WW2 German captured 1938 Izhevsk 91/30

[Junk Yard Dog]

There was a Korean movie about something like that. Start off a Korean in the Japanese army, captured by Soviets and forced into the Red Army, captured by Germans and put into the German Army.

[Joeinthehills]

Interesting rifle with a fascinating history, he must have sent it home before being captured by the Soviets, and somehow my relatives failed to find and confiscate it as they marched over Germany and Austria in 1944-45. The anti German sentiment encountered in eastern Europe isn't exactly unexpected considering the brutality of the German occupation of these countries during the war. The things done by the SS, the Gestapo, and even the regular German army in many occupied countries could be staggeringly brutal, to bordering on the unimaginable, yet they did these things, and did them in places were memory's are very long. My Uncle was Army intelligence, US Army, during the war, he was attached to George Patton's staff and got a close up first hand look at the death camps and other horrors. Sometimes he saw these things in the company of old "blood and guts" himself who by the way was visibly sickened by what he saw on more than one occasion. If I was part of a military who participated in such acts I would do my best to keep silent about it also. The death camps may have been the SS, but the German regular army amassed it's own impressive list of atrocities as the war went on.
Money is the real reason behind the anti German sentiment of WW1, the newspapers fed the flames, the push behind this was from American industrialists and bankers who held the IOU's of the allied powers. If the Allies lost the war it would have devastated the American economy, this is not to say that Germany didn't commit some of the acts they were blamed for, but there was blame on all sides in the Great War. We should have just sent 10 million men over there and flattened first Germany, then France and England, then Russia, reorganized the governments along more democratic lines and ended WW2 and the Cold War before either happened.

Damn, Jim you sound just like Old Blood and Guts Patton reincarnated.

"I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket." Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, USMC, Recipient of Two Congressional Medals of Honor.

[BuckeyeSgt]

There was a Korean movie about something like that. Start off a Korean in the Japanese army, captured by Soviets and forced into the Red Army, captured by Germans and put into the German Army.

Its called "My Way". On Netflix. Great movie.

I wish my grandfather had told me more. I got a couple of stories but not much. He got malaria in Italy after the Germans flooded the area. But it kept him out of the bloodbath at the Rapido River crossing. Him and his buddys hated Mark Clark. Even at his reunions the other guys never talked about it either. There are only a few of them left now.

[Joeinthehills]

There was a Korean movie about something like that. Start off a Korean in the Japanese army, captured by Soviets and forced into the Red Army, captured by Germans and put into the German Army.

Its called "My Way". On Netflix. Great movie.

I wish my grandfather had told me more. I got a couple of stories but not much. He got malaria in Italy after the Germans flooded the area. But it kept him out of the bloodbath at the Rapido River crossing. Him and his buddys hated Mark Clark. Even at his reunions the other guys never talked about it either. There are only a few of them left now.

X's 2

Spoke w/ many WWII Vets, as my father was one, and a Uncle that lost 2 B-24's over Europe.
But my next door neighbor who I worked for in high school was in the German Army (Africa and Eastern campaign) and didn't get home until 1949, and one of his friends who was a Luftwaffe combat pilot, and then test pilot flying the experimental jets. Totally white haired in his 60's.
They toasted me when I announced that I had signed up for the US of the MC.

[Junk Yard Dog]

Interesting rifle with a fascinating history, he must have sent it home before being captured by the Soviets, and somehow my relatives failed to find and confiscate it as they marched over Germany and Austria in 1944-45. The anti German sentiment encountered in eastern Europe isn't exactly unexpected considering the brutality of the German occupation of these countries during the war. The things done by the SS, the Gestapo, and even the regular German army in many occupied countries could be staggeringly brutal, to bordering on the unimaginable, yet they did these things, and did them in places were memory's are very long. My Uncle was Army intelligence, US Army, during the war, he was attached to George Patton's staff and got a close up first hand look at the death camps and other horrors. Sometimes he saw these things in the company of old "blood and guts" himself who by the way was visibly sickened by what he saw on more than one occasion. If I was part of a military who participated in such acts I would do my best to keep silent about it also. The death camps may have been the SS, but the German regular army amassed it's own impressive list of atrocities as the war went on.
Money is the real reason behind the anti German sentiment of WW1, the newspapers fed the flames, the push behind this was from American industrialists and bankers who held the IOU's of the allied powers. If the Allies lost the war it would have devastated the American economy, this is not to say that Germany didn't commit some of the acts they were blamed for, but there was blame on all sides in the Great War. We should have just sent 10 million men over there and flattened first Germany, then France and England, then Russia, reorganized the governments along more democratic lines and ended WW2 and the Cold War before either happened.

Damn, Jim you sound just like Old Blood and Guts Patton reincarnated.

"I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket." Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, USMC, Recipient of Two Congressional Medals of Honor.

When you boil it down US conpanys were selling the allies all the war material they could buy, and when they ran out of money our banks extended them credit. Germany stood behind the British blockade, we would have sold to them also, but they had no way to transport it. Our economy would have taken a huge hit had the allies lost the war and defaulted. It didn't help that Germany resumed sinking US citizens with sub warfare, and then pulled that shit with Mexico. Tailor made to generate negative public opinion in the US. During WW2 the US government made sure to produce propaganda films such as at least one of the Why we fight series, that showed the German American contribution to the US military starting at the very top of our military leadership. In WW2 it was the Japanese who took it up the...got the type of treatment the Germans had during the Great War, while most Italian, and German Americans were left alone.

[B24]

My Dad and 3 of his brothers were WW2 vets. He was a Master Sgt. Crew chief (B24 mechanic). I lost him
in 2008 at the age of 94. My user name is in his honor. My Uncle Ray was an Engineer and top turret gunner
on a B24 and flew 78 missions in the south pacific, he is 91 and still with us, He has many a story to tell.
My Uncle Donald was already a ham radio operator before the war so naturally he wound up in the Signal Corp. I'm a
ham also so I guess I got got some of my love of radio from him. Last and not least my Uncle David lost his life
near Meppen Germany in a B17 named Delta Girl. It was his 3rd mission and he wasn't flying with his normal crew.
He was the right waist gunner. The left waist gunner and tail gunner also lost their lives at the hands of a skilled
ME-109 pilot. The rest of the crew bailed and rode the war out as POW's. According to the MARC ( missing aircrew report)
my Uncle is buried in the Ardennes but I cannot find his name listed as being buried there.

I have the utmost respect for all our Vets. I'm not a fan of Tom Brokaw but he got it right when the called them the
Greatest Generation.

All the history needs to be preserved, whether it is a Mosin, Garrand, Mauser, B17 ME-109 or a Zero.

Thanks to all our VETS.............Gregg

[qz2026]

[Marcus]

My grandfather was born in Imperial Austria, my mother was born in Czechoslovakia, and one of her brothers and one of her sisters were born in Germany - and they were all born in the same house.

My grandfather, who was Austrian-Czech, was born in 1915 when Znaim, Moravia( the family's ancestral home, which is separated from present day Austria only by a river), was part of Austria, and became a Czech citizen in 1918 when this part of Austria was given to the newly independent nation of Czechoslovakia. He was an officer in the Czech cavalry when Moravia and Bohemia were re-united with the German Reich in late 1938. Basically, overnight everything that had been Czech government property became German government property, and all Czech military and government personel became German soldiers and German government workers. His best friend, Leo Brueckner, who was also his business partner (they were both artists, as well as art collectors and dealers) was also in the Czech cavalry with him, but since Leo was Jewish, he wisely decided that - even though there was no open anti-Semitism or hostility and persecution in this area at the time - it might be time to move further east and out of Germany territory.

My grandfather was a German cavalry officer up through the fall of France (he was one of the guys you see the photos of riding the white horses in the German victory parade in Paris), at which time the German Army pretty much did away with the cavalry except for a few token ceremonial units. He was transferred to the German Army Gebirgsjaeger (Mountain Infantry - tough, elite troops...both the German Army and Waffen SS had mountain troops) and took part in the German invasion of the Soviet Union. His experiences in Russia included getting shot twice by Russian snipers and surviving - he carried a Mosin 7.62 projectile lodged in his spine for the rest of his life.

As the tide of war turned against the Germans, my grandfather was with the German forces that were cut off and isolated on the Crimean peninsula, and surrendered on May 12,1944. The Soviets promptly began executing all field grade German officers and anyone who wore the Iron Cross or its ribbon, which the Communist Commissars had told the Soviet troops was a medal for killing 30 Russians. Being a German officer and holder of the First and Second Class Iron Cross, my grandfather was stood against a wall in front of a Soviet firing squad. Just before the order to "fire" was given, his old friend Leo Brueckner - who was now a colonel in the Soviet Red Army - drove by and saw him. Leo was able to halt the execution by stating that my grandfather was not a German, but Czech, and they had served together in the Czech cavalry before the war. Naturally, the Russians figured that Leo, being Jewish, would have no reason to lie to protect a Nazi...and of course you don't contradict or argue with a Red Army colonel. So they made my grandfather one of those offers you can't refuse: "If you are peace and freedom loving Czech, join Red Army. If not, back in front of wall, Nazi swine!" Naturally, when they put it so nicely, how can you say no?

So my grandfather ended up as a Red Army officer in the "Czech Red Army" for the remainder of the war. They carried Soviet weapons and wore English uniforms with Czech rank emblems. Their food came in cans with labels that said "Product of the Soviet Union" but when you peeled the paper label off, they were actually from America...my grandfather spoke English as well as Czech, German, Russian, Italian, and Spanish, so Right at the end of the war, he was allowed to go home on leave, so he threw the commie uniform in the fire, cut some of the Old Masters paintings on the wall out of their frames with a knife and rolled them up and stuck them in a suitcase, put on a suit, and escaped over the border into Austria. The rest of the family had by this time already escaped to Austria and then Germany due to the anti-German sentiment in Czechoslovakia at the time and the Communist occupation. They had been able to send some furniture (antique stuff that formerly belonged to the French emperor Napoleon) to Germany toward the end of the war when the Red Army was approaching (this actually happened a couple times, and my family would evacuate to Dresden, where my grandmother's family was from - they were there when Dresden was bombed on Feb. 13, 1945), and this rifle was in one of the wardrobes - if you are familiar with Europe, they do not have closets in the bedrooms (at least in the older houses, and our family home was an ancient structure) but instead have these large, free-standing, wardrobe cabinets - these have a fancy top piece that sits on them which is hollow, and you can hide things in there if you lift it up.

After the war, my family eventually ended up in Dachau, where my grandfather ran a "transit camp" located at part of the Concentration Camp ( they actually lived in one of the former prisoner barracks) that had been set up to help people who could not, or did not want to go back to their native countries - Jewish Holocaust survivors, anti-Communists from Eastern Europe, ethnic Germans from Communist occupied areas where being of German descent was literally a death sentence, etc. - immigrate to the U.S., Canada, Palestine/Israel, Australia, etc. My grandfather also belonged to a post-war German "resistance" organization made up of Gebirgsjaeger veterans called the "Edelweisspiraten" (Edelweiss Pirates - the Edelweiss is a highly coveted little flower that grew at high and dangerous altitudes in the Alps and was featured in the distinctive and highly respected sleeve emblem of the Army and SS "Gebirgsjaeger" mountain troops in WW2. The Edelweisspiraten were not a group that engaged in armed resistance, sabotage or executions of traitors like the SS "Werewolf"organization, but instead were more a "Robin Hood" type association that helped comrades relocate to safer locations (remember this was during the time of the Nuremberg Trials, when Russian rapists and murders sat in judgment and hanged good German officers) and hijacking U.S. military shipments of food to feed starving German women and children.

The rifle remained hidden in the "Kleider Schrank" (wardrobe) during the early post-war years when such objects were subject to confiscation...being an administration official of the American/German occupation government (and later West German Government) whose job included law enforcement duties and powers, and living on what amounted to a U.S. Army base (at this time the entire Dachau prison camp complex, the SS camp, barracks, factories, and training grounds next to it, and all surrounding or nearby facilities and related complexes, were all under U.S. Army jurisdiction and occupation as "Camp Dachau") also gave a large measure of safety, security, and privacy. Later on, restrictions on firearms possession loosened up under West German and Bavarian law, and it wasn't hard for my grandfather to get the "Waffenbesitzkarte" (weapons possession permit) for this - and the CZ-24 pistol he carried in the Czech and German cavalry that also made the trip to freedom with the rifle.

My uncle Udo, who is the older of my mother's 2 younger brothers, brought the rifle (an the pistol) to California and left them with my mother back in the late 1950's-early 1960's period when he was a tanker with the U.S. 7th Army in Germany. At that time no military "bring-back" type papers were needed for weapons that were the private and legal personal property of U.S. military personel, and there were no laws forbidding bringing these items into the country. I have owned them since the early 1970's, when I moved from Detroit to Anaheim, Calif. to be with my mother.

[Marcus]

There was a Korean movie about something like that. Start off a Korean in the Japanese army, captured by Soviets and forced into the Red Army, captured by Germans and put into the German Army.

If anyone here is fortunate to have a copy of Volume 2 of "Drei Linien", check out the definitely Asiatic soldier wearing a German uniform with distinctively ethnic round fur cap (that bears the German eagle and cockade) examining a Mosin rifle, on page 49 - there is a second person also in this photo who also appears Asian and is wearing the round fur cap, but his features are somewhat blurred so he can not be positively identified. The section is titled "Gewehre Mosin-Nagant M. 1891/30 in Deutschen Diensten" (Mosin-Nagant M. 1891/30 Rifles in German Services) and the photo is titled "Deutsche Waffeninspektion am Gewehr M.91/30" (German weapons inspection of M.91/30 rifle), although no mention is made of the fact that the "Germans" in the photo are very clearly foreigners - and at least the one definitely Asian - in German uniforms. I wish I knew the full story behind this photo.

[Junk Yard Dog]

This would be a good example of why I tell someone who is about to unload some piece of antique furniture to measure everything twice to be sure there are no hidden compartments full of great grandpas life savings.

[Ironnewt]

Marcus, I hope you have this all written down someplace. What a story. In any war there is always brutality but there is also humanity....Running into your old riding partner just as you were to be shot. It was not your grandfather's time to die.

When kids complain about Truman's decision to drop the A-Bombs on Japan, I ask them well where was your family then? What about your dad, granddad,or great granddad as the case may be. My father was in the USMC, 1st Marine Division at the end of WW II. He had already landed under fire twice and been wounded twice. Based on what the staff studies showed, Dad was not going to survive his third landing on mainland Japan. (He did survive his visit to Korea a few years later leaving some blood and a few toes between Inchon and the Chosin advance to the sea) If we had invaded Japan, The USSR would have occupied Manchuria, Korea, Northern China as well as parts of Japan proper. The rolling Red Horde might have run Mao outta town. I know they would have kicked the nationalists all over the place.