SCHWERE PANZERSPAHWAGEN 8-RAD SDKFZ 234/4 (75mm PaK40 L/46) IN 1/15 SCALE. The 8-Wheeled Heavy Armored Reconnaissance Vehicle SdKfz 234/4 75mm PaK40 L/46 was the final vehicle in the SdKfz 234 ARK series. This was another of the types suggested by the personal intervention of Adolf Hitler and was potentially an excellent type, reflecting the desperate situation on Germany's fighting fronts in late 1944-45. The SdKfz 234/4 had the powerful long 75mm PaK40 anti-tank gun. This was a weapon of proven effectiveness as a ground mount, the standard anti-tank gun with infantry units. The SdKfz 234/4 simply took the complete gun and carriage minus the wheels and placed it straight into the open fighting compartment. The result was a crude but potent wheeled tank destroyer. The particular merit of this vehicle was its speed, low profile, and fast drive in either direction. Known to the troops as the "Pak-wagen" (anti-tank vehicle) and did all it was called upon to do. This promising Pak-wagen got a chance to show its mettle in the last battles of the Reich where it distinguished itself along the line of such weapons as the Panzerfaust and other anti-tank weapons that were created in the closing months of the war. In the Battle of Berlin the soviets lost 300,000 men and 3,000 tanks, a grizzly reminder of the ferocity and intensity of the last European battle that was fought in that cataclysmic and immense tragedy known as the Second World War. The plunder, rape and pillage of eastern Germany had already become infamous around the world. Russian troops had indulged in sexual debauchery against the German woman hardly paralleled in modern times, where the Russian soldiers descended beneath the level of animals. The Soviet savage would force her legs open, and wait to see her roof burning, capable of descending to the worst excesses of human savagery and dehumanization, in an unspeakable scene. All females regardless of age, were pitilessly raped time after time by hulking Russian soldiers, they showed no feelings other than hate and lust, as each Russian brute satisfied himself amid the wildly terrified screams and groans of the woman sick to heart in a way anybody has ever known. Russian behaviour was full of such arresting barbarism. For the Soviet soldier brutality and subhuman conduct of all kinds was the rule. The kind of mentality created by the sheer inhumanity of Bolshevism, an indescribable inner turmoil, in which the Soviet soldier participated to the full. In the kind of age in which we are living, where civilization might well be overturned at a maniac's touch, all people of western hemisphere should be aware of this approach to dealing with people of Eastern mentality. Events described in this chapter have been set down solely to show the shocking effects of Communism (mankind's worst social aberration). This is evidence that the half-century of Cold War which followed the conclusion of World War II distorted our views of the world and our values, and saw the USA and the USSR posture for position in the post-war world. The final Battle for Berlin represents the labor pains which gave birth to that half-century, a huge orgy of death and destruction that took the lives of some 750,000 people. For we have now lived for a half-century in the world created by the sacrifice of these people. A good time to pause and reflect not only on the past, but on the challenges that confront us in the ever-diversifying, increasingly complex world that lies ahead. Recently the world has seen some remarkable changes over the past few years. Witnessing the collapse of one of the Second World War's victors-----The Soviet Union----as well as the reintegration of one of its losers----Germany. The latter emerged from this war stronger than ever before, and the Soviet Union more enfeebled than ever. Both Britain and France lost all its colonial rule in the post-war period. Against all odds Germany emerged from the conflagration like platinum. The allies after the war admitted that Hitler and the German people did not want war, but they still declared war on Germany, intent on destroying it, in accordance with their principle of balance of power, and which were encouraged by Churchill and Roosevelt. The allies ignored Hitler's pleadings not to enter into war, later on the allies were forced to realize that Hitler was right. He offered them the co-operation of Germany; instead, since 1945, the allies have been facing the immense power of Marxist tyranny. It was latter on that the allies felt ashamed and humiliated to see that the aims they accused Hitler of, are being relentlessly pursued now, only under a different label. Germany alone took up the fight against Marxism. Should any state thought it necessary to ally himself with Marxism let that state be convinced of this: It will not save Marxism, that state will but share the ruin to which Marxism was doomed. Nevertheless, it seems that we have been unable to completely recognize the significance of these events; the nations of the world do little more than stare blankly at the continuing ethnic strife taking place in nearly every corner of our planet. In doing so, let us keep the words "History repeats itself" foremost in our thoughts.
