The Gun Counter

For no good reason I picked William Manchester's classic from the shelf of my late father's books.

All I can say is my ignorance was blissful, and I will never enjoy Krupp marked guns in the same way. I won't be throwing them in the river, but some of this incredibly well written book is sickening. And, I see why it's a classic - I highly reccommend it.

Barrels marked Krupp Flussstahl, Essen and Valt. Hafner Hofbuchsenmacher, Cassel

Huh, never heard the story, I had to go look it up. Amazon has the book in paperback for $16.49:

http://www.amazon.com/Arms-Krupp-Indust ... 0316529400

Sounds like things started going south when Kaiser Wilhelm arranged a marriage between Bertha, the heir, and Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach. Interesting read at Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krupp

The Krupp story has just been screened on German primetime TV as a three-part series of films. Mrs Denis (who is a history buff) watched it and approved of both the dramatisation and the historicity of the production.

I can understand selling arms to both sides, or cheating the Versailles treaty, and many other business practices, but Krupp's embrace and push for slave labor was disgusting. They built new munitions plants next to Aushwitz and other camps, so they could use the inmates.

Many of our foreign Milsurp guns are tainted with blood, and I guess I'm just getting old and soft because it never bothered me much before. I may sell the Japanese and Nazi WW2 guns, I don't know.

ZeroGravitas wrote:Many of our foreign Milsurp guns are tainted with blood, and I guess I'm just getting old and soft because it never bothered me much before. I may sell the Japanese and Nazi WW2 guns, I don't know.

That's why mine are Swedish, Swiss and American.

I prefer to think of it as adopting an abused tool.