Recently, while poring through the cornucopia of painfully watermarked goodness that is germandocsinrussia.org, I ran into a handbook on the armed forces of the Soviet Union.1 Published in January of 1942 by Foreign Armies East, the department of the German General Staff charged with the study of (you guessed it) foreign armies found to the east of the Reich, this little volume provides lots of pictures and figures of the sort that gladdens the hearts of folks who enjoy The Tactical Notebook.
Strictly speaking, the book that I found contained excerpts from a larger work with a much shorter name. Thus, while the mother called herself Wartime Armed Forces of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the daughter bore the clumsy (but comprehensive) title of Excerpt from the ‘Wartime Armed Forces of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’, Part A, Situation as of January 1942: Weapons, Uniform, Fighting Methods of Partisan Detachments, Fortifications (with Photos and Drawings)2 Auszug aus "Kriegswehrmacht der Union der sozialistischen Sowjetrepubliken", Teil A, Stand Januar 1942: Bewaffnung, Uniform, Kampfweise der Partisanenabteilungen, Befestigungen (mit Fotos und Zeichnungen). (1)
The people who run the German-Russian Project for the Digitization of German Documents Found in Archives of the Russian Federation (hereafter ‘German Docs in Russia’) perform a valuable service. Unfortunately, in the course of doing this, they complicate the work of researchers in two important ways. First, they make it hard to download complete documents.3 Second, they place an annoying watermark on each page.
Both of these practices reflect the mentality that Germans call Kleinbürgerlichkeit. People afflicted with this small-mindedness would prefer to reduce the value of what they produce than run the risk that someone else might profit from their work.4 (Rather than wax rhapsodic on the stupidity of such practices, I will simply refer the good people at German Docs in Russia to the Mr. Bob Newhart.)5
As might be expected, a study of Soviet forces produced in January of 1942 contains lots of information made obsolete over the course of the preceding six months. Thus, for example, the plate that shows various uniforms shows a captain of infantry armed with a sword. Nonetheless, the handbook showcases a number of novelties, not the least of which are the descriptions of the Matilda (Mark II) and Valentine (Mark III) infantry tanks provided by the Großbritannische Reich.
Readers who prefer to avoid the chore of downloading the handbook one page at a time, can find a five-part version of the work at the Military Learning Library. (The technical limitations of the website that hosts the aforementioned repository required that I break my PDF of the complete book into smaller parts.)
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I apologize for placing a bare URL in the text of this piece. However, when compared to the alternative (Deutsch-Russisches Projekt zur Digitalisierung Deutscher Dokumente in Archiven der Russischen Föderation) a single instance of scriptorial barbarism struck me as the lesser of two evils.
Auszug aus "Kriegswehrmacht der Union der sozialistischen Sowjetrepubliken", Teil A, Stand Januar 1942: Bewaffnung, Uniform, Kampfweise der Partisanenabteilungen, Befestigungen (mit Fotos und Zeichnungen). (The link will take you to the relevant entry at German Docs in Russia.)
I will explain my technique for downloading complete documents in a separate article.
As irritating as they might be, the watermarks on the photos found on the website of the Bundesarchiv complement the sale of high-quality reproductions. German Docs in Russia, however, offers no such service.
The link will take you to an excerpt from a longer comedy skit stored on YouTube.
“the Mr. Bob Newhart.”
Someday future anthropologists will wonder why the 20th century Hominid Americanus worshiped a strange cult called Comedians, and will be searching in vain for the lost line and title of “the Mr. Bob Newhart”. Then again, 20C HA (Hominid Americanus) worshiped many strange cults.
Consider yourself avenged, oh nonplussed scribe.