Posted on 08/04/2021 9:23:46 AM PDT by Eleutheria5
An 84-year old German man has been fined 250,000 euros ($297,000 USD) for storing a collecting of World War II-era weapons in his basement, including a 45-ton Nazi tank, according to German media reports.
The court in Kiel, Germany convicted the man under the country’s War Weapons Control Act after a search of the octogenarian’s home resulted in the discovery of a large collection of wartime military weapons stored in his underground garage, including the Panther tank, a torpedo, mortars, anti-aircraft guns, machine guns, automatic pistols and 1,500 rounds of ammunition, the Register reported.
The defendant, whose name was kept confidential due to German privacy law, received a 14-month suspended sentence. He must donate or sell the tank and the anti-aircraft guns to a museum or collector within two years, reported the Associated Press.
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(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...
That is the pic in the article... now that you mention it, they look too modern to be WWII vintage.
No chance the young and stealthy boys in his neighborhood didn’t know all about this guy’guy’s stash. Local exploration is baked into the cake.
Cause they used 60's era Patton tanks as Tigers and showed them driving across desert landscape. Last time I looked, "the Ardennes is a thick forest!!
I just want to fire a 20mm anti-tank rifle and flamethrower.
The minaret in the background is a dead giveaway!..................
Ironically they’re Merkava tanks of Israel.
He has to sell to a museum or collector. Ummm, he is apparently quite a collector. Maybe he could form an LLC or change his name and sell the collection to himself.
Johnny DuPont lives!
Ah yes the scorched desert of Belgium! It was filmed in Spain. Maybe it was all Clint Eastwoods fault. Interesting article about Eisenhower denouncing the movie. Apparently there had been another planned movie about the battle where Patton was gonna be played by John Wayne. That I would have paid to see.
“Their NATO motto is
“In case of war, hide till the Americans come to save us”.
That might be true now, when rumor is the Bundeswehr only have 250 functioning tanks.
In the ‘80s at the height of Cold War II the West Germans could field 350,000 men in 12 active divisions; four mech inf, six armored, one mountain and one airborne.
The Heer had 4,800 tanks, 2100 artillery and mortar tubes of 105mm or greater, 700 helos (200 attack), 3,500 APCs and 2700 ATGM launchers.
Their reserve Territorial Army was 600,000 strong, organized into twelve brigades and fifteen regiments.
They pulled their weight in those days.
Data from Global Security.org website.
Sorry forgot to mention the article is on the IMDB site.
What about an Abram’s tank? Is that illegal? Asking for a friend!
During my childhood there was a building supply company on the highway south of Boston named “Grossman’s”.
In the late 50’s, Grossman’s had somehow aquired about twenty Sherman Tanks, and had them lined up along the highway with a big “FOR SALE” sign. They were gone within a month! Everybody wanted one.
I kept asking Dad to buy one so he could drive me to school in it.
That would have “impressed” the bullies who tormented me because I was smarter than they wre! LOL!
I always wondered who bought the tanks and what they were used for.
When the USSR was collapsing, you could buy anything in their military arsenal for cheap.
I remember a story about them selling MIG’s and it was “buy 5 and get the sixth free” or something. And me too broke to do anything but look and lament.
If he is 84 now, he would have been about 8 years old when the war ended in 1945.
Good pictures at this link
He’ll easily pay off the fine with the sale of the tank alone. Probably worth a couple million by itself.
Piker. :-)
Abrams tanks have no legitimate sporting purposes. As if they wouldn’t be awesome for skeet shooting.
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