Springtime For Hitler

Aah, spring. The flowers blooming, the birds tweeting, the bees buzzing away. Sunshine, green grass and, in 1940, the rumble of advancing panzers as the Germans decided to go on holiday in France, via Belgium.

And so we come to my latest batch of photos, 1940-ish Germans, the second batch of little army men for my early war army for Flames of War.

First up, why are we marching? The bosses might talk about orders, duty, national rights and so on, but soldiers know it is for les femmes and le vin:

Loosely based on some 1930s art deco style postcards.

Many panzertruppen are riding around in Panzer IIs:

Four of the models are from Peter Pig, the fifth is Battlefront; the two brands mix-n-match well.

Lucky panzertruppen get to ride in Panzer IIIs, in this case "e" models, from Peter Pig:

The Germans had discovered pretty quickly that the 2cm cannon in Panzer IIs had to work hard to hurt enemy armour, especially modern tanks such as those used by the French, so they took a particularly hard-hitting Czech gun and mounted it on a Panzer I chassis to create the Panzerjaeger I:

Two of these models are Battlefront and two are Old Glory. Not such a good mix, as you can see, with the BF models being significantly bigger. They'll do for now, though.

The roving Panzers cannot be everywhere, so the Schutzen need anti-tank guns and sustained-fire machine guns to defend themselves against unfriendly types.

The guns are from Battlefront, the figures are a mixture of Peter Pig and Battlefront; again, no problems with mixing-and-matching here.