After the war, what happened to Wehrmacht radios?

[Yuri D.]

The story goes that an order was given to destroy Wehrmacht signals gear in 1945. This order was then reversed to supply components to the recovering West German electronics industry. There are several questions that need to be answered here:

• What happened to this equipment in the different occupation zones?
• Which countries adopted these devices, and for how long?
• How did East and West Germany use these devices, and for how long?

[Gabbertje]

I can remember, in my time at the "Bundeswehr" in Germany, there where Parts of Wehrmacht radios (marked with "Eigentum der Wehrmacht" in our Equipment depot of my kasern. I never got any chance to get one of these for my collection... :'(

But: I never heard about a usage of Wehrmacht radios after war in the early Bundeswehr. They used US radios I think.


Don't know how this parts came to the depot.

But, what I know is, that many local electricians here in Germany used Wehrmacht radio parts for use in different civil equipment after the war.

What I think to know is, that Norway used german radios after the war.


kind regards,

Stefan

P.S.:

Yuri, I follow your work here for a long time now. Very good work!

[Yuri D.]

Stefan, thank you for the information, and the compliment.

[Val]

Here Yuri has a nice document that describes how to destroy wehrmacht radio. Pay attention to pages with roman numbers I and II

http://www.desyatnik.com/manuals/tfg..._us_manual.php

In soviet territory, especially after war, you could get shot or a free ticket to Siberia, if working radio transmitter was found on you. So...they were dismantled and components were used for other purposes - building radio receivers etc.

[la5he@yahoo.no]

Norway had some 400 000 German troops during the occupation, so the country ws full of equipment in 1945.
Some of the sophisticated stuff was taken away by the British to be studied at the various research establishments. Some were destroyed. We believe it was done to create a post-war market for British equipment .
F ex. loads of excellent Siemens teleprinters were destroyed and replaced by inferior Creed machines.
Radios were used in the Home Guard into the early 1960s. All coastal stations had KweA,LweA and T39- Main receivers.
In fact we had so much equipment that lorrys filled with radio were taken to deepwater warfs, where everything was dumped in the sea , just to clear storage room.
At the main Signal Corps base loads were plowed into the ground, just to make room.
Hundreds of aircrafts were run over by tanks to flatten them, before dumped into the ground.

In retrospect, much of what happend was a scandale !!!

Rgds Ragnar

[lz1pv]

In Bulgaria ...

Before and during WWII, the Bulgarian army had been armed mainly with german weapons — tanks, airplanes and that's why, the signaling equipment had been german too. Characteristically, rare prototypes had appeared in Bulgaria - for example radio receivers like E2a , SPEZ 975F , LORENZ EO4139.
For airplanes there was an interesting fact, DEVOITINE D-520 air fighters with their board equipment had been delivered as gift from the occupied France.
During the war, the deliveries of military technique had much difficulty, and often Germany did not succeed to deliver, what the Bulgarian government had been ordered, because of the continuous necessity of equipment for the Front, but on behalf of that, many repair workshops had been built in the country.
Great difficulties the country experienced during bombing of the British aircrafts, but it managed to shoot down and capture near 300 pilots.
The war ended for Bulgaria at the territory of Austria, and in Bulgaria entered much captured german weapons and equipment.
Communication equipment were used for long years, and with especially good name were used the radio receivers « BERTA» ( TORN E b ). Older friends remembered, in many military units, that was the mandatory backup HF receiver. Another interesting fact was that, it was organized the delivery of RV12P2000 from Eastern Germany.
After final removal of service, unforunately, most of that equipment had sad fate – one part was given as gift to amateur radio-clubs in the country, and another part was „discarded with destruction“ (Bulgarian patent), Someone told me about a division in which they had dug a huge pit and inside they had arranged over 500 devices and then they had been buried with a bulldozer.
Almost till 1960 «FUG 17» was used for communications between the mountain peaks metereological stations. Untill 1967 - «TORN E» was used in BULGARIAN NEWS AGENCY.
Unfortunately, 3 years ago I could not manage to save a huge stock of spare parts for German communication equipement - two trucks, and everything was destroyed, including 1KW transmitter "LORENZ" from two "RS384". If someone of the colleagues here from this website were able to be present there, she / he could get heart-attack seeing what were destroyed, but with the military staff you cannot get on well.......

[Funksammler]

I have heard stories of huge amounts of equipment being taken to the UK, moved into large hangers on one end, coming out as scrap on the other.

The French army used some equipment, for example the Schwabenland was used by the French Navy, various types of aircraft radio equipment was used by the French ariforce, even the T52 Geheimschreiber was used by the French after the war (Most surviving T52's come from French surplus stock). I have also heard of large stocks of new in box Fug16's being scrapped through the surplus dealers in Paris.

Immediately after the war, not a lot of people were interested in German equipment, allied surplus equipment was preferred by many armies building up after the German occupation. Some was taken into service, but this was the exception, rather than the rule. The vast majority was scrapped, metals recovered to aid the reconstruction after the war.

regards,

Funksammler