How non-recycling was supposed to make Germany win the war.
By Ketil Svendsen
1988, it was. One beautiful summer day I happened upon the remains of some old WW2 barracks. This was near the family cottage, right outside Voss, two lazy hours by train from Bergen. A metallic “clang” had steered my attention towards a heavy metal cylinder, with a sheet metal device attached. Having plowed trough a few books and then some on the second World War, I recogniced the shape as that of an old german antitank weapon, trigger and missile missing. A Panzerfaust 60M.
It had been lying out in the open for over 40 years, but was in surprisingly good condition. The following year, as part of a school assignment on local history, I interviewed a local farmer. He told me they had to flee their houses in 1944, due to “practice with mortars between the farm buildings”. While mortar fire sounds unlikely, shaped charges in the form of Panzerfaust missiles doesn’t.
In fact, 1944 was a year when Panzerfausts were being tested not only in southern Norway at Holmestrand, but also on the military firing range outside Voss. See left hand pic from “Kampfschule Voss” at Bømoen, Voss from a 1944 visit by admiral Otto von Schrader. Naturally I picked it up, carried it home and subsequently traced all books, pamphlets and sources on the weapon.
Because historic, it was.
A cheap idea. The Panzerfaust [english: armour fist] was the german answer when their antitank rifles became obsolete as the allied armour grew thicker. 
Everybody agreed that hollow-charge ammunition (right hand, exploded [sic] view) was all the rage. But while the americans turned to rockets launchers, the brits to a cumbersome shoulder fired spigot mortar and the russians to improvised heroism, someone on the axis side thought that a cheap, mass produced recoilless gun sending off a high explosive, shaped charge a few inches from the shooter’s head sounded like a good idea. Turned out, it was.
The Panzerfaust being fired at night, showing the disadvantage of the system: The muzzle and rear flash that gave away the position of the user. But never mind: With no-one wanting the spent tube back, you could just throw it away and make a run. Unless, that is, you were stuck in a basement in Berlin.
Point and click. In mid 1942 the first crude, handheld “Faustpatrone” saw the light of day at HASAG in Leipzig. It was convenient in size, dangerous in use and with little or less impact on armoured steel. But an important step had been taken: The first-ever real throw-away weapon had been made. A researcher, dr. Heinrich Langweiler at the Hugo Schneider Aktiengesellschaft-Metalwarenfabrik (HASAG, a Leipzig company producing lanterns, Panzerfaust and Fliegerfausts, notorious (and third-largest consumer of kz-labour) in exploiting female slave labour from a subdivisions of the Ravensbrück and Buchenwald concentration camps, just across the Hugo Schneider Straße/street) had been working on various uses of the hollow-charge principle, but had discovered that while the shaped charge kept the weight down, it
still was a bit of a handful to throw at a tank – not to mention dreadfully suicidal. The Faustpatrone, name due to it’s rather awkward firing position (fittingly at an arm’s lenght) – could launch the grenade (actually a rocket at this point) some 70 meters, but lacking any means of sighting or even a safe way of pointing it towards the target, it’s potential of penetrating as much as 140 mm of armor was still closer to the drawing board than actual use.
Enter Gretchen. A further development of the “Faustpatrone”, namely Faustpatrone 1 (later known as Panzerfaust Klein, and even nicknamed “Gretchen” in some circles), had the tube extended – allowing it to be tucked under the firer’s arm – actual sighting introduced and the trigger now sat off a recoilless gun charge rather than a rocket.
VW didnt just make bread boxes, beetles and new, fashionable retro versions of their old cars.
Being cheap and convenient, it was ready to meet the masses: little wonder Volkswagen-Verke (at Fallersleben by Wolfsburg in Lower Saxony) did much of the manufacture, to the extent of having their own camps of female slave labour …
More text in prrrogress!
Scan of war-time bedienungsanleitung:
Was this one of the items the police borrowed from you? Did you fire home made missiles with this thing or is my memory failing?
No police for neither. MPs, on the other hand — and not for the Panzerfaust: it’s single shot :) Home made missiles? Me being a role model to my kids; your memory must surely fail you ;)
MPs it was. No wonder. They were probably tired of playing with their puny MP5s and wanted to lay their hands on some real weapons.
You being a role model to your kids, you should teach them to handle explosives before memory fails you. If they handle that stuff without training things could go bad.
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Hehe, right off to chemistry class then ;)