This booklet gives a complete overview on the characteristics of high voltages installations and cables, the regulations around working with them and their influence on normal telephone networks.  This is a background information booklet belonging to the Telephonbauordnung booklets, regulations for the construction of telephone connections, but w/o the H.Dv. 419 identification.

This booklet gives an overview on how to connect telephone wires to insulators on poles, and how to put tension on these wires.  

In this booklet the principles of the algemeine Geheimschriftverfahren, general cipher writing procedures are explained. All messages that were subjected to this ciphering procedure were double ciphered using 2 series of numbers that changed daily.

This booklet gives and overview of the different types of road, which are encountered in earth-works when placing underground telephone cables. 

This booklet describes the provisions that were taken by the German army when motorized vehicles were confiscated. The confiscation could be effected with or without the owner remaining the driver. Additionally, the ownership of the vehicle could remain at the original owner, or could be transferred to the Wehrmacht.

This is a supplement book with further explanations and corrections on the permanent guidelines for the mobilization plan of the German army. It is listed as classified. 

This collection of individual contributions has Friedensstärkenachweisungen (F.St.N.), forces specifications in peace time, as title, but only contains folders for the Kriegsausrüstungsnachweisung (K.A.N.), equipment for the forces in war-time.  More specifically, it specifies the equipment for the l. Nachr.Kol.c (mot), leichte Nachrichen Kolonne c (motorisiert), small signaling troop motorized, and the Gebirgsjäger-Feldersatzkompanie, reserve mountain troops company.

The leaflet therefore lists the equipment essential for the indicated army sections, such as vehicles, weapons, communication equipment, but also individual items such as manuals, gas masks, special pioneering equipment, clothing.

For an almost complete listing of the Sammelbände for the Friedensstärkenachweisungen, see the page Stärkenachweisungen. 

This handbook contains provisions for the supporting personnel of the army, such as arrangements on food and drink, daycare for their children, housing etc.

This leaflet explains the Erdsprechgerät instrument and its use. The Erdsprechgerät was a telephone that could be used for telephone communication through media with high dampening, such as barbed wire and soil. Hence the name Erdsprechgerät. Calling through the soil near a damaged telephone cable that subsequently picks up the signal was called Notferngesprech, while calling using barbed wire was called Weitferngespech. To make Notferngesprech, the instrument was capable of passing the signal up to 5 meter of soil.  For the Weitferngespech on a normal cable, up to 80 km could be bridged. To make a call, an instrument on both sides of the line was required. The instrument was part of the standard equipment of the Festungsnachrichtentruppen to be able to call through damaged ground lines during reparations of the line.

This binder contains a description of the newly erected Polish fortifications, next to the old Russian and German defenses originating from WW-1. It covers defenses in Polen's southern region, against Upper Silesia and Mähren.

It is marked as classified, but once the manual was used in the field, it changes to Nur für Dientgebrauch only for use by the troops.

This booklet describes the organizational aspects and the deployment of flamethrower tanks in a tank battalion. Flamethrower tanks were considered for close combat when normal tanks are less effective. These are typically in heavily fortified areas, against bunkers, in build environments and in dense woods. Additionally, flame throwers in general have a strong influence of the moral of the enemy troops.

These flamethrower tanks have to work closely together with other tanks, in order not to be too vulnerable to enemy fire. The flamethrower had a range of 30m, while its machinegun had a range of 200m. It was based on a PzKpfwg II (Sd.Kfz 122) and could typically provide 80 bursts of 2-3 seconds each.

This booklet provides instructions to the troops in defense against espionage. It proves for more effective to prevent secrets from being exposed than to actively hunt for spies. The instructions accordingly deal with camouflage of instructions and making the soldier aware of how to deal with vulnerable information. 

This booklet is an addition to the Merkblatt Geheim 7/1 Jahresverfügung and its annexes, where the regulations for the Feldheer are only partially covered in these booklets.

This booklet is meant for the accounting officer and deals with tips and tricks on accounting: it covers guidelines and points of attention that, based on the experience, do not get sufficient attention by the accounting officers. The appearance of this booklet is not a call for updates of existing guidelines, but the booklet forms separate additional guidelines on its own.

These booklets list the codes for the companies that produced weapons, ammunition and equipment for the Wehrmach German army. In order to not reveal the name and location of factories that produced goods for the German war-industry, no longer the full names of these companies but a 3 letter code was used to mark the goods. That way, in case of capture of equipment the manufacturer is not revealed, but it still allowed to report e.g. bad quality to the Oberkommando.

These codes have been used to mark equipment etc. since the Wehrmacht again began to arm itself in the early 1930's. But it is only till the start of WW-II that these codes were published in these classified lists. The aaa-azz list was the first issue and was published in November 1940. The individual lists consist of 1 starting letter, and then from the additions of aa to zz. The overview of the lists is given to the right. In total, 13 individual booklets were issued, covering the codes from a to ozz.

In case the letter code could also be read upside down, a point was added at the end. For example dnu upside down reads nup, so it was represented as "dnu.".

Everybody knows the 1977 reproduction of these lists by Karl Pawlas. The volumes below, however, are scans of the original lists, at least the ones in my collection and published by the Bundesarchiv. The Pawlas book contains some (inevitable) errors, e.g. the April 1941 substitution of bns. is not in the Pawlas book. But several substitutions are correctly listed in Pawlas, while they do not appear in the original lists below. Therefore, it is very difficult to create a complete list w/o any errors.

This leaflet is about special care for the infantry weapons for correct functioning in winter conditions. It deals with the rifle, machinegun, light and heavy mortars, the infantry  gun and 5cm PaK. It is marked Merkblatt, but was not listed in the Merkblatt series.

This single page note provides practical information for the individual soldier on chemical substances used as weapons. It is described how the different groups of chemical substances are identified, what their effect on the human body is, and the measures that the soldier can take, as well as first aid treatments. Such a leaflet was typically intended to stick into the personal paybook, so that each soldier always had it with him. The following categories are differentiated:

• Weisskreutz irritating to the eyes

• Blaukreutz irritating to the nose and throat

• Grünkreutz damaging the lungs

• Gelbkreutz damaging the skin and eventually the lungs

• Spreng- und Brandgase exploding and burning gasses

This booklet is for the training of the troops of the Division 157 in gas warfare protection. It was intended to provide a condensed and uniform training to the troops of the Ersatztruppen replacement troops. 

The H.Dv. series provides an extensive list of manuals related to gas warfare defense, and these are referenced throughout this booklet for details.

This booklet describes the responsibilities and way of operation of couriers and their accompanying staff in receiving and delivering messages.

This booklet contains the data and calculations for the conversion of geographical data into the rectangular map coordinates. 

This booklet describes the use of local crops produced in the occupied areas for the production of food for the German army. The purpose was to relief the demand of the agricultural industry within Germany and the transport of these goods to the occupied areas.

Although this booklet is issued by the Oberkommando des Heeres (Chef H Rüst u. B d. E), it was not issued as a Merkblatt.

This small booklet is an addition to previously issued guidelines for the defense against chemical warfare. It serves to get the troops in fully prepared state, and it orders the erection of cleaning stations in the field.

This booklet describes how schematic drawings for telephone and telex networks must be made. It covers Leitungs-, Schalt- und Linienskizzen, drawings for cables, connection and lines.

• The Leitungsskizze, the cable drawing contains the number of connections that can simultaneously be realized on a given connection.

• The Schaltskizze, the connection drawing contains information on the different types of connections that can be made between two posts, being the different types of telex and telephone connections.

• The Linienskizzen, the line drawing represents how the lines run in geographical terms and contains additional information on connection posts, amplifier posts and an indication on the line-material and cable core diameters.

The dofferent drawings are used for the differet services involved in the operation and maintanance of the network.

This incomplete booklet gives an overview of the different frequencies that were used by the different army sections. It also describes how the frequencies were changed every 3 days up to every month.

This leaflet describes the basic knowledge of mountain warfare. It was intended to be kept in the Soldbuch.

This leaflet deals with the measures that every driver of any vehicle must take to safe on fuel. Pretty obvious advises.

I specially like the last warning:

Jede Zuwiederhandlung ist Sabotage am Endsieg !

Every violation equals sabotage of the final victory !

This booklet provides instructions on building wooden decoys of tanks as a means to mislead the enemy on the troop strength and location. It describes the construction of:

• Panther. Several versions are described: versions that can be moved and versions that are fixed to the ground.  The different versions use different types of wood and have different levels of detail.

• Pzkpfwg IV in 2 versions: mobile and fixed.

• StuG 40 in 2 versions: mobile and fixed.

All armies of WW-2 used decoys to fool enemy reconnaissance. The allies relied much on inflatable versions of tanks, trucks and half-tracks, while the Russians relied more on wooden constructed versions. These, however, were much less detailed than the German ones described in this booklet. The detailing also reflects in the amount of work the decoys described in this booklet required: The building times ranged from 40 hours with 6 soldiers (i.e. 240 labor hours) to 26 hours with 12 men (i.e. 212 labor hours) to 15 hours with 6 men (i.e. 90 labor hours).

This 4 page leaflet, meant to put into the Soldbuch, stresses the responsibilities of the commanders of railway transports and of railway stations during air raids. 

This is a very interesting classified booklet giving an overview of the different support and supply vehicles serving the transport, planning preparing and firing of the V2 rockets. It given an overview of armored command cars, communication vehicles, aggregate trucks, tankers for T-Stoff and B-Stoff, compressor truck etc. etc.

Many of the special vehicles were based on standard vehicles, such as the Opel Blitz and Open Maultier, but with special cabins.

For further readings on the V2 devlopment and deplyment see V2rocket.com.

This booklet giving an overview of the provision of using the telephone network, both the Wehrmachtsfernsprechnetz as the Dutch private network from the PTT. The latter section of the booklet serves as a telephone book for the region of Hilversum, listing the name, rank, are telephone number of different officers at the army sections. It was not common that all officers had their personal telephone connection, and one would call the department where the person was active. Additionally, the telephone number of the house where they were quartered is gven in the last section.

This wonderful booklet describes the use and the inner arrangement for the weapons of the various type os Rinstände. The Ringstand was a small reinforced concrete structure, also known as bunker, to house a weapon to protect the solder(s) that operated it, the weapon itself and its ammunition from enemy fire and artillary. The design originates from the structures that the Italian troops build in Tobruk, Egypt, to fight the British troops. It proved to be very effective for the effort it took to construct. The Italian version was made of wood. The thus created Tobrukstand was officially referred to as Ringstand and many variants were created for multiple weapons, such as machinegun, mortar, flame thrower and anti-tank guns (Kw.K. - Kampfwagen Kanone or Pak - Panzerabwehrkanone) and Beutewaffen tank turrets.

This book deals with the positioning of various machineguns, also Beutewaffen, and the different mounts that are to be used. There is even a mount that houses the M.G. Lafette. Then, various forms for mortars are described.

It is a follow up of the classified construction guidelines of the General der Pioniere und Festungsbau Nr. 7300/42 and 3800/43 g. The 1st one is also given here:

Richtlien über den Bau von Ringständern aus Stahlbeton

In the Merkblatt 57/5 Bildheft neuzeitlicher Stellungsbau, the standard design, the Ringstand 58 was described, as well as a design of the Rinstand in wood M.G. Postenstand aus Rundholz, later denoted as the M.G. Ringstand uas Rundholtz. The 1944 version of the Merkblatt also contained a description for the construction of a Ringstand aus Rundholz für Pzkpfw Turm, made from poles and intended for a tank turret. In this edition, a description of a supplement to mount on top of the Ringstand in case of heavy snow is also described, the Schneeaufsatz für Ringstände, and a Ringstandschlitten (Vorbereitete Rundumfeuerstellung für Schnelleinbau). The latter was a mobile wooden structure that could be moved over a trench and acted as a Ringstand fire-position.

This booklet describes the provisions for the use of telephone, telegraph and wireless connections. Priority setting, coding rules and rules for private use. Also the use of the PTT network, the Dutch public services.

This booklet describes the use and training for the Drilling machine gun, mounted on heavy halftrack Sd.Kfz. 251/21. The Drilling is a socket mounted ensemble of 3 heavy machineguns M.G. 151 caliber 15mm (M.G. 151/15), with a later upgrade to 20mm (M.G. 151/20). The main intend of the weapon is its use as assault ground combat weapon. Its use as AA gun was secondary. It's high firing power combined with the high mobility when mounted to the heavy halftrack vehicle were considered its advantages.

This late-war booklet is a collection of graphical instructions for the positioning and construction of defense works that can be used for the protection of towns and villages. It covers positions for defense, obstacles and tank barriers.

Most of the descriptions and instructions are taken from the Merkblatt 57/5 Bildheft neuzeitlicher Stellungsbau and the Merkblatt Richtlinien für die Anlage und Ausführung der Ortssicherungen. This latter Merkblatt was not listed in the standard Merkblatt series. Some graphical instructions are also described in the H.Dv. 220/4 Ausbildungsvorschrift für die Pioniere - Teil 4, Sperren.

This book describes the measures that are to be taken against espionage of the communication. Jede zum Feinde durchdringende Nachricht kostet deutsches Blut, every message reaching the enemy costs German blood. The strict control of all communication is of utmost importance to effectively act against espionage, sabotage and propaganda. The broadest definition of communication is applied: not only communication via telex, wireless and telephone, but also written communication, via e.g. letter, freight and pigeons. 

This manual describes the organization, mandate and responsibilities of the Abwehrstellen, defense points to assure adequate control of all communication.