload of other weapons and now they are simply checking if everything is properly disarmed.
Until then it is locked down. After all you do not want a (right wing?) nutcase with a gun that can kill anything short of an MBT at 500+ meters.
Would love to have a tank with a gun able to blast things apart... just imagine how much fastrer the M25 would be if you could blow the overtaking lane hoggers and the 3 abreast lorry drivers from here until kingdom come... What fun, problem would be with such a prolific number of targets fitting the criteria which would you choose?
"I've seen the odd Spitfire or Hurricane in private gardens/grounds too.
Seems the fickle finger of fate foretells that the losers armour has not to be seen?"
We have one flying around our village most weekends. Guy that owns it is the same guy who flew the spitfire in most of the 80's/90's war movies (most famously the scene from Empire of the Sun). He bought an industrial park near where I live because it still had the aircraft hangers from the 2nd world war.
Ok, you got me with those folk on the genocide, but the Germans were kind enough to document it, Stalin and co just made folk vanish, its doubtful if we would ever know the full story with that lot, and if we include all the civilian and military dead over the two wars, they have to be ranking up in the top 5 causes for world population reduction events surely!
Stalin also documented it. The big ERASURE of the tracks is Chrushov's job.
If you pick the 1952 edition of the World map printed in any Warsaw pact state you will notice an interesting anomaly - there are 16 Soviet republics, not 15. Stalin had no qualms to put his Super-Getto on the map. There is a 16th republic - the Jewish Soviet Republic which is beyond Kazahstan on the Chinese border. You can even see why too - the map shows rare earth, etc being mined in the area (what is missing is the Uranium mines and supporting industry, but that is an expected "detail").
If you pick the 1956 edition (I have both) that is missing. NEVER EVER HAPPEND Товарищ. Понятно? Chrushov and Co disappeared it from history completely (along with quite a few other things).
"genocide on a never seen before or after scale"
...its like Rwanda never happened. Over 800,000 of the countries population of 7 million were murdered in tribal genocide - but nobody ever seems to remember this happening, despite this being only 20 years ago.
http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/genocide/genocide_in_rwanda.htm
The uncomfortable fact is that the world stood by and watched it happening.
>Mutter ficker?
Mutterficker, no space.
As for WWII regalia, personal possession is forbidden in Germany if it sports NAZI insigna.
The only "battle" the British Empire and French won over the Germans was the race to Dunkirk, and then again, the German army let them win ... All battles won by the allies included Soviet or "troops from other places of the world".
Then again ... "Listen, don't mention the war! I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right." Basil Fawlty
The German for "motherfucker", is, in practice "motherfucker".
Something like "mutterficker" would probably be taken in a literal sense as someone who has sex with a mother.
English seems to be the preferred language for obscenity in Germany (and the Netherlands too, apparently).
(I'd like to sit a German down with a copy of the profanisaurus one day, and see how seriously they take it.)
> What is a 'Nazi tank', anyway?
It's a description by someone who doesn't know (or can't be bothered to know [cough]Quentin Tarantion[/cough]) that there was a difference between the German people as a whole and the Nazi Party and its sympathisers.
"It's a description by someone who doesn't know (or can't be bothered to know [cough]Quentin Tarantion[/cough]) that there was a difference between the German people as a whole and the Nazi Party and its sympathisers."
Sadly my grandfather was an officer in WWII and "I" had to explain it to him.
" a difference between the German people as a whole and the Nazi Party and its sympathisers"
To put the boot on the other foot.....according to my father, who went into France on D-Day +3 and then travelled though France, Belgium, Holland and North Germany, ending up in Bremen, none of the Germans were Nazis. Or at least thats what they all claimed when forced out of a building at gun point.
"Ein nicht nazi...ein nicht nazi...." repeated time after time, even by those in SS uniform.
From what he saw, in reality most Germans of the time were supporters of Adolf, only losing their belief when the tanks rolled in
"searching for Nazi art and finding a Nazi tank."
Mechanical engineering such as tanks and aircraft is the only Nazi creations capable of being considered as "art", because at the time many of their products WERE state-of-the art technical excellence, whatever purposes they were put to.
On the other hand Nazi art was boring, depressive, censored and unoriginal. Except for the "depraved" stuff they stole and hid for themselves.....
So-so. Packed snow/ice is not the strong side of the old MAN since it has no ice cleats (unlike say the Leo 1). Add in the tempramental final drive and it is not really a winter tank.
Heating is decend from what I have been told and the engine has a "cold weather starter" rated for "Russian Winter"
The army engineers finally managed to remove it. Apparently, they had to negotiate a bend, and since the tank had no tracks any more, they had to figure out how to pull it around.
BTW, the owner is quoted as having bought the tank as scrap in Britain.
Link: http://www.n-tv.de/panorama/Weltkriegspanzer-in-Ostsee-Villa-geborgen-article15433571.html
Actually the german Panzermuseum at Munster has a working example of that type (SdKfz 171 "Panther") and model (A G from the maschine gun) that is occasionally even shown on the move. Panther 801 "Ulrike" is actually a post WWII build jokingly labeled a "Auf. G zu spät" build by MIAG under british orders.
IIRC the French in Saumur also have a working G. The Littlefield Collection in the US had a working Panther as well, not sure of the Version, IIRC an A (that is the SECOND version, the first version was the D)
Panthers are resonably common in museeums due to the fact that the french army used them well into the 1950s and so quite a few survivors are in museeums. The number of working ones is lower due to the tempramental final drives but there are some as well.
The German army of 1943 certainly did - they delayed the Battle of Kursk until more Panthers were ready, then a large proportion of them broke down because the drive train was originally designed for a much lighter tank.
Meddling in the design made it definitely a Nazi tank in that regard.
Let's be happy about this. Because a Panther without the weak final drives VERY closely resembles a Leopard 1. (Weight, Weight/HP ratio, armoring, speed/mobility concentration(1)). And would you really go up against that in a Sherman?
(1) Very late Panther even had stabilized optics and IR night fighting gear and a turret that could take the 88L71 or even a "in the work" 105mm.
I know accuracy is anathema to the subs round here, but the suburb where the villa housing the tank is located is Heikendorf, not, as you have written it, Keikendorf.
The presence of the torpedo is entirely predictable, Heikendorf is the site of the memorial to the U-Boat war dead .Rather chilling, worth checking out - https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-Boot-Ehrenmal_M%C3%B6ltenort#/media/File:U-Boot-Ehrenmal_M%C3%B6ltenort_2.jpg
Most Germans love mechanical objects, old tanks are commonplace and torpedos are always popular exhibits in museums, I wonder if this bloke has a Messerschmitt Me 262, as well, that would be something! I always thought Goldfinger was quite Germanic
Well, yeah, man, you see, like, all the tanks we come up against are bigger and better than ours, so all we can hope to do is, like, scare 'em away, y'know. This gun is an ordinary 76mm but we add this piece of pipe onto it, and the Krauts think, like, maybe it's a 90mm. We got our own ammunition, it's filled with paint. When we fire it, it makes... pretty pictures. Scares the hell outta people! We have a loudspeaker here, and when we go into battle we play music, very loud. It kind of... calms us down.
Jet Girl: You see, this tank isn't... isn't...
Tank Girl: What? Just one little adjective and we'll have a *whole* sentance. Isn't, glad, sad... mad... Lonely...
Jet Girl: Isn't... Operational.
Tank Girl: [seizes Jet by the throat] How do I know you're not lying?
Jet Girl: [choking] Because if, if I was lying, your lungs would be full of cyanide gas.
[Tank releases her]
Tank Girl: Cool! So we get a new tank.
If one reads the german article there are connections between the owner and (quote from the SZ)
"Im Zuge der Ermittlungen um nach Jahrzehnten wieder aufgetauchte Nazi-Kunst waren die Behörden auf die Spur des Norddeutschen gelangt."
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/nobelviertel-bei-kiel-alter-mann-hortet-panzer-in-seiner-villa-1.2547493
So the initial investigations where along re-apperaing art from the 3. Reich (most likely stolen art) and then the officials found the tank, an 88mm Anti Aircraft gun, a 533mm Torpedo and lots of other weapons. They have been confiscated and will be checked if they are properly disabled/disarmed. Until then they are removed to an official place for lockdown to prevent illegal use if NOT disarmed.
A 75L70 still is a VERY potent gun, punching through anything short of a modern tank after all. (The 88L56 AA gun actually is less capabel in that job)
He must be very rich, there was also a perfectly restored 88mm gun, yes the one setting 1000's of allied and russian tanks of fire. These guns are very rare and expensive collector items.
See: http://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/schleswig-holstein-bundeswehr-zieht-kriegsgeraet-aus-privatkeller-1.2549201
It is unknown on what information it was decided to remove the material from the house and take it to an army compound for further investigation. Since the value of a 88mm would drop considerably in value from a demilitarization, perhaps it was not implemented to the full extend required by the law, not taking into account that destroying a perfect 88mm is a barbaric act.
May be some civil servant saw reason for that to rob an old man of his possessions.
No PC or "rampant greens" (earlier post) involved.
Germany has very strict laws about weapons, and that includes guns. Weapons meant for warfare (Kriegswaffen) are even more regulated (in short: you cannot have them).
Speaking as a Kraut, I am happy we do not have a gun proliferation as in other places.
"Speaking as a Kraut, I am happy we do not have a gun proliferation as in other places."
Speaking as a Brit, don't look at us or Japan when you're saying that.
The gun nuts in the US argue that their guns are needed to protect them from possible power abuse by the State. But German history shows that when there were lots of guns in circulation (post WW1), their owners ended up on the side that overthrew the democratic Republic. It's not surprising that the NRA tends to avoid discussion of Great Britain, Germany and Japan.
In short: You are wrong!
A properly disabled military weapon CAN be owned by privat persons in germany. There are some special rules for "active military weapons" i.e I could not own a de-militarized G36, but those do not apply to the tank or AA gun. A good example is the "Technikmuseum Sinsheim" that also owns a Panther AND is a privat museum.
The steps necessary to disable a weapon are massiv and have been getting worse over the years, i.e for a rifle multiple caliber sized holes must be in the barrel. So the objects in question may no longer fulfill that rules. But THOSE rules we have due to "political correctness" and "anti gun craze" because the older variants (bolt welded IN the barrel) worked just as well.
Now I am off, polishing my pistols and rifles.
Even there you are not correct. I legally own a Mauser 98K military rifle for sports shooting (Ordonanz-Schiessen). The only illegal weapons are fully automatic systems and:
Halbautomatische Langwaffen, die einer Kriegswaffe ähnlich sehen UND bei denen die Lauflänge kleiner als 42 cm, oder die Hülsenlänge kleiner als 40 mm, oder die der Bullpup Bauweise entsprechen sind vom Schießsport ausgenommen
Semi-Auto rifles that resemble a military service rifle AND have a barrel of less than 42cm or a cartridge length of less than 40mm or are a Bullpub-design (like the british SA80/L85) are not allowed for sports shooting
So if I get my hands on a HK91/HK41 I could legally own and fire it (granted, NOT in Ordonanz competitions, those have additional rules). since it fullfills all the above rules
Yeah, by the time you get "older", you have had to grow up and put away childish ideals for the pragmatism of being a parent, taxpayer, home owner, did I say taxpayer, etc. Sorry, the CRS has kicked in. Must be time to renew my AOL membership.
It's difficult, that "growing up" that so many posters here have put off by living in their mom's basement for the last 30 years.
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I notice he only regards non-ferrous metal as scrap. Presumably ferrous metal is salvageable.
I once had a warehouse full of brass as part of a site for which I was responsible. I'd have felt more confident with one of those beasties around to discourage the ungodly, except that collateral damage would be an issue.
Yes, plus several other things such as SS runes. Showing any of these in public is an offense. This will not change anytime soon.
Forbidding these in games might seem strange, but if this was lifted the first Nazi glorifying game would appear in virtually no time.
Discuss with your neighbor.
There's proof of extreme eccentricity right there: Nobody would bother to steal Nazi "art". When they had an exhibition of Nazi art in Berlin before WW2, and another exhibition of degenerate modern art (to show Germans how lucky they were to be protected from it by their Leader), there were queues for the "degenerate" exhibition and the Nazi one was empty - till Goebbels hastily shut the degenerate one down.
(Yes I do know what the author meant.)
Would have been interesting getting it out of the cellar......
chap I used to work with was a tank driver in BAOR in the 1960's. He managed to "lose" gears and brakes on both tracks on a Conqueror tank (approx 64 tons) while going downhill in a German village. The tank ploughed into a house at the bottom of the hill and dropped into the cellar.
The house was demolished in an attempt to get the tank out, but it couldn't be done - just not enough access room.
In the end the craned the gun and turret out, and then cut the hull up with torches
It was no great loss - the Conqueror was too heavy to be any use anyway
The whole concept of the Ostrich syndrome is a crime to me. Oh! Let me stick my head in the sand and pretend this never happened.
Oh! lets IGNORE the fact that WWII ever occurred and make all the Nasty Nazi memorabilia and weapons go away. Then we can blissfully forget it and doom society to repeat all it's previous mistakes.
Lets change the rules and take the WWII German tank (already de-militarized) from the old guy under some ridiculous revisionist pretext
It's the same thing with the Confederate Flag now. The statues, battlefields and school names are next.
Oh! Lets bury our history so we can be safe from it.
The nancypants brigade will be out any minute with the same arguments that the American flag or the British flag should be banned as well. No one or thing will be safe from their hollow but loud protests.
FUCK all the PC revisionists everywhere and piss on their graves. They are no better than the Nazis, Stalinists, Confederates, etc that they rail against. All they want is to tell other people how they should run their lives while ignoring their own advice.
They can't live with the reality that people are forever fallible and that the only way we will ever learn, is from our mistakes. Erasing your history and mistakes, however vile they may be; is no way to learn from them. Without our history, we are all less than nothing.
EVERYONE is entitled to an opinion, including ALL the categories we may or may not agree with!
And it is MY opinion that you prissy twats should all FOAD.
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