German Marines

[Sequoia]

I just played "Marine Ambush" last night and I was curious, in the game standard Wehrmacht troops stood in for the German Marines. Does anyone have a link to an example of 1945 German Marine uniforms? Also how were they equiped?

Thanks.

[Philippe]

I'm not enough of a uniform grog to have your answer at my fingertips, but in the hope that this will catch the attention of the more learned, a partial answer (with illustratrions) can be found on the WWIIdaybyday.com website. There's also some information on unit histories on the Feldgrau site and the Third Reich Factbook site (which seems to have moved, but you can still find it).

The short answer seems to be that they wore feldgrau uniforms like the Heer, except that their buttons were usually gold instead of silver or gray, and the silver trim around the collar and shoulder tabs tended to be gold. There were anchors on the buttons (surprise !), and the crossed anchor motif shows up on many of the shoulder boards.

I suspect this applies more to the dress uniform than the field uniform. And I wouldn't be surprised if the unit in that scenario you mentioned was wearing just about anything. AFAIK there are no mods for that uniform because it only shows up in one scenario that requires you to really like playing with a lot of trees.

[Michael Dorosh]

I thought the uniform described here applied to the Coastal Artillery. I thought I've seen photos of German sailors during the Norway campaign where they wore the gunshirts (with the "bib" on the back). Frankly, I'm a bit baffled by the reference to "German Marines" but am open to education.

[Sequoia]

I did find a site on my own which clarified things for me:

http://www.angelfire.com/sk2/germanuniforms/

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Sequoia:

I did find a site on my own which clarified things for me:

http://www.angelfire.com/sk2/germanuniforms/

Yes, complete with stolen pictures from a variety of publications. Looks like most of the uniforms on the "marines" page are actually Heer uniforms, with some info on naval headgear and trades badges. The books he is stealing from are mostly Osprey's Men At Arms, which have improved in quality in recent years. He seems mostly to crib from THE GERMAN ARMY 1939-45, which is in 5 volumes.

Funny how he has a list of further reading, but the books from which he steals the photos aren't mentioned.

[Sequoia]

Do you think the site is inaccurate as well as being plagiarized?

[Berlichtingen]

Gonna have a hard time finding German Marine uniforms... there weren't any. There were a few Herr units trained to make sea to shore assaults (mostly Pioniers and some of the Brandenburgers), but no established Marine force as exists in the UK, US and Italian establishments

[Philippe]

Just to clarify, I don't think anyone ever seriously thought of the six late war "Marine-Infanterie Divisionen" as anything other than naval infantry (or at least I hope they didn't). I'm assuming that German usage of the word "Marine" is similar to the French. It normally has a specialized meaning in English, but even the more common international usage is preserved in the term "Merchant Marine".

Among other things, sailors make very good gunners and boat handlers, and have been used in specialized capacities by ground forces for a long time. Napoleon, for example, used a very large contingent of them in the 1809 Danube campaign (bridging and manning the guns that protected the bridges). But if I understand correctly the units that we are talking about here were mostly scraped together in the last six months of the war as a better-trained and organized alternative to Volksturm.

[Michael Dorosh]

Judging by what I read on that site, I daresay Phillipe has it right on the money.

As for how accurate the site itself is - the author doesn't seem to give his name anywhere, which is never a good sign. The stolen photos and drawing don't invalidate the work on their own. For what it is worth, the info on regular infantry uniforms does seem above average - which makes it such a shame the author is too lazy to come up with images on his own. It does sound like he knows what he is talking about. Or at the very least, he has the ability to copy out of books well.