A daily account of the main events of World War II.

The rise of the Third Reich as it happened from its beginnings to the start of World War II in September 1939.

Designed as a fast mailplane (with single-fin tail surfaces) for Deutsche Lufthansa and first flown in 1934, the Do 17 was rejected by the airline and then developed by Dornier as a high-speed bomber with twin vertical tail surfaces. The aircraft entered service in early 1937, gaining the nickname “The Flying Pencil” on account of its slender rear fuselage. The first two military variants were the Do 17E-1 and Do 17F-1 for the high-speed bomber and long-range photo-reconnaissance roles respectively, the latter with additional fuel and the internal bomb bay revised to carry two cameras. The two types offered good performance and adequate all-round capabilities for their day, but by 1939 were obsolescent.

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Production of Germany’s first modern light anti-aircraft gun, the FlaK 18, ended in 1936 to allow manufacture of an improved model, the 3.7cm FlaK 36, that was the FlaK 18 gun on a new mounting carried on a two-wheeled carriage and served by an eight-man detachment.

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Together with her sister ship, Tirpitz, the Bismarck was the pride of Hitler’s navy, and was viewed with alarm by the Royal Navy. Launched in February 1939 and completed in August 1940, she underwent sea trials in the Baltic and in May 1941 she sailed in company with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen to attack Allied commerce in the Atlantic.

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The Maschinenpistole 28/II sub-machine was in essence a 1928 development of the MP 18/I, which entered service in 1918 as the German Army’s first such weapon, by Hugo Schmeisser for production by Haenel (interestingly, his name would be internationally associated with the later MP 38 and 40, though in fact he had very little to do with these weapons - the association is largely the result of Hollywood fantasy).

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German victories in the first three years of the war resulted the capture of large numbers of enemy vehicles. These were pressed into service. The problems with this was the lack of spare parts and eventual obsolescence. Due to the small numbers involved, it was not worth the setting up of spare parts manufacture, and as a result most of these vehicles were lost due to maintenance problems. French and Italian armoured vehicles could be relatively easily maintained because those countries (which Germany occupied) had large stocks of spares, but armoured vehicles captured from other adversaries presented problems.

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