Military History Photo Friday: The Volkshandgranate 45, A Grenade Made Out Of Concrete:

I've been reading Antony Beevor's excellent history book Berlin: The Downfall 1945 as part of my research for my Volkssturm novel. The Volkssturm were a German civilian militia formed in October 1944 in a last desperate bid to stop the Allied advance. The Volkssturm called up all able-bodied men aged 16 to 60 who weren’t already in uniform. It also called up some women.

A passing mention in Beevor's book told me of a weapon I didn't know about--the Volkshandgranate 45, or the "people's hand grenade 1945". This crude grenade was developed in the last months of the war and was the product of a chronic shortage of raw material. By this time most of the Third Reich's industrial base had been taken by the Russians, and the Germans resorted to making hand grenades out of concrete. These would be filled with bits of scrap metal, gravel, and nuggets of cement. The whole thing was fitted with a fuse and some explosive. Beevor says the Volkshandgranate 45 was more dangerous to the user than the target, and yet hundreds of thousands of them were produced in the last months of the war and distributed to the Volkssturm, Wehrmacht, and even some elite SS units.

It just goes to show how desperate the Third Reich had become in the last months of its existence. As the Nobel Prize winning author Heinrich Böll, who was drafted in to the army during the war, put it, the men were fighting not for their country, but for survival, and their only hope was that they would somehow survive after they were defeated.

Military History Photo Friday: Armor in the Museo Cerralbo, Madrid

This week over at Black Gate I blogged about the amazing collection at the Museo Cerralbo, Madrid. Enrique de Aguilera y Gamboa (1845-1922), 17th Marquis of Cerralbo, gathered together a vast collection of art and antiquities in his mansion in Spain's capital. He had everything from old books and Roman intaglios to ornate brass lamps and suits of armor. It's now a fun museum.

Sadly, there isn't much signage in the museum and I'm not much of an expert, so I won't be able to tell you much about these pieces. If you can identify any, please drop me a line in the comments section! Hit the link above to see the full article!

Photos copyright Sean McLachlan.

A lovely suit of samurai armor.

A German zweihander (two-handed sword), plus bits of barding (horse armor), and two types of polearm--a halberd (left) and a corseque (right)

Military History Photo Friday: Filipino Weapons and Armor of the Nineteenth Century

The Museo Naval in Madrid has a fine collection of artifacts from Spain's Golden Age of Sail. One of hte more unusual collections is this set of Filipino weapons and armor. The Philippines were a Spanish colony for many years, and the Filipino people fought against the Spanish for their independence. The Americans inherited this war when they took the Philippines from Spain in the Spanish-American war of 1898.

Post-Apocalyptic A to Z: Nuclear Annihilation

The quickest and easiest way for us to destroy civilization is to nuke one another. This has been a very real possibility for 60 years now, but I don't think it will happen. The rich and powerful who run the world's nuclear powers know that they would be as screwed as the rest of us, so nobody dares push the button. This is the same reason that rulers don't order assassinations on their rivals--that weapon, once used, would soon get out of hand and endanger the entire privileged class.

Of course some crazy terrorist group would love to get their hands on a nuke, and would have no qualms about using it, but while this would be one of the greatest tragedies the world had ever seen, it wouldn't end civilization.

The Cold War saw an entire subgenre of Atomic Scare books. My favorite is Level 7, by Mordecai Roshwald. It takes place in a bunker after a nuclear war, and the author is careful never to make any reference as to which side the characters are on. As the protagonist comes to the slow realization that the world is destroyed forever, and that radiation is leaking in, we realize that it doesn't matter which side he's on. Both sides have lost.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Military History Photo Friday: Elaborate Renaissance Arms and Armor

Here are a couple of fine pieces from The Wallace Collection, one of the best private collections of art in London. They have an especially good arms and armor gallery. It's well worth checking out if you're in London.

On the top we have, according to the signage, "a mace of the morning star type, damascened in gold with arabesques and emblematical figures within cartouches of silver piqué." Well that clears that up. It's from Milan c.1560.

Below are some fine parade helmets from the same century, also made in Italy and of the type known as "antique armor", which imitated the styles of parade armor from ancient Rome.

Military History Photo Friday: The chakram, deadly frisbees of India

No, these aren't toys, but they did inspire those Aerobees that we played with as kids. These are Chakram, an Indian weapon. They're razor sharp on the outside, generally about 5-10 inches in diameter, and are thrown (carefully) like a Frisbee or twirled on the forefinger and then released. Accounts say Indian warriors could throw these long distances with great accuracy. Medieval Indians understood aerodynamics and made the bottoms flat and the tops curved like with the wings of an airplane.

It's unclear when the Chakram was first invented although it's certain they're very ancient. They were mainly used in northwest India, especially by the Sikhs, who continued using them into the 19th century. One account mentions street criminals using small chakram in Calcutta as late as the 1940s.

While the chakram were long-lived as a weapon, I'm not surprised they didn't spread to a wider area. Like many unusual weapons, the chakram was trying to replicate something that could be more easily accomplished in another form. A bow is easier to use and deadlier, which is why you can find bows in pretty much every culture. These are neat, though! Anyone want to practice with one and get back to me?

Top photo copyright Sean McLachlan. Taken at the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford. Bottom photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.