German Soldiers Mocked the M1 Garand Until It Spoke Faster Than Their Rifles скачать в хорошем качестве

German Soldiers Mocked the M1 Garand Until It Spoke Faster Than Their Rifles

When German soldiers first encountered American troops armed with the M1 Garand rifle, many dismissed it as typical American excess—semi-automatic fire in a world where bolt-action rifles had won wars for generations. Some German veterans called it wasteful, undisciplined, the weapon of soldiers who couldn't aim properly and needed to spray bullets to hit anything. Then they faced it in combat. And the mockery turned to fear. This video examines how the M1 Garand—the first semi-automatic rifle issued as standard to an entire army—fundamentally changed infantry combat in World War II. While German soldiers were still working bolt-actions between shots, American GIs could fire eight rounds as fast as they could pull the trigger. In firefights measured in seconds, that difference meant everything. We explore German military assessments of the Garand, from early dismissive reports to increasingly desperate accounts of being outgunned in close-quarters combat. Through battlefield reports, captured documents, and post-war interviews with Wehrmacht veterans, we see how German infantry doctrine—built around disciplined bolt-action fire and machine gun support—struggled against an enemy where every rifleman had semi-automatic firepower. We examine specific engagements where the Garand's rate of fire proved decisive, the German attempts to counter it, and why their own semi-automatic rifle programs came too late to matter. The Americans had equipped every infantryman with what amounted to rapid-fire capability, and German soldiers learned the hard way what that meant in actual combat.