The Pensioner Who Hid a WWII Panther Tank in his Basement

You tube ^ | 21 Oct 2022 | Simple History 2

[DUMBGRUNT]

The Pensioner Who Hid a WWII Panther Tank in his Basement

Collecting war memorabilia is nothing uncommon, but rare are the people that have collections as impressive as the elderly German gentleman we are going to talk about today. Under German privacy laws, his identity was kept a secret, being dubbed as Klaus-Dieter F. Klaus was a millionaire and he loved collecting Nazi Germany memorabilia. Guns, uniforms, medals, the things in his collection grew in both number and size and included things like torpedoes, 8.8cm flak cannon and, as a crown jewel of his collection, a partially functional demilitarised PzKpfw V Panther tank, which he kept in the basement of his villa. He had that tank for over 40 years, even taking it out to clean snow during winter, but in 2015 the authorities from Berlin found out about his collection and they immediately took action, seizing his tank and, under pretext that he violated "War Weapons Control Act", putting him to trial that would last for the next few years. Even though he had proof that the tank lost its weapon status, in the end Klaus was forced to either donate or sell it, along with the flak cannon.

8 min 28 sec

[ansel12]

In France I fired a rifle grenade at an American tank but I don’t remember which WWII tank it was.