Terrific pictures on the Dunkirk 1940 Inland France and Belgium thread Did the Germans have some form of recovery Corp.? On another thread the collection of iron railings and pots and pans in UK was shown as not adding much to the War Effort. Taking it that most of the transport and weapons were rendered useless there must have been many thousands of tons of high grade scrap metal . Did this get recycled?. As an aside I seen to remember a lot of fuss in the papers over a chap called Dawson making millions clearing the Normandy beaches. .
There was a substantial operation to process salvage and of course loot the occupied countries, even to the extent of smelting church bells and of course they had four years to do it. Vehicles and equipment were first roughly grouped in 'beautesamellstelle' before being sorted into those which could be made usable and those which were scrap. Germany of course had a huge area of occupation with furnaces that could be used for re-smelting and had less access to raw materials from overseas.
I'm sure there is a thread on here with photos of the German using captured BEF gear, trucks etc rather than just collecting the scrap - they used a certain mark on them but cant recall what it was TD Post Dunkirk Salvage Dunkerque Captured Weapons
Hi, the German Army founded special units for recovering enemy weapons and vehicles in 1940. These Instandsetzungskompanien (Repair and Maintenance Companies) collected all sorts of enemy material, cannibalize damaged vehicles for spares and collected the items in special "Beute-Sammlestellen" (collecting points for captured enemy material) . It was strictly forbidden for German field units to use captured enemy items without permission. In Germany the vehicles, tanks, arty guns, rifles etc were collected, manuals were translated and new ones were written. With the spare parts of cannibalized vehicles a stock of spare parts were built. Then a lot of identical vehicles were allocated to German field units. Especially new established units from 1941 on and refitted units after France were given enemy equipment. If there were not sufficient spare parts or ammunition vehicles and guns were used mainly for security units or (arty guns) in the Atlantic Wall positions. A large amount of French equipment were also given to the German allies, like Romania, Hungaria and even Italy got some Renault tanks. Nice story: In an interview I talked to a member of a German transport unit who had been equipped with large US-made trucks captued in France 1940. (I don´t know the exact Type). Before Barbarossa they got some of these trucks with some spare parts, but...the German tools were metric, but all parts of the trucks were inch. Bye Frank
