Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => The Great War => Topic started by: armchairgeneral on December 09, 2017, 11:14:18 AM
-
In trying to find out when the German stahlhelm was introduced on the Eastern Front sources suggest mid-1917 roughly a year after it’s introduction on the Western Front. If this is correct I wondered why this was? The Western Front being regarded as more of a priority maybe?
-
Probably because initially at least, a steel helmet was considered an accessory for trench warfare. All sides were noticing very high levels of head wounds (the part of you most likely to be hit if you are in a trench, I guess).
Trench warfare wasn't so much of a defining factor of the war on the Eastern Front, so that may be why the helmets were prioritized to the west.
Interestingly, I read somewhere that the levels of head wounds went even higher after troops started wearing steel helmets. This was something that baffled everyone until they figured out why this was, as it seemed like the helmets were actually making things worse. Which they weren't.
-
They were first issued on the Eastern Front by mid-1917. They were not issued to everyone though until those troops were transferred to the Western Front in early 1918.
-
Stahlhelm were in very short supply when first issued. During the Somme campaign, frontline troops would hand over helmets to the units that relieved them. The Western Front was regarded as the more important front from a strategic and operational perspective in late 1916.
Robert
-
Don't leave us hanging Plynkes. Why was it a false correlation that Stahlhelms caused head wounds? Did they make troops feel more confident initially?
Lon
-
As noted above, Stahlhelm were in short supply in 1916, many German units in the early weeks of the Somme campaign were still in Pickelhaubes.
It does have the benefit that you can use your 1914 infantry right up to 1917 in the East though:)
-
Don't leave us hanging Plynkes. Why was it a false correlation that Stahlhelms caused head wounds? Did they make troops feel more confident initially?
Lon
Quite logical to be honest. You had KIA and WIA. If you start wearing the helmet your KIA from headwounds will drop and survivable WIA head related injuries will increase. Thus creating the (false) impression there are more headwounds.
-
Gunbird has it. It was a statistical mistake the British made, I don't know about the other armies. They were looking only at the increase in the head-wounds column of their casualty lists initially, not taking into account the fact that these would have previously been KIAs.
-
Thanks fellows, makes sense. More fun with statistics.
Lon
-
Thanks for all the comments chaps. As I understand it the Austro-Hungarian army bought half a million stahlhelms in 1916 so they may have had them earlier than the German army?
-
Armchair general, you draw a fascinating point that the Austro-Hungarians may have been using stahlhelms on the Eastern Front before the Germans. Have never thought of that. But we must remember that they were also serving on the Italian Front, so unless there is some account of when units on the Eastern Front received theirs we can't say for sure.
Wikipedia notes that the Austro-Hungarians purchased about 416,000 German helmets from November 1916 until the end of the war and also began its own licensed production starting in May 1917, citing Ortner, M. Christian (2002). The Emperor's coat in the First World War: Uniforms and equipment of the Austro-Hungarian army from 1914 to 1918.
-
(http://s03.radikal.ru/i176/1712/2d/c1d540f46d3e.jpg)
Austro-Hungarian troops enter Kamenets-Podolsky after the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
(http://s020.radikal.ru/i713/1712/0a/56b5829da1e7.jpg)
German troops examining a Russian Mgebrov-Renault armoured car captured from the Bolsheviks. Kiev, 1918.
-
(http://i1360.photobucket.com/albums/r660/Armchairsaxon/E4E134C8-E1AF-46DD-B4FC-A3BAD81E5C4B_zpsxeieyyjl.jpeg~original) (http://s1360.photobucket.com/user/Armchairsaxon/media/E4E134C8-E1AF-46DD-B4FC-A3BAD81E5C4B_zpsxeieyyjl.jpeg.html)
German troops enter Riga 3rd September 1917. This is the earliest picture I have found of German troops wearing the Stahlhelm on the Eastern Front. Just trying to find the earliest for Germans and Austro-Hungarians.
-
Germany started the discussion about the Stahlhelm started official with a letter at the 15th of August 1915. The Marinegeneralarzt Prof. Dr. August Bier made the suggestion for the Stahlhelm to save the heads of the soldiers, because they really had a lot of head injuries and brain injuries/dead. If it help, I don't know. First they tested it at the westfront, because the war changed from only running against the enemies line to running with artillery support against the lines. The result were these awful head injuries.
At the End January of 1916 the first Stahlhelms (30.000) were produced by the Eisenhüttenwerk Thale/Harz and delivered. In February 1916 the were used by the beginning of Verdun. So, Mid 1917 could be realistic for the east. The name was Modell 1916, short M1916 and the newer model M1918.
-
Thanks for the further replies gentlemen. Where I am really coming from is friend of mine has a late War WW1 German army and I was musing about pitting some Russians against them.It seems there were a few actions prior to the Russian army collapsing in late 1917?
-
There was a large-scale "June offensive," which ended in failure:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerensky_Offensive
By the way, during this period in the Russian army there appeared a large number of apparently very interesting units from volunteers - "Battalions of Death" and "Shock Battalions". There were even women's units.
http://siberia-miniatures.ru/forum/showthread.php?fid=11&tid=283
(http://s018.radikal.ru/i505/1211/72/4661565649b0.jpg)
(http://klin-demianovo.ru/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/e2a425e840a9-768x446.jpg)