Antarctic Space Nazis Across the Multiverse

[Icelander]

The local horses of the area in Germania Hyperborea where the ASNs first settle average around 12 hands in height and weigh 650-700 lbs. They can carry a man, but they are inconveniently small for most of the tasks which WWII Germany used horses for and they certainly can't support armoured Gothic cavalry, which some völkisch ASN leaders dream about.

There are horse breeds used by other local cultures (located 200+ km away) in Germania Hyperborea which are larger than that, up to 13 hands, but while these can be beautiful horses, with exceptional endurance and willingness, as well both fast and nimble, they are still fairly slim and better for nearly naked raiders than they are suitable for 'modern' warfare. Veterans of WWII (and some veterans of WWI, of course) want and need draft horses that can pull weight and cavalry horses able to carry a man with some equipment for a long time. Within 500 km of the ASN settlement in Germania Hyperborea, there don't seem to be any horses that weigh more than 800 lbs. and most of them are more like 600-700 lbs.

The ASNs encounter some larger horses, up to 14.5 hands and 1,000 lbs., on raiding missions over gates to distant parts of Germania Hyperborea, but these appear to be either very rare or at least only found in cultures that live more than a thousand km away from the first settlements. There is no good source of thousands of them, and, indeed, it did not appear that even that distant culture had many such 'giant' horses, as most of their mounts were 13-13.5 hands and 750-900 lbs.

The ASNs brought as much breeding stock for their livestock from 20th century Earth as they could, as they have access to breeds that are often larger and better suited for the uses which humans intend them for than animals available at lower TLs. On the other hand, horses were a strategic resource in WWII Germany and in 1943-1945, it's not like they could have an infinite supply. A few thousand, at most.

Yes, no doubt enthusiasts of animal husbandry and equestrianism among the leadership of the ASNs managed to obtain and move over to their new home some very fine stud stallions and mares with pedigrees longer than my arm, but while they would thus have had excellent prospects for breeding good horses in the future, they would not have very many horses that they could afford to lose in warfare.

I'm assuming that the draft horse situation in Zentrum der neuen Welt was that they had enough for the first several hundreds of farms, likely the initial five hundred prestige SS farms, but there was a time in the first few years when they had to use oxen from Germania Hyperborea, inferior local pony-horses, beast-men and Kadavergehorsam slaves as beasts of burden and draft animals because they didn't have enough adult draft horses.

I have some questions about the rate at which the ASNs could grow their initial herds of each broad type of horse, i.e. draft, riding, war, etc., whatever I end up deciding these initial herds may have numbered.

I'm assuming that the terrain in Germania Superior is mostly the kind of forest that covered a lot of prehistoric Germany, but that there are obviously also hills and other terrain features where grass grows well, not to mention that the forests have some feed in them.

Assume also that the arrival of the ASNs caused some very one sided wars where most of the TL2 people who lived within a couple of hundred km of the first ASN settlement died or moved away.

This means that there ought to be plenty of grazing available, both in the suddenly empty forests and on the farmland abandoned around each native settlement. The ASNs will also fight wars with other neighbours as they extend their area of influence, even if they don't settle in numbers very far away for the first few years, and there will be good grazing grounds in the areas where these wars take place.

How fast would their initial herds grow?

How long does it take per generation of draft horses? How long is a breeding cycle where you double your numbers of horses good enough to use as breeding stock for the next generation?

And how fast could the ASNs cross-breed 20th century horses with local pony-horses to create massive numbers of horses that they could use in warfare without depleting their breeding herds?

How many generations and how much time would it take them to create a new breed of cross-bred horses that they could field by the tens of thousands and replace losses fairly quickly, and would at least match early medieval horses in Europe?

And how many years to have vast herds of horses equal in quality to 19th century cavalry mounts and 20th century horses used in warfare?

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by johndallman

For the equipment which had to be specially built in Germany, here's a possible cover story.

"Accidentally" hint that it has to be transported by submarine. The 400lb weight limit is quite optimistic for manhandling through a submarine hatch, and there are various reasons why the SS might be staging a secret submarine operation, apart from getting away from the remains of the Reich.

Excellent thought. That's what they did, clearly.

Just to be clear for anyone idly wondering, the 400 lbs. (180 kg) weight limit is not so much a hard and absolute limit as it is a practical limit for the heaviest single piece that the ASNs could at bring through with the fairly simple and swift method of having servitor beast-men carry them as they navigate the World Tree.

It's theoretically possible to rig some sort of contraptions and carry heavier objects over by having a team of workers and the beast-men manhandle larger pieces little by little between the gates. In such a fashion, I I imagine that future ASN engineers could have managed to move something up to a ton or two.

The problem is that doing this would slow them down a lot and use up time and space around the gates that could be contributing in other ways. So if some absolutely vital pieces that weigh more than 400 lbs. (180 kg) have to be brought over, it will reduce the ca 30,000 short tons that I'm assuming they managed to bring as strategic resources to keep their fighting forces in the field and to bootstrap local industry.

Just by going slightly over 400 lbs., the piece would take at least twice as long to move, because then no beast-man could carry it alone while climbing a difficult path, which is the equivalent of it 'costing' four times its actual weight in terms of how much it removes from the total weight budget. Anything between 400-700 lbs. might effectively count x3 to x6 timewise, with heavier objects that are still no more than maybe half a ton would count as something like x10 or even more.

Anything weighing a ton would be so difficult to get over the World Tree that it would take as much time as twenty tons or more moved as multiple smaller pieces that each count as no more than Medium encumbrance for beast-men who can thus still move at a fairly rapid pace with them.

The beast-men have ST 22 to ST 28, with ST 24 being a good average. They also have HT 13, Move 9+, Hyper-Lungs (that give them FP 19+, among other things) and Very Fit, as well as High Pain Threshold, Breath Control at 16+, Climbing and Lifting at skill 14+ and Hiking at skill 15+.

With a good carrying harness, so they can use their Blunt Claws to climb, they'll carry extremely heavy burdens with ease that no human could match. And as few individual objects would be as heavy as 400 lbs., the strongest beast-men would tend to handle the heavier weights, not to mention that it is possible to enhance them with RPM rituals to add a few points of Lifting ST for days when they have to carry a lot of very heavy loads.

I arrived at my 400 lbs. limit by assuming that most trips would be made by someone no stronger than ST 27-29, whether that's natural or assisted by RPM, that a TL7 load-bearing harness capable of attaching something so heavy to the beast-man would weigh 30+ lbs. and probably more for heavier loads, and that going over Medium encumbrance would slow them down in the long term, so they shouldn't do it if it could be avoided.

Technically, I should probably account for the fact that by the last six to eight months of the period while they are stocking up, you could walk directly into the Zentrum der neuen Welt demiplane from gates in Berlin and Wewelsburg, without any climbing over the World Tree being involved, and there was a pretty short walk over from the Der Riese complex to a spot in Jötunheim.

The 30,000 tons figure accounts for the late surge in the weight of what they could move (and is already pretty generous, assuming very good logistical organization around the gates, dare I say... Teutonic efficiency), with the much easier and shorter trips needed during the last stages, but I guess that the beast-men could have taken much heavier weights in individual loads when taking a few steps over level ground than what they were capable of climbing with.

So some larger pieces of up to maybe 650 lbs. and the occasional one reaching half a ton might have been possible, even without a massive interruption in the regular traffic of smaller items. Just that such heavy single loads were an exception, not the rule, and that most of what they brought consisted for stuff small enough for a human to carry.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by johndallman

There are two major difficulties:

The first is fusing. Getting HE rounds to detonate when they're supposed to, but not otherwise, is fiddly with WWII technology. The usual way is to have an impact fuse with a short delay built in, which is armed by the centrifugal force applied to the shell when it's spun by the rifling. This has to fit in a 20mm round and leave space for some explosive. It's lots more small parts to make, machine tools to make them, production lines to run, and so on.

The second is assembly, which is unavoidably more dangerous given you're putting high explosives into the shells. If ammunition assembly is being done by hand, it's quite dangerous, and if it's being done by machine, there's a risk to hard-to-replace machinery.

So I think the pragmatic answer is not to make HE ammunition until the population and industry have been built up significantly. Take the designs and samples with you, but you're going to have to re-create the manufacturing processes because people will have forgotten the details by the time you're ready.

What's your SWAG for when the ASN industry might be in a state to make HE and SAPHE ammunition?

Twenty years after settling? Thirty? Fifty?

What kind of population and economic infrastructure do they need to be able to make new SAPHE rounds for a couple of dozen single-shot 20mm weapons, for example?

And what kind do they need to start churning out enough ammo to make 2 cm Gebirgsflak 38s a practical option for mowing down megafauna and uppity flying horrors?

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by johndallman

To make cartridge cases and bullet jackets on any scale, you need to do deep drawing of brass or steel. This needs power-operated machinery. It doesn't take all that much skill to operate, but it wears out the dies that the metal is forced into fairly quickly. So you need skilled metalworkers, good steel and plenty of gauges and cross-checking to keep replacing those dies.

You also need ovens for annealing the cases/jackets at several stages in the drawing processes, and those need quite precise temperature control. They were usually heated by coal gas in wartime Germany.

The big machines that a full-scale ammunition factory uses for drawing tens of cases at the same time are just too big for your 400lb/item transport limit. Take the plans and hope to build them in a few years, but you need smaller machines for your immediate use.

Excellent. Small-scale reloading at first, which seems to justify arming the Wehrbauern with black powder weapons, as it was too difficult to manufacture enough smokeless powder fast enough for their needs, at least during the first few wars against the locals.

Originally Posted by johndallman

The best place to get those will be the experimental shop at a large armaments firm, and that's where you can also get operators, tool and die makers, and all their specialised tools and equipment. So that will get you machines that are good for any small arms calibre, maybe up to 12.5mm. If you want to cope with 20mm, you'll need an extra set of machines, probably from a different factory's experimental shop.

Is 'up to 12.5mm' an approximate value or an absolute limit for a typical small arm shop?

I ask because I'm hoping that 12.7x70mm Schüler rounds can be justified for specialist 'Untierejäger' marksmen, without the ASNs necessarily having the capability to make bigger rounds than until their industrial base gets bigger and they start building their own factories with native steel and materials.

Originally Posted by johndallman

However, you'll only get annealing ovens that dismantle into 400lb pieces if you're very lucky. They aren't built to be portable or dismantlable, since they're mostly made of firebricks. So take the metal and glass parts, plus the temperature sensors and control systems, and build new ovens in your industrial area. If you have to transport firebricks for the first few, OK, but brick-making of various kinds is an industry you'll want to set up early on. It's an easy one to forget, because its products are so cheap and ubiquitous from TL4 onwards.

I rolled for it. There were enough antiquarians and archaeologists associated with the inner circle for them not to forget brick-making.

Originally Posted by johndallman

The tooling will be the dies, gauges, precise alloys and annealing specifications, and so on. You'll need a set of drawing machines and annealing ovens to use with it, which we've accounted for above, and assembly tools, which come soon.

Sounds good.

Originally Posted by johndallman

You need to set up your drawing machines, and they need power, probably hydraulic, since small movements with great force come naturally to that. Well, until you can set up a factory-level hydraulic power system, which demands a lot of good-quality metal pipe, you're going to need a small pump for each machine, and something to drive it, which may well be beast-power. Easier to get those designed and built in Germany than in a colony. And you need lubrication for the machines, which may well be tallow, and hydraulic oil, which won't be. Better take plenty of that along.

How long do you guess it might take the ASNs to develop their own petrochemical industries?

Originally Posted by johndallman

You've got your bullet jackets and cartridge cases. Now you need fillings for them. For plain ball ammunition, the filling is lead, and the weight needs to be fairly precise for accuracy. That's normally done by drawing lead wire to size, cutting lengths, which is easy to do accurately, and ramming it into the jackets with hydraulic power. So you need lead mining, smelting, another set of machinery from a lead wire supply company, or to have a smaller set designed and built in Germany, and time and tools on the drawing presses for filling the jackets.

Question:

How many people are required to extract a decent supply of usable lead per year from mines where the TL2 locals already mine it? That is, how many TL7 people, because we can easily throw locals at it. Though likely enough, only a couple of thousand locals that could be captured alive would already have the necessary skills. Still and all, even if you don't capture them alive, you can make use of those TL2 and TL3 miners, with the favour of the Lords of the Last Waste on your side.

I note that it's easy for the ASNs to expend some 10,000 tons of lead in a year of intensive fighting, even with their relatively small population. Granted, the ASNs should avoid fighting where they have to fire 100,000+ rounds in a day's fighting, repeated for months. Hopefully, no TL2-3 culture is going to throw human wave attacks at them for months at a time. There are no empires to support such armies.

Originally Posted by johndallman

WWII Germany had some alternative bullet materials, for 9mm Parabellum, either a bullet made of sintered iron powder, or a solid iron bullet coated in lead. Sadly, neither is likely to work well in rifles: at rifle speeds, the rifling will rip up the bullet surfaces and the bullets will go wild.

Oooh, nifty!

The primary reason I imagined that the ASNs would field AP rounds despite not facing any armour that WWII veterans would recognise as such, is that various strange and mystical fey creatures are vulnerable to iron weapons and thus to the hardened steel penetrators of typical AP rounds.

If it is cheaper for the ASNs to make sintered iron powder rounds or coating iron bullets in lead than to make standard WWII FMJ rounds, that may well become the standard 9x19mm ammunition, with the MP40s then becoming recognised as 'anti-fey' weapons.

Originally Posted by johndallman

Ah, assembly. You can't take the big machines that assemble lots of cartridges in parallel apart into 400lb chunks. They're bigger than that. The low-tech fallback is hand-assembly, which needs only reloader's tools, but isn't something you want to entrust to slaves, given the ease of over- or under-loading cartridges.

You probably want to get some small machines built in Germany for use until you can build a proper production line. Making them capable of handling large rounds is quite possible, given they're a custom job, but may well mean that they're less capable of handing a lot of smaller rounds at once. The German answer is to have modular machines, or more than one type of machine, but this all takes time, which is not in long or readily predictable supply for the planned departure.

Everything I've found and heard from you sounds like my initial feeling, i.e. that they could maintain a force with their WWII vintage small arms in the field, but that they would not be able to be profligate with ammunition for the first couple of generations, is true.

Unless someone has reasons why that would not be practical, I'm going to assume that the ASN armament program was from the start divided into two levels, one exclusively staffed with Earth-born ASN engineers and technicians, where they did their best to keep the advanced weapons they brought functional and supplied, and one where they established a geared-down black powder armaments industry that was allowed to employ favored native-born Aryans.

This second tier would then have a variety of increasingly more restricted technology, with black powder made with TL4 methods being sold to the Svartálfrheim allies from the start and impossible to conceal from the native 'Aryan' population from the Neue Reich (and probably quickly familiar to various necessary slaves of less Aryan origin), but the making of percussion caps and primers being regarded as much more sensitive information.

The manufacture of TL5 repeating rifles for any Reich citizens who could not be supplied with smokeless powder weapons would then be started with machines and tooling brought over, but would need to expand so fast that any attempt to have it staffed exclusively by Deutschblütig citizens would obviously be doomed to failure. At least the simpler parts and the black powder to reload cases would be done in factories that employ native-born people.

This does, however, bring up a pretty major question.

Situated in an analogue of Westphalia as the ASNs are, which materials for black powder do they have easy access to and which would be more difficult to get in the amounts required for a huge production?

Charcoal is easy enough and I've already established parts of Jötunheim as having abundant sulfur deposits in its natural form. But how are they getting massive amounts of saltpeter? Is it all censored and redacted, i.e. French and Swiss methods, and similar foul smelling ways?

Originally Posted by johndallman

Not that hard if you planned for it, but quite hard as a late improvisation.

I've found out that during the entire WWII, Germany never set up manufacturing of 14.5x114mm rounds, despite issuing captured rifles since the start of the war against Soviet Russia. I'm going to arbitrarily decide that the ASNs did not have any machines or tooling to loot for this one and that they didn't get the capacity to manufacture new 14.5x114mm ammo until their native-built industry had reached TL6 in specific armaments. In any event, for such a specialty weapon, a few cases of ammo last a long time, as it's not as if it's used for ordinary infantry engagements against TL2 and TL3 foes.

[Icelander]

I'm wondering about the Mauser Werke and the Antarctic Space Nazis. Mauser was always an independent company, but the fact that they used forced labour and had satellite factories located at SS camp sites means that tnere were some professional connections between Mauser and the conspirators that led the Antarctic Space Nazis to their new homes at the fall of the Third Reich.

At some point during the latter stages of WWII, Allied strategic bombing killed 26 workers at Waffenfabrik Mauser AG in Oberndorf and destroyed a power plant powering one or more of the several factories the comoany had in this fairly small town. I haven't been able to pin down the exact date of the bombing raid or raids, largely because the famous WWI Oberndorf raid in 1916 makes it a chore to search for less famous WWII bombing of the same targets.

Oberndorf was eventually captured by French troops on the 20th of April, 1945, without any fighting. The French operated the factories for a while, before looting some of the machinery and destroying most of the rest in 1948. From what I can tell, the majority of the machinery seemed to be undamaged, despite bombing raids, when the French took possession, and the factory could still turn out thousands of weapons in 1946, even if they were not producing 70,000 military rifles per month, as their peak production was.

Famously, three former Mauser engineers, Edmund Heckler, Theodor Koch and Alex Seidel, stole two milling machines and perhaps a few smaller tools under the cover of night in 1948, ostensibly to rescue them from the French, moved them by truck and hid them in a nearby empty factory (former site of forced labour, for some of the 5,000 slaves used by Mauser Werke at the height of their wartime production). The three former Mauser men used their 'rescued' war booty to found a new company in 1949, which, with restrictions on German weapon manufacturing gradually lifted, became the familiar conglomerate Heckler & Koch.

Now, I don't know how many German engineers, technicians, armourers and machinists worked at the factories in addition to the 5,000 slaves. Today, Oberndorf is something like a town of 15,000, but I'm not sure how much the WWII population was, given the enormous rate of production. It must surely have numbered in the hundreds of true experts, but beyond that, I don't know whether we are talking about a couple of hundred local-born workers or many thousands of German workers from all over, in addition to the foreign slaves.

What I'm wondering is how receptive workers at Mauser, especially the managers, senior engineers, highly skilled technicians and other leading lights of the company would have been to an offer of an escape to a 'Last Redoubt', where they could continue to design and build arms?

Likely, any future ASN who had genuine friends working at Mauser would have very carefully broached such a suggestion as soon as everyday Germans had lost realistic hope for eventual victory, so sometime in 1944. They would, at first, not commit to where such a Last Redoubt might be, but only that the intention was to save the best minds and technical expertise of Germany, so that a nucleus for rebuilding industrial capacity could be preserved. Highly desirable recruits would be offered the favour of powerful SS leaders, extremely generous sums in Reichsmarks and gold, and promises of high position in the armaments industry of the Last Redoubt.

By the failure of the German counteroffensive of the Battle of the Bulge and the Allied advance to the Rhine in January 1945, the future ASNs would all but abandon sublety. By the end of January 1945, they'd be ready to approach workers en masse and offer them assistence in emigrating with their families to the Last Redoubt when the time comes that the Alllies might break through, over the Rhine, and cut them off.

At that point, they'd be trying to ransack various tooling that was not currently in full use, as well as inventing plausible-seeming excuses to transfer any technical worker willing to relocate without knowing the full story to a 'secret location' to make arms for the Werwolf movement. They'd try to do this with the connivance of factory managers and without triggering complaints to Berlin, but even if someone complained, they'd have real orders, even if they might seem pointless and desperate orders, and perhaps not specifically addressing individual items of machinery, but the future ASNs would be willing to bribe managers with favours, influence, promises, bartered luxuries and even cash.

By February 1945, the future ASNs can produce orders signed by senior figures in the SS Economic Office, the commanders of the Werwolf program and all the way up to the Reichsführer-SS, stating that the Allied advances made it imperative to move vital strategic assets, like armament factories, to locations chosen to enable them to continue production. Again, specificity would usually be verbal and the orders might be insufficiently precise for book keepers, but the future ASNs would pay in cash for any 'government seizures', not only Reichsmarks, but gold or various desirable considerations, favours and luxuries that the most senior SS leadership had access to, but most Germans no longer did.

During March, as the Allies moved steadily closer to many places east of the Rhine, the future ASNs would have worked openly at salvaging important industrial equipment and valuables that could be hauled up on their trucks, focusing mainly on dies, tooling, ammunition components and already made parts for rifles. In fact, I'm pretty sure the last future ASN trucks raced Allied mechanised infantry and armour as they tried to make it to the gate in Wewelsburg, or failing that, at least escape the Allied encupirclement and reach Berlin and the gate there. Some trucks would have been destroyed by Allied airpower, even.

What I'm wondering is how many skilled technical workers and engineers at Mauser would be passionate enough, either about the cause of the 'Reich' or perhaps their craft, to agree to move from their homes to found a new Reich somewhere unfamiliar and mysterious, if it meant continuing the work they were doing rather than facing an uncertain future in a defeated and probably demilitarized Germany, where their jobs would be outlawed for at least years, maybe even decades (they would mostly remember the post-WWI years or at least know people who did).

By the time they had to decide, the ASNs would be willing to tell those who seemed willing a bit more, so they'd have a rough idea, but likely enough the supernatural aspects would be downplayed. Obviously, some workers may have believed in an Alpine Fortress and others, at least until they committed themselves, that they were headed by submarine to a secret base somewhere remote.

In our real history, Edmund Heckler, Theodor Koch and Alex Seidel risked being shot by French occupying forces for stealing the machines they used to start H&K. Many locals fondly tell the story of working on the 'rescued' old machines from Mauser in the 1950s, obviously proud of the company as a symbol of German engineering and efficiency, as well as regarding the theft of the machines as a heroic local legend, rather than in any way ashamed of the slave quarters that used to stand where they worked, less than a decade before.

Would these engineers and workers be willing to take a leap of faith and leave Oderndorf on the basis of a secret SS plan to rescue German industry?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Icelander

What's your SWAG for when the ASN industry might be in a state to make HE and SAPHE ammunition?

Twenty years after settling? Thirty? Fifty?

Don't know yet. I'm working on an industrial chemistry post (and that's an interesting optimisation problem), and after that I'll do a steel mill post.

With all the information flying by, I'm not currently clear how many TL6-7 Germans they're taking, and what their age profile is. Obviously, there are going to be some significant crests and troughs in the age profile for a century or more, as the SS father a new generation of children over a fairly short time period.

What kind of population and economic infrastructure do they need to be able to make new SAPHE rounds for a couple of dozen single-shot 20mm weapons, for example?

For that few, train up a few people and hand-load them.

And what kind do they need to start churning out enough ammo to make 2 cm Gebirgsflak 38s a practical option for mowing down megafauna and uppity flying horrors?

For that they need a full armaments industry, with the capabilities of late WWI, which is when 20mm shells started to become practical as ammo for automatic weapons.

[Icelander]

I've tracked it down and in the 1943-1945 period that the Antarctic Space Nazis were using their positions as the leaders of the SS to prepare a Last Redoubt on other worlds, the factories of Steyr Daimler Puch, A.G. Werk were working with Granitwerke Mauthausen, a division of DEST, at Gusen and Sankt Georgen an der Gusen, building smallarms for the Nazi war machine using slave labour administered by the SS.

In 1944, when Steyr stopped making MP40 SMGs (because the StG 44 was a better weapon and was due to replace it), the machines and tooling for that task would therefore have almost literally fallen into the hands of the future Antarctic Space Nazis. So, fortunately for those who like their Antarctic Space Nazis to be armed with classic and iconic WWII weaponry, the ASNs looted every single die, press, tool and machine part that they could fit through the Der Riese gate to Jötunheim, during 1944.

Sure, it's almost a 500 km drive, but the Soviets weren't so close during the first few months of 1944 that you couldn't drive across the 'Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia' (i.e. the modern Czech Republic).

Steyr also made Karabiner 98k rifles, as did more than one company that also used SS slave labour for their assembly lines and would therefore have been in a position for the future leaders of the ASNs to acquire machines and tooling from them to take into the new worlds.

After they stopped making MP40s, Steyr switched over to StG 44 assault rifles and actually managed to make some 80,000 of them between 1944 and the end of the war. If the Antarctic Space Nazis managed to move some of the lighter machinery ahead of the invading Soviets, they could have the nucleus of a later production of such rifles.

For one of these random reasons, the ASNs also had pretty good connections into the Československá Zbrojovka Brno company, taken over by the Germans after the conquest of Czechoslovakia. They mostly made rifles that were very close to the Gewehr 98 and during this era, the Karabiner 98k, finally switching over to actually making Karabiner 98k completely to German specs in 1942.

Carl Walther GmbH used satellite production facilities at Neuengamme concentration camp to make some of its Gewehr 43 / Karabiner 43 rifles, which means that at the end of the war, enterprising Antarctic Space Nazis might have liberated some of the machines and tooling, along with engineers and technicians, in March and April 1945.

A number of pistols, like the Radom pistolet wz. 35 Vis and probably many of the common German issue ones were also made by slaves from the SS camps.

Somewhat oddly, I've come across multiple references to DEST having made 'carbines' and 'Mauser machine pistols' in the camps, but I don't know the exact weapons involved. The 'carbines' could be a translation of the K98k by someone unfamiliar with the weapon, but which Mauser machine pistol did the Germans mass-produce in WWII?

Were any of the full-auto Mauser C96 models, i.e. the M1932/M712 Schnellfeuer, made during WWII? Somehow, I thought the issue weapons were from existing stock made in 1936 and earlier.

I know that Mauser took over Luger production after WWI and that the Waffen-SS used old stocks of Lange Pistole 08 (Artillery Luger) with long barrel and stock, which I guess someone might call a 'machine pistol', but I don't think there were any new models made, let alone any significant numbers of them in select-fire.

Of course, given the fact that the heaviest machines couldn't be easily removed and would have been functionally impossible to move over to the other worlds, the ASNs were mostly concentrating on stuff that would allow them to later build up their own capacity to make these weapons.

The ASNs would have liked to have been able to continue their production in their new homes as soon as they got there, but in order for that to have been possible, they'd have to have been able to move orders of magnitude more weight over and they'd have needed to be able to move loads using vehicles, not be limited to beast-men power over the World Tree.

Still, having the complete plans for these weapons and their ammunition, some people who worked at making them and pretty much every part from the factories that can be broken down into individual pieces smaller than about 400 lbs., is a pretty good start for when the ASNs have built up the infrastructure in their new home enough to have plenty of coal power and a decent supply of high quality steel.

Does anyone know whether other German small arms were made in factories connected to the SS administered slave labour system or perhaps even in concentration camps?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Excellent. Small-scale reloading at first, which seems to justify arming the Wehrbauern with black powder weapons, as it was too difficult to manufacture enough smokeless powder fast enough for their needs, at least during the first few wars against the locals.

I'd start with TL4 black powder + flintlock muskets for local levies, because they're a huge advantage over TL2-3 weaponry, but people armed with them can't defeat TL6 troops with bolt-action rifles without a ridiculous numerical advantage.

Is 'up to 12.5mm' an approximate value or an absolute limit for a typical small arm shop?

Approximate. It simply depends on how big someone wanted to be able to handle when he ordered the machines for this experimental shop, which will be part of a larger arms works.

A small gunsmith business doesn't usually have the ability to make cartridge cases from sheet brass AFAIK. If they're developing a new round, they'll order basic cases, and tinker with neck length and shoulder angle via hand tools. A high-end sporting arms business that creates specialised cartridges, like H&H, will have drawing machines, but I don't know the names of German or Austrian firms that did that. However, I can probably find out in an hour or two.

How long do you guess it might take the ASNs to develop their own petrochemical industries?

They know what's needed, but it's a lot of heavy equipment. They need a significant steel industry first, which I have not researched yet.

How many people are required to extract a decent supply of usable lead per year from mines where the TL2 locals already mine it? That is, how many TL7 people, because we can easily throw locals at it. Though likely enough, only a couple of thousand locals that could be captured alive would already have the necessary skills. Still and all, even if you don't capture them alive, you can make use of those TL2 and TL3 miners, with the favour of the Lords of the Last Waste on your side.

You need mining foremen with skill and willingness, maybe 1 for each 50 miners. If they're locals, they'll need some extra training. You need a real mining engineer for each shift, and a boss mining engineer.

Then you need the people to extract the lead from the ore, don't know about that yet.

The primary reason I imagined that the ASNs would field AP rounds despite not facing any armour that WWII veterans would recognise as such, is that various strange and mystical fey creatures are vulnerable to iron weapons and thus to the hardened steel penetrators of typical AP rounds.

Mass-producing hardened steel penetrators takes mechanisation. I think powdered iron bullets for MP40s are a good idea for anti-Fey.

Everything I've found and heard from you sounds like my initial feeling, i.e. that they could maintain a force with their WWII vintage small arms in the field, but that they would not be able to be profligate with ammunition for the first couple of generations, is true.

I think you're right, and none of what I'm researching is indicating otherwise.

one exclusively staffed with Earth-born ASN engineers and technicians, where they did their best to keep the advanced weapons they brought functional and supplied,

One thing they can readily do is bring a lot of Mauser 1898 actions and barrels, not assembled, and use local wood to put stocks on them. That saves the limited carriage capacity.

This second tier would then have a variety of increasingly more restricted technology, with black powder made with TL4 methods being sold to the Svartálfrheim allies from the start and impossible to conceal from the native 'Aryan' population from the Neue Reich (and probably quickly familiar to various necessary slaves of less Aryan origin), but the making of percussion caps and primers being regarded as much more sensitive information.

Plausible.

how are they getting massive amounts of saltpeter? Is it all censored and redacted, i.e. French and Swiss methods, and similar foul smelling ways?

That's one way. Mineable niter or nitratine are most unlikely in the climates you have available, which are all too damp. I'm looking at this for the industrial chemistry post.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by johndallman

With all the information flying by, I'm not currently clear how many TL6-7 Germans they're taking, and what their age profile is. Obviously, there are going to be some significant crests and troughs in the age profile for a century or more, as the SS father a new generation of children over a fairly short time period.

They'll have some 40,000 adults and about 12,000 German children in 1945 / Year 1. That's about 28,000 adult men and 12,500 adult women.

Of the adult males, less than a thousand are the new aristocracy of carefully chosen SS men, about 2,000 are other SS men and Waffen-SS men whose positions were such that they had to be included (many of these will also have been hand-picked, but for practical qualities). Albert Lütkemeyer, the commandant of the camps at Der Riese project, is perhaps the best example of someone chosen for loyalty, obedience and willingness to carry out a dull, soul-crushing job without complaining or asking questions rather than any genius or outstanding qualities.

By contrast, Franz Xaver Dorsch was a necessary addition, for all that that none of the inner circle of the SS trusted him one inch and he was never among those who knew every secret of the scheme for the Last Redoubt, even as he was probably one of the most important members when it came to actually granting the future ASN access to German industry and resources.

Of course, the distrust was warranted, Dorsch was a spy for Bormann, and his reports to Bormann allowed that worthy to secure a position in the Last Redoubt. Of course, Bormann was not quite prepared for the supernatural elements involved and his immediate bid for ultimate power in place of Himmler and his coterie was swiftly abandoned in favour of a more long-term plan when he realized the awesome and terrifying power of the Black Knights of the inner circle of the SS.

Some 25,000 of the total settlers are scientists, engineers, experts, technicians and other necessary people from various industries overseen by the SS and the OT. That includes about a thousand of the most elite commandos that Himmler and the Waffen-SS were able to obtain, usually through projects ostensibly connected to Werwolf or similar projects Otto Skorzeny was involved in, as well as probably a couple of thousand SS and Waffen-SS men chosen for soldierly qualities. There were more Waffen-SS men they wanted to bring, as well as their families, but at the end, there were too few trucks, too little time and the Soviets were advancing too fast. Thousands of potential ASNs died in desperate fighting meant to slow the Allied advance, mostly in the East, to give the others slightly more time.

The skewed gender ratios and the few children are due to several factors, but the most important are high numbers of young unmarried men among the volunteers who were prepared to go. There are also fairly high numbers of middle-aged and older experts who have grown children, some of whom are numbered among the other adult colonists. There were also several thousands skilled workers and SS men who were brought over at the end of April 1945 who had been away from their families on the Eastern Front or working at secret facilities and never even got the chance to see them before their headlong flight from the Soviets was directed through gates in the Owl Mountains or Berlin.

Another contributing factor is the rapid collapse of German units at the end of WWII, which led to the ASNs having to hurry their preparations and some 'less vital' shipments being cancelled in favour of materiel that the planners considered absolutely necessary. Various equipment or personnel with vital skills were thus prioritized over unmarried German girls who were to be taken as future wives for unmarried men among the technical workforce.

In any case, it was determined that the local 'Aryan' population of Germania Hyperborea should be able to supply such wives, or breeding stock, at the very least. Which they did, certainly, which is why there are much more pure-blooded descendants of Germans among the SS men and their families than the families of the 'ordinary' Germans, who have mixed much more with the natives, at least those of good 'Aryan' stock.

A source of much anger and frustration among the first generation of ordinary Germans in the Neue Reich was the fact that while the families of SS men were a high priority, many of the technicians and skilled workers who were offered a place in the hectic months as Germany was falling, January to the end of April, 1945, were promised that their families would be moved over, but with several truck convoys being destroyed by Allied aircraft or encircled and captured by Allied advances, thousands of their wives and children were left behind in the Third Reich. Many of these men also suspect, rightly, that decisions were made that prioritized moving important industrial materiel and skilled technicians over the families of those who were already in Jötunheim or Germania Hyperborea.

One last-ditch attempt was made to move some of the dependents over in April 1945, either through Der Riese, in the Owl Mountains in Lower Silesia, or the Berlin gate, with Sepp Dietrich ordered to lead the entire 6th Panzer Army in support and round up as many dependents as possible, failed miserably, at least in so far as it was meant to get thousands of people over.

Only a few hundred survivors, soldiers and dependents both, led by Joachim Peiper, managed to reach Jötunheim through the Silesian gate, after having somehow eluded capture by the Soviets. Sepp Dietrich fell along the way, as did most of the rest of the 6th Panzer Army, breaking through the Soviet lines in an insane offensive without supplies or support, with no goal apparent to the Soviets, merely in order to allow at least that small group to reach the new world. Tanks were abandoned as pillboxes as trucks loaded with refugees and soldiers rumbled through Soviet lines, looking for routes where the Red Army had not yet penetrated.

Originally Posted by johndallman

For that few, train up a few people and hand-load them.

For that they need a full armaments industry, with the capabilities of late WWI, which is when 20mm shells started to become practical as ammo for automatic weapons.

Excellent. They'll have several hundred people who used to make such rounds in quantity in a TL7 factory and at least a few engineers who designed the factory that made them.

The technicians and workers who came along were mostly brought in the last few months of the Third Reich. There were a few scientists, surveyors and technicians in Jötunheim from 1943 and in Germania Hyperborea from early 1944, but in terms of total numbers, 90% of the new settlers did not know where they were going until shortly before arriving there and even those who knew mostly only moved for good in the spring 1945. Regardless, there were some engineers involved with those factories who knew that they'd want some way to handload 20mm shells, and have had that information ever since mid-to-late 1943. These could have designed a way to handload the big rounds with equipment that they brought over.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by johndallman

A high-end sporting arms business that creates specialised cartridges, like H&H, will have drawing machines, but I don't know the names of German or Austrian firms that did that. However, I can probably find out in an hour or two.

No, I can't. Cartridges of the World doesn't have enough detail on German designs. Mauser, RWS and DWM will certainly have all the equipment you need.