Bundeswehr Training Films

On a bit of a West German bent - so yesterday I was trolling through this thread on militaryphotos.net when I came across a series of training movies set in the 1980's from youtube.

I watched the first one (split into 4 on youtube) and thought it was worth sharing. Now I don't speak German (yet another failing of my education) but found this relatively easy to follow - even with the sound right down.

This first one is more of a history lesson but has some good World war Two training footage of grenadiers attacking Soviet T-34s towards the middle. It also shows how an infantryman is seen from a tank which is quite interesting and a couple of the scenes appear to me to be direct copies of real actions from Normandy.



The second one is where we really join the action. A small Bundeswehr engineering detachment (well that's whatI think they are) are attacked by "Soviet tanks" and have to defend themselves with liechten panzerfaust. As I understand it (from reading a tranlation) the dialogue is appalling - but this is where not speaking German is a good thing. One interesting thing for the wargamer - German infantrty fighting in blue uniforms...



The third film has a "standard" infantry unit defending against an armoured attack. I assume that the armour is supposed to represent BMPs. These are hunted down by a panzerjager team with Panzerfaust 3's. One is taken out by a Marder in a classic scene. One of the things I found interesting in this part was the infantry defending a forest - not from the edge of the forest, but well back from the tree line.



The battle continues into part four - with some good scenes in trenches and with a Panzerfaust 3.



Take some time and have a look - it's well worth it.

Have fun

Richard