Killinger und Freund Motorrad

“The Killinger und Freund Motorrad was intended for civilian production but the start of World War II cancelled those plans. One motorcycle was discovered by the US Army in the spring of 1945 at a German military installation but it is not known if this was the original prototype or another Killinger und Freund Motorrad”

german para

ww2 images

italians in the desert.my collection

all photos done with a sony cybershot by myself.

selection of atlantic ww2 troops

A bridge too far and lone star

Bridge Too Far is a 1977 epic war film based on the 1974 book of the same name by Cornelius Ryan, adapted by William Goldman. It was produced by Joseph E. Levine and Richard P. Levine and directed by Richard Attenborough.

The film tells the story of the failure of Operation Market Garden during World War II, the Allied attempt to break through German lines and seize several bridges, including the road bridge over the Lower Rhine at Arnhem, in the occupied Netherlands, with the main objective of Allied armour outflanking the Siegfried Line at its northern extremity.

The name for the film comes from an unconfirmed comment made by British Lieutenant-General Frederick Browning, deputy commander of the First Allied Airborne Army, who told Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, the operation's architect, before the operation, "I think we may be going a bridge too far."

The ensemble cast includes Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Edward Fox, Elliot Gould, Anthony Hopkins, Gene Hackman, Hardy Krüger, Laurence Olivier, Robert Redford, and Maximilian Schell. The music was scored by John Addison, who served with XXX Corps during Market Garden.

The film begins with a montage of archival film footage narrated by a Dutch woman, Kate ter Horst (Liv Ullmann), describing the state of affairs five years into the war. D-Day had come and gone and the Allies are bogged down by overextended supply lines. Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower had to decide between U.S. General George S. Patton and British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, each of whom had competing plans for ending the war quickly, and being the first to get to Berlin. Under political pressure, Eisenhower chose Montgomery's Operation Market Garden. In September, 1944, the Allies are advancing but have paused in Belgium, near Lommel.

A Dutch family, part of the Dutch resistance underground, observes the German withdrawal toward Germany and awaits the impending arrival of Allied forces. Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt (Wolfgang Preiss) arrives in the Netherlands and discovers he has few resources in men or equipment and morale is very poor. The underground resistance leader (Siem Vroom), along with his 13-year old son (Erik van 't Wout), keep careful notes of German troops evacuating throughout Arnhem, information he will later pass on to the Dutch resistance.

Operation Market Garden envisions 35,000 men being flown 300 miles from air bases in England and being dropped as much as 64 miles behind enemy lines in the Netherlands. The largest airborne assault ever attempted, with Lieutenant-General Frederick Browning (Dirk Bogarde) saying, "We're going to lay a carpet, as it were, of airborne troops, over which XXX Corps can pass," and confidently suggests that "We shall seize the bridges - it's all a question of bridges - with thunderclap surprise, and hold them until they can be secured"by the 20,000 vehicles led by XXX Corps. Arnhem's bridge crosses the Lower Rhine, the last major river between the Allies and the German heartland, and seizure of the bridge will allow vast Allied armies to turn east into Germany.

The plan is to begin in seven days time, with XXX Corps reaching Arnhem two days after the drop. The 101st Airborne Division, under Major General Maxwell D. Taylor (Paul Maxwell), is responsible for the road and bridges from the north side of Eindhoven to the south side of the Meuse River at Grave. The 82nd Airborne Division, under Brigadier General James M. Gavin (Ryan O'Neal) is responsible for the bridge crossing the Maas, and from the north side of the Maas to the north side of the Waal River bridge, just north of Nijmegen. The British 1st Airborne, under Major-General Robert E. Urquhart (Sean Connery) is to land northwest of Oosterbeek, and take and hold the north side of the Lower Rhine River to the bridge at Arnhem. Polish Major General Stanisław Sosabowski (Gene Hackman) will lead the 1st Independent Parachute Brigade to secure the south side of the Lower Rhine and make contact with Lieutenant-Colonel John Dutton Frost (Anthony Hopkins), and Second Battalion, who is to work his way east along the banks of the river. XXX Corps, led by Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks (Edward Fox), and spearheaded by Lieutenant-Colonel John Ormsby Evelyn Vandeleur (Michael Caine) on point, are to cross the Maas-Schelde Canal on the north side of Lommel and push up the road, as quickly as possible, to Arnhem.

Authenticast Rostov Sul Don

Prelude

After concluding the Battle of Kiev in September 1941, the German Army Group South advanced from the Dniepr to the Sea of Azov coast. Walther von Reichenau's 6th Army captured Kharkov. Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel's 17th Army marched through Poltava towards Voroshilovgrad. Erich von Manstein's 11th Army moved into the Crimea and had taken control of all of the peninsula by autumn (except Sevastopol, which held out until 3 July 1942).







Ewald von Kleist's 1st Panzer Army advanced from Kiev, and encircled Soviet troops at Melitopol in October, then attacked east along the shore of the Sea of Azov toward Rostov at the mouth of the Don river, known as the gateway to the Caucasus.







 Sea of Azov offensive Operation



Rostov was assigned as the objective for the 11th Army now commanded by General von Schobert(below), however he died in a crash on the same day after landing his liaison Fieseler Storch aircraft in a minefield. To replace him, General of Infantry von Manstein was ordered to travel from the Leningrad sector of the front to the extreme southern sector. He would also receive support from the 4th Luftwaffe Air Fleet.







At this time the LIVth Army Corps of the 11th Army was still engaged in Crimea, and because the Romanian forces were still engaged in the Siege of Odessa, the Army's resources for the Rostov objective were severely limited even against retreating Red Army troops. Therefore initially von Manstein replaced the LIV Corps with the smaller XXXth Army Corps and XLIXth Mountain Corps, and ordered the LIV Corps into the first echelon in the advance to Rostov.







Late in September the 3rd Romanian Army joined the 11th Army in its advance towards Rostov, but was severely depleted by the attacks of the Soviet 9th and 18th Armies on the 26th of September. This forced a halt to the Army's advance to safeguard its flank, and forced von Manstein to use his only mobile reserve unit, the Leibstandarte Brigade to shore up Romanian defenses.







Rostov Defensive Operation



The Soviet counter-attack delivered as part of the general Donbass-Rostov Strategic Defensive Operation (29 September 1941 - 16 November 1941) also forced the Army Group Commander to order his 1st Panzer Army to manoeuvre in order to be better placed to counter any further Soviet thrusts in the Romanian sector of the front, and also to attempt an encirclement of the two Soviet Armies, which was partly successful in the area of Chernigovka where the commander of the 18th Soviet Army General-Lieutenant Smirnov was killed during the breakout attempt[3] between 5 and 10 October 1941. This was interpreted by Hitler as such a success that he declared "The battle of the Sea of Azov is over." on the 11 October before the troops had even reached their objective. As a commemorative gesture, Hitler issued the order to redesignate the Leibstandarte Brigade as 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler.







The German 11th Army was ordered back to Crimea to effect the breakthrough of the Isthmus of Perekop.







Perceiving that the way to Rostov and the Caucasus was open, Hitler issued an order transferring the objective from the 11th Army to the 1st Panzer Army and attaching to it ill prepared Romanian 3rd Army, the Italian Alpine Corps, and the Slovakian Motorised Brigade.







During the subsequent reorganisation of Axis forces the 3rd Panzer Corps and 14th Panzer Corps took the lead, supported by the XLIX Mountain Corps recently arrived from Crimea.







By the 17th October 1941 the Mius river was crossed by the 14th Panzer Division and Taganrog was captured by German troops, with the mountain troops entering Stalino, forcing the newly formed 12th Army into a renewed withdrawal. However the Red Army was at this stage fortunate in that the Autumn rains had begun, and the infamous Rasputitsa had set in slowing the 1st Panzer Army's advance to "meter by meter". This meant that the leading German units did not reach the outskirts of Rostov until mid-November, having lost contact with the Red Army in the meantime.







The assault on Rostov began on the 17 November, and on 21 November the Germans took Rostov. However, the German lines were over-extended, and von Kleist's warnings that his left flank was vulnerable and that his tanks were ineffective in the freezing weather were ignored.







 Rostov Offensive Operation



On 27 November the Soviet 37th Army, commanded by Lieutenant-General Anton Ivanovich Lopatin, as part of the Rostov Strategic Offensive Operation (17 November 1941 - 2 December 1941), counter-attacked the 1st Panzer Army's spearhead from the north, forcing them to pull out of the city. Adolf Hitler countermanded the retreat. When von Rundstedt refused to obey, Hitler sacked him. However, retreat was unavoidable, and the 1st Panzer Army was forced back to the Mius River at Taganrog. It was the first significant German withdrawal of the war.











Hitler's insistence on taking Rostov forced the OKH to focus on Army Group South's progress, and set the stage for the subsequent Battle of Stalingrad.







The Battles for Rostov in fiction



Stuart M. Kaminsky's character Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov fought in the at Rostov as a young man. He took out a German tank with a grenade and a lucky burst of gunfire from a looted German machine pistol, but was badly wounded. A doctor saved his leg, but the leg was badly injured enough to give Rostnikov his trademark limp.







The first mission in the game Men of War takes place during the closing days of the Battle of Rostov.

NORMANDY AND BEFORE

ATTACK By Robert Aldrich was one of those films in a million.Palance, Marvin King of Cool) Albert. The road to berlin was paved with many obstacles, the foremost being Eddie Albert's character.The great scene in the film is how Palance gets killed; this is truly amazing. HELL is For HEROES was another Aldrich film; why was he a great director? Well he didn't have the Spielburg affinity for sentimental crap.

As a Kid I was constantly seeing films like this then going home getting all the soldiers out and refighting the film.





























































































THE road to Normandy was a muster of the common people of the commonwealth.While all Europe organised its fascist parties the Uk and its peoples took up the struggle.The only country that stood between Mussolini Hitler and theit armies; did we get a good deal out of it=not really but it was one of our finest moments.Toy soldier companies took the period on seriously as the plastic period appeared.
On the far left we have a Dulcop Italian Alpini and below are Dulcop G.I's in an early blister pack. Below that is the fantastic Airfix box of soldiers and then the best soldier Dulcop ever did the German machine gunner.