 | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  |
This is your source for English translations of original German gun manuals for rifles, pistols,
machineguns, accessories, and German military manuals for reenactors and historians. If you needed
a German military manual, or wanted to learn about the German view of the war but don't read
German, you've come to the right place.
Original German weapon, field, training, and accessory manuals are tough to find, expensive, and of
course, written in German. With WWII and earlier manuals, they are often written in the old style
German. If you collect manuals, that's fine, but if you wanted or needed the operating and
troubleshooting information, you've been out of luck unless you could read German or old German
(Fraktur font - see old German) and tracked down a 60+ year old manual.
98 different German manuals have been translated to English. A few of these have been combined
into single volumes, and two are available in the original German as well as English. All are now for
sale on the Manuals page. I'm currently working on translating other manuals, and I still have many
more waiting to be done ranging from a 1905 Maxim operator's manual to a 1942 U-Boat
Commander's Handbook (Geheim! - "Secret!"), plus other manuals that will be of interest for
reenacting and general history lovers. All will be translated as my time allows. I do have a full-time
job, so these things always take longer than I would like.
The German language is difficult to translate because of the loose and multiple meanings of many
words. Accurate translations of gun manuals are usually only possible with the manual's subject item
available for inspection and disassembly. Members of the collector community have been very
supportive in lending their hardware or providing access to their guns and manuals so that I can
accurately complete the translations. Great care has been taken in providing the most accurate and
easy to understand translations, as well as the best quality graphics possible.
Most manuals are 5.5”W x 8.5” H, with a heavy paper cover (exceptions are noted). These manuals
are high quality, professionally printed on acid-free paper and are not the usual poor quality
photocopied photocopies often found on the web. I've bought a few of those, and I was
disappointed too.
The original manuals are the only source for the information they contain, are very rare, and of
course, expensive. The thick collector books for some of these guns are great for history,
development, production statistics, and pictures of the accessories, but lack useful details or don't
even mention the actual hands-on operation, training, and troubleshooting for the guns themselves. If
you've wanted an original "owner's manual" for your German MG or other German gun, or wanted to
know the fine points of German army training, the information is now available in English.
Click on the Manuals link to see a listing of the available translations, and the Coming button to see
what's planned for the future. All prices include U.S. postage (either first class, or priority mail).
If you want more than just a few manuals, inquire about a postage discount. When the package
weighs more than 13 ounces, I may be able to send it cheaper by using a priority mail flat-rate
package. Foreign orders are welcome, please email me for the cost of the additional postage. The
larger the order, the bigger the discount. Often, about 8-10 manuals can be sent overseas for no
extra postage fees, but larger orders may require customs fees for the buyer. Decide what works
best for you, then contact me to work out any details. You may prefer to have your order sent in a
few separate packages. U.S. postage to other countries is very reasonable.
New manuals are always wanted. I'd especially like to find the manuals - HDv 181/1 through 4, but
all other manuals will be considered. Let me know what you have. If it is worth the work, I'll
translate it. I don't need to buy it, or even borrow it. It can be scanned and emailed to me, or as
some people have done, the book can be loaned to me and I'll returned it promptly after I scan it. Of
course, this means you get a copy in English for free when it's finished.
If you're looking for a German manual you don't see here, I may have it or know where I can get it.
Ask and I'll let you know what I can do. I've emailed scans of a few pages to those in need of
something I don't have translated yet, and found manuals for some very rare pieces that aren't in
demand enough to translate.
If you'd like to know about a manual for something in particular, send me an email with your request.
Email addresses will not be used for any other purpose, shared with anyone, nor made public.
To give you an idea of the amount of work involved in translating the old German, click for a picture
of an original page from an MG 08/15 manual. You'll see why these manuals take a ridiculous
amount of time to complete.
This webpage was updated on July 29, 2010.
Coming next will be the U-Boat Commander's Handbook, from 1942.
The Denckler P38 operator manual and the East German AK-47
operator manual are the two most recently finished translations. Both
are available for purchase now.
The 1944 manual PDV. 42 "Close Combat with Edged Weapons"
{fighting with the spade, and fighting with the rifle with the bayonet
mounted and not mounted} is done. Moves, counter-moves, strikes,
hacks, cover, counter cover, sally, and footwork. It's all in this manual.
93 pages.
1943 Reibert: The paperback and hard cover editions are now ready to
sell. 448 pages means this is an extremely thorough instruction book for
a reenactor or history lover. If you've liked the other training manuals,
this book is a must have. See the full description and scans of some of
the pages on my Manuals page (at the bottom).
If you could never understand exactly how the MG34 worked internally,
I now have a manual to cure that. This one was used to train the recruits
and armorers about the internal workings of the MG34. Very well
illustrated. There is no other manual like it.
Squad Combat Instruction for the Panzer Grenadier from 1944 - 196
pages. What a great manual for a historian or reenactor to understand
the combat training of the German Landser.
See the Manuals page for details.
An Explanation
It's Not Easy
These manuals have been translated the hard way, one word at a time by manual labor. There is no
computer program I've found which produces an accurate, or even understandable translation for the
old German. The results from a $400 translator program are OK (sometimes) for modern German,
but are incoherent when translating 60+ year old military books. I have 15 German/English military
dictionaries, one German-only military dictionary, and three standard German/English dictionaries, all
dated from 1925 to 1945, as well as a standard modern German/English general dictionary, and two
sets of English dictionaries (one old, one modern) to help determine the correct translation of the text.
I often have the actual gun or equipment sitting next to me for examination in order to be sure that I
choose the correct meaning from among the several different English possibilities for translating the
German word. The guns and equipment which I don't have are either loaned to me by other
collectors, or I'm allowed access to them for examination and disassembly. Sometimes I've had to
translate the German to English, then look up the English definition in a World War II era English
dictionary because the English word is not in common use anymore and I want to be sure I get it
right. It all takes a ridiculous amount of time.
This is not a "type it in and hit the Translate button" job. I've tried computer translation programs,
both online and on disk. They may be adequate (at best) for modern German, but of course were not
designed to properly work with a 60 year old gun manual with special vocabulary and meanings. The
results are useless, so the hard way is the only way for this job to be done right. A barrel used to be
a "lauf", but modern German uses the word "rohr". "Lauf" in modern German can mean "run". The
bullet is hurled "by the run" rather than the correct "through the barrel". It is much worse sometimes.
.
The words used for different parts of the gun, and even the meanings of some of the words, have
changed in the 60 to 90 years since these manuals were first published. Each word of the original
manual has been translated and typed in, and each graphic has been scanned and usually enhanced,
touched up, or cleaned of the old "freckles" and crease-line flaws that have appeared through the
decades.
I do not speak German, nor do I write it. I have learned to read it, and can read the old German font
so that I can translate these manuals. Speaking and reading/writing any language are actually two
separate things. Children learn to speak years before they learn to read and write. I learned to read
German, and then the old German. Maybe some day I'll learn to speak the language too.
Graphics Quality
Every effort has been made to keep the picture and diagram quality as high as possible, but most of
these fragile old manuals were printed on low quality, rough surface paper which wasn't intended to
last for decades and certainly didn't preserve well. Some pictures were poor quality to start with, and
have steadily deteriorated since being published. The pictures in the translated manuals in many cases
have been improved from the originals, but there is only so much that can be done with an original,
poor quality picture. If a picture isn't what it ought to be, the original was likely a lot worse. On some
manuals, I've spent more time working on the pictures than doing the actual translation, and I even
have a few manuals that I won't translate because the pictures are so bad they can't be restored.
When this happens and the manual is too good to abandon, I've scanned or photographed original
guns and parts to recompose the illustrations, or spent days with Photoshop redrawing the graphics.
Click here to see an example of a graphic from HDv 216/6 which I redrew because the original was
so bad. Producing a quality product is important to me, so I make every effort to reach that goal.
You're not going to find a 3rd generation copy of a bad photocopy in the manuals I've produced.
Printing
All manuals are printed on acid-free paper directly from the computer files by a high resolution
printer. Bulk printing from photographic plates or using a photocopier is cheaper, but degrades the
quality (I tried), especially when the graphics were marginal to begin with. Those methods are just
copies of an original print, and can't be as good as the actual original. Printing each page directly from
the computer ensures that each page is the best it can be, but the limiting factor is the original manual.
Some manuals for sale will have better quality graphics than others because of the source material.
A Very Limited Market
These manuals fill a need in an extremely small market. If a fortune was waiting to be made by
translating and selling these manuals, someone else would have done it 50 years ago. The expense to
acquire the original manuals for translation is high because the manuals are very collectible and more
rare than the guns themselves. My most expensive purchase of an original manual so far is $275, but
recently I saw an original HDv241 for the MG42 sell for over $700. Fortunately, that excellent
manual was scanned and emailed to me a few years ago by a collector in Oklahoma (thanks Brad).
The manuals are very time consuming to scan, translate, type in, reword, restore the graphics and
insert them in the text, and then set up for printing. When learning to read the old style German script,
just to determine the spelling was quite a task in itself. I have 7 months of (spare time) work in the
1940 Battalion Tactics manual alone, with several others taking 3 months. As my experience has
progressed in translating German, these manuals are finished much faster than they used to be, but
they are still very time consuming to complete. My real job and family obligations limit the time I have
for this hobby.
Printing a few thousand (or even several hundred) copies of each manual would certainly lower the
price per manual, but that's only if the copies would sell. The limited number of buyers for a particular
manual would mean a garage full of unsold copies, and each new manual completed would result in a
further investment that would take years or decades to recover. For example, the question of how
many MG26(t) (ZB-26) automatic rifles are out there, and how many people will be interested in
buying a manual for one, has an effect on the price of the manual. If I work for 3 weeks and only sell
50 copies in 4 years, the price for the manual has to reflect that. The ZB-26 is a fine gun, and I have
completed a 1940-dated 48 page manual, but I know that I can't afford to sell 60 hours of work (plus
printing costs) for $5 a copy. Also, the printing cost for 100 manuals is much higher per manual
compared to the cost per manual for printing a thousand or more. Buy a few hundred manuals and
we can make a deal!
Pricing
You may notice I've reduced prices on some of the manuals. If I sell enough copies of a particular
manual, I can reduce the price as I recover some profit for my time and expenses. The more I sell,
the cheaper the cost to produce these manuals. Any business has to make money to survive, but I'll
try to keep the prices as reasonable as I can. The more manuals I translate, the faster I get at it,
which means I can sell the more recently translated manuals cheaper. The initial cost of the original
manual, weeks or months spent translating it (the older it is, the harder it is to translate), the number of
pages, and if color printing is involved, all determine the selling price. U.S. first class or priority mail
postage is included in the price and I don't add "handling" charges to pad the cost. I always hated
buying something for $15 and having it cost $25 by the time I got it, so I don't run my business that
way. Let me know if you want several manuals. When I save time, postage, and gas going to the
post office, I can pass the savings on to you. It may not be more than a few dollars, but it is only fair.
The larger the order, the bigger the savings. This especially applies to foreign orders, as I can send
several manuals for only a bit more cost than just one or two.
Please keep in mind that I'm not doing this because I have too much money and nothing to do when I
come home from my real job. By not copying the manuals for your buddies, you enable me to sell
more, which means I can afford to buy and translate other manuals.
Thanks Guys
Members of the collector community have been very encouraging and supportive by lending their
manuals and allowing me to disassemble and examine some very expensive hardware (such as the
MKb and FG42). Their help is greatly appreciated, and keeps these translations from being
awkward and inaccurate. Some of the manuals have the names of those who have allowed access to
their collections or have loaned me their original manuals, some from the U.S, and some from other
countries. These guys should be commended for their contributions to the gun collecting community.
If you recognize any of the names, be sure to tell them thanks for all of us when you see them.
Without their help, these manuals couldn't be as accurate as they are, some wouldn't have been
translated, and some I wouldn't even know about. I certainly appreciate their help, and letting them
know that others do too is good manners to say the least. They share their collections in this way to
advance the sport for the benefit of us all. That's first class behavior. A long-time collector who has
given me a great deal of support and full access to his collection once told me that he didn't feel that
the collection was his personal property; it belonged to History. He just got to enjoy it for a while.
Very nice.
As I've been translating a few non-gun manuals that are of special interest to military historians and
reenactors, I'm finding the same support I've had with the gun community. I can only wish I had
started doing this a few years earlier.
Your Support is Appreciated
When I started translating these manuals, I wondered why nobody in the last 90 years had translated
any of them. Certainly there was a need and interest for it. Now I know why: it's hard, takes a
ridiculous amount of time, and will never make enough profit to be a full time job, or even pay a
decent hourly wage like a real job, but there are no other sources for the information contained in
these aging manuals. These are the original training, operating, and maintenance manuals for these
guns and accessories, and infantry instruction manuals that were the primary sources of information for
the German soldiers. This work needs done before the old books start to crumble and are lost
forever, or are hidden in collections where they will never be seen by people who have an interest in
the arms and training of the German military of this turbulent time.
Your support is appreciated and allows me to continue the work.
To see how to place an order, click on the "Orders" link.
Contents of this page © 2010 by John Baum
machineguns, accessories, and German military manuals for reenactors and historians. If you needed
a German military manual, or wanted to learn about the German view of the war but don't read
German, you've come to the right place.
Original German weapon, field, training, and accessory manuals are tough to find, expensive, and of
course, written in German. With WWII and earlier manuals, they are often written in the old style
German. If you collect manuals, that's fine, but if you wanted or needed the operating and
troubleshooting information, you've been out of luck unless you could read German or old German
(Fraktur font - see old German) and tracked down a 60+ year old manual.
98 different German manuals have been translated to English. A few of these have been combined
into single volumes, and two are available in the original German as well as English. All are now for
sale on the Manuals page. I'm currently working on translating other manuals, and I still have many
more waiting to be done ranging from a 1905 Maxim operator's manual to a 1942 U-Boat
Commander's Handbook (Geheim! - "Secret!"), plus other manuals that will be of interest for
reenacting and general history lovers. All will be translated as my time allows. I do have a full-time
job, so these things always take longer than I would like.
The German language is difficult to translate because of the loose and multiple meanings of many
words. Accurate translations of gun manuals are usually only possible with the manual's subject item
available for inspection and disassembly. Members of the collector community have been very
supportive in lending their hardware or providing access to their guns and manuals so that I can
accurately complete the translations. Great care has been taken in providing the most accurate and
easy to understand translations, as well as the best quality graphics possible.
Most manuals are 5.5”W x 8.5” H, with a heavy paper cover (exceptions are noted). These manuals
are high quality, professionally printed on acid-free paper and are not the usual poor quality
photocopied photocopies often found on the web. I've bought a few of those, and I was
disappointed too.
The original manuals are the only source for the information they contain, are very rare, and of
course, expensive. The thick collector books for some of these guns are great for history,
development, production statistics, and pictures of the accessories, but lack useful details or don't
even mention the actual hands-on operation, training, and troubleshooting for the guns themselves. If
you've wanted an original "owner's manual" for your German MG or other German gun, or wanted to
know the fine points of German army training, the information is now available in English.
Click on the Manuals link to see a listing of the available translations, and the Coming button to see
what's planned for the future. All prices include U.S. postage (either first class, or priority mail).
If you want more than just a few manuals, inquire about a postage discount. When the package
weighs more than 13 ounces, I may be able to send it cheaper by using a priority mail flat-rate
package. Foreign orders are welcome, please email me for the cost of the additional postage. The
larger the order, the bigger the discount. Often, about 8-10 manuals can be sent overseas for no
extra postage fees, but larger orders may require customs fees for the buyer. Decide what works
best for you, then contact me to work out any details. You may prefer to have your order sent in a
few separate packages. U.S. postage to other countries is very reasonable.
New manuals are always wanted. I'd especially like to find the manuals - HDv 181/1 through 4, but
all other manuals will be considered. Let me know what you have. If it is worth the work, I'll
translate it. I don't need to buy it, or even borrow it. It can be scanned and emailed to me, or as
some people have done, the book can be loaned to me and I'll returned it promptly after I scan it. Of
course, this means you get a copy in English for free when it's finished.
If you're looking for a German manual you don't see here, I may have it or know where I can get it.
Ask and I'll let you know what I can do. I've emailed scans of a few pages to those in need of
something I don't have translated yet, and found manuals for some very rare pieces that aren't in
demand enough to translate.
If you'd like to know about a manual for something in particular, send me an email with your request.
Email addresses will not be used for any other purpose, shared with anyone, nor made public.
To give you an idea of the amount of work involved in translating the old German, click for a picture
of an original page from an MG 08/15 manual. You'll see why these manuals take a ridiculous
amount of time to complete.
This webpage was updated on July 29, 2010.
Coming next will be the U-Boat Commander's Handbook, from 1942.
The Denckler P38 operator manual and the East German AK-47
operator manual are the two most recently finished translations. Both
are available for purchase now.
The 1944 manual PDV. 42 "Close Combat with Edged Weapons"
{fighting with the spade, and fighting with the rifle with the bayonet
mounted and not mounted} is done. Moves, counter-moves, strikes,
hacks, cover, counter cover, sally, and footwork. It's all in this manual.
93 pages.
1943 Reibert: The paperback and hard cover editions are now ready to
sell. 448 pages means this is an extremely thorough instruction book for
a reenactor or history lover. If you've liked the other training manuals,
this book is a must have. See the full description and scans of some of
the pages on my Manuals page (at the bottom).
If you could never understand exactly how the MG34 worked internally,
I now have a manual to cure that. This one was used to train the recruits
and armorers about the internal workings of the MG34. Very well
illustrated. There is no other manual like it.
Squad Combat Instruction for the Panzer Grenadier from 1944 - 196
pages. What a great manual for a historian or reenactor to understand
the combat training of the German Landser.
See the Manuals page for details.
An Explanation
It's Not Easy
These manuals have been translated the hard way, one word at a time by manual labor. There is no
computer program I've found which produces an accurate, or even understandable translation for the
old German. The results from a $400 translator program are OK (sometimes) for modern German,
but are incoherent when translating 60+ year old military books. I have 15 German/English military
dictionaries, one German-only military dictionary, and three standard German/English dictionaries, all
dated from 1925 to 1945, as well as a standard modern German/English general dictionary, and two
sets of English dictionaries (one old, one modern) to help determine the correct translation of the text.
I often have the actual gun or equipment sitting next to me for examination in order to be sure that I
choose the correct meaning from among the several different English possibilities for translating the
German word. The guns and equipment which I don't have are either loaned to me by other
collectors, or I'm allowed access to them for examination and disassembly. Sometimes I've had to
translate the German to English, then look up the English definition in a World War II era English
dictionary because the English word is not in common use anymore and I want to be sure I get it
right. It all takes a ridiculous amount of time.
This is not a "type it in and hit the Translate button" job. I've tried computer translation programs,
both online and on disk. They may be adequate (at best) for modern German, but of course were not
designed to properly work with a 60 year old gun manual with special vocabulary and meanings. The
results are useless, so the hard way is the only way for this job to be done right. A barrel used to be
a "lauf", but modern German uses the word "rohr". "Lauf" in modern German can mean "run". The
bullet is hurled "by the run" rather than the correct "through the barrel". It is much worse sometimes.
.
The words used for different parts of the gun, and even the meanings of some of the words, have
changed in the 60 to 90 years since these manuals were first published. Each word of the original
manual has been translated and typed in, and each graphic has been scanned and usually enhanced,
touched up, or cleaned of the old "freckles" and crease-line flaws that have appeared through the
decades.
I do not speak German, nor do I write it. I have learned to read it, and can read the old German font
so that I can translate these manuals. Speaking and reading/writing any language are actually two
separate things. Children learn to speak years before they learn to read and write. I learned to read
German, and then the old German. Maybe some day I'll learn to speak the language too.
Graphics Quality
Every effort has been made to keep the picture and diagram quality as high as possible, but most of
these fragile old manuals were printed on low quality, rough surface paper which wasn't intended to
last for decades and certainly didn't preserve well. Some pictures were poor quality to start with, and
have steadily deteriorated since being published. The pictures in the translated manuals in many cases
have been improved from the originals, but there is only so much that can be done with an original,
poor quality picture. If a picture isn't what it ought to be, the original was likely a lot worse. On some
manuals, I've spent more time working on the pictures than doing the actual translation, and I even
have a few manuals that I won't translate because the pictures are so bad they can't be restored.
When this happens and the manual is too good to abandon, I've scanned or photographed original
guns and parts to recompose the illustrations, or spent days with Photoshop redrawing the graphics.
Click here to see an example of a graphic from HDv 216/6 which I redrew because the original was
so bad. Producing a quality product is important to me, so I make every effort to reach that goal.
You're not going to find a 3rd generation copy of a bad photocopy in the manuals I've produced.
Printing
All manuals are printed on acid-free paper directly from the computer files by a high resolution
printer. Bulk printing from photographic plates or using a photocopier is cheaper, but degrades the
quality (I tried), especially when the graphics were marginal to begin with. Those methods are just
copies of an original print, and can't be as good as the actual original. Printing each page directly from
the computer ensures that each page is the best it can be, but the limiting factor is the original manual.
Some manuals for sale will have better quality graphics than others because of the source material.
A Very Limited Market
These manuals fill a need in an extremely small market. If a fortune was waiting to be made by
translating and selling these manuals, someone else would have done it 50 years ago. The expense to
acquire the original manuals for translation is high because the manuals are very collectible and more
rare than the guns themselves. My most expensive purchase of an original manual so far is $275, but
recently I saw an original HDv241 for the MG42 sell for over $700. Fortunately, that excellent
manual was scanned and emailed to me a few years ago by a collector in Oklahoma (thanks Brad).
The manuals are very time consuming to scan, translate, type in, reword, restore the graphics and
insert them in the text, and then set up for printing. When learning to read the old style German script,
just to determine the spelling was quite a task in itself. I have 7 months of (spare time) work in the
1940 Battalion Tactics manual alone, with several others taking 3 months. As my experience has
progressed in translating German, these manuals are finished much faster than they used to be, but
they are still very time consuming to complete. My real job and family obligations limit the time I have
for this hobby.
Printing a few thousand (or even several hundred) copies of each manual would certainly lower the
price per manual, but that's only if the copies would sell. The limited number of buyers for a particular
manual would mean a garage full of unsold copies, and each new manual completed would result in a
further investment that would take years or decades to recover. For example, the question of how
many MG26(t) (ZB-26) automatic rifles are out there, and how many people will be interested in
buying a manual for one, has an effect on the price of the manual. If I work for 3 weeks and only sell
50 copies in 4 years, the price for the manual has to reflect that. The ZB-26 is a fine gun, and I have
completed a 1940-dated 48 page manual, but I know that I can't afford to sell 60 hours of work (plus
printing costs) for $5 a copy. Also, the printing cost for 100 manuals is much higher per manual
compared to the cost per manual for printing a thousand or more. Buy a few hundred manuals and
we can make a deal!
Pricing
You may notice I've reduced prices on some of the manuals. If I sell enough copies of a particular
manual, I can reduce the price as I recover some profit for my time and expenses. The more I sell,
the cheaper the cost to produce these manuals. Any business has to make money to survive, but I'll
try to keep the prices as reasonable as I can. The more manuals I translate, the faster I get at it,
which means I can sell the more recently translated manuals cheaper. The initial cost of the original
manual, weeks or months spent translating it (the older it is, the harder it is to translate), the number of
pages, and if color printing is involved, all determine the selling price. U.S. first class or priority mail
postage is included in the price and I don't add "handling" charges to pad the cost. I always hated
buying something for $15 and having it cost $25 by the time I got it, so I don't run my business that
way. Let me know if you want several manuals. When I save time, postage, and gas going to the
post office, I can pass the savings on to you. It may not be more than a few dollars, but it is only fair.
The larger the order, the bigger the savings. This especially applies to foreign orders, as I can send
several manuals for only a bit more cost than just one or two.
Please keep in mind that I'm not doing this because I have too much money and nothing to do when I
come home from my real job. By not copying the manuals for your buddies, you enable me to sell
more, which means I can afford to buy and translate other manuals.
Thanks Guys
Members of the collector community have been very encouraging and supportive by lending their
manuals and allowing me to disassemble and examine some very expensive hardware (such as the
MKb and FG42). Their help is greatly appreciated, and keeps these translations from being
awkward and inaccurate. Some of the manuals have the names of those who have allowed access to
their collections or have loaned me their original manuals, some from the U.S, and some from other
countries. These guys should be commended for their contributions to the gun collecting community.
If you recognize any of the names, be sure to tell them thanks for all of us when you see them.
Without their help, these manuals couldn't be as accurate as they are, some wouldn't have been
translated, and some I wouldn't even know about. I certainly appreciate their help, and letting them
know that others do too is good manners to say the least. They share their collections in this way to
advance the sport for the benefit of us all. That's first class behavior. A long-time collector who has
given me a great deal of support and full access to his collection once told me that he didn't feel that
the collection was his personal property; it belonged to History. He just got to enjoy it for a while.
Very nice.
As I've been translating a few non-gun manuals that are of special interest to military historians and
reenactors, I'm finding the same support I've had with the gun community. I can only wish I had
started doing this a few years earlier.
Your Support is Appreciated
When I started translating these manuals, I wondered why nobody in the last 90 years had translated
any of them. Certainly there was a need and interest for it. Now I know why: it's hard, takes a
ridiculous amount of time, and will never make enough profit to be a full time job, or even pay a
decent hourly wage like a real job, but there are no other sources for the information contained in
these aging manuals. These are the original training, operating, and maintenance manuals for these
guns and accessories, and infantry instruction manuals that were the primary sources of information for
the German soldiers. This work needs done before the old books start to crumble and are lost
forever, or are hidden in collections where they will never be seen by people who have an interest in
the arms and training of the German military of this turbulent time.
Your support is appreciated and allows me to continue the work.
To see how to place an order, click on the "Orders" link.
Contents of this page © 2010 by John Baum
 |
| | | | | | | | | | |