"Prices are not high," Ballschmieter said. About 3,000 trucks have been sold since the gates opened last August and 5,000 remain on the lot, with more arriving every day. So former East German bases, like this one on the Baltic Sea coast where Wernher von Braun developed the V-2 rocket for the Nazi Wehrmacht, have been converted into sales and storage depots.Įvery day, Ballschmieter said, as many as 100 customers drop by his Materiel Depot Service company to kick a few tires (carefully - many of them are flat) and pick up a few deals (trucks are selling for as little as $400). But Bonn's experts, along with their NATO allies, quickly concluded that most of what the Soviet bloc had produced was either not up to snuff or was incompatible with Western products.Īnd the windfall of military materiel came at the worst possible time, just as Germany, like the United States and other countries in Europe, was scrapping huge volumes of its own equipment and weaponry in compliance with arms reduction treaties. When East Germany was folded into its western brother state, reunited Germany became the reluctant owner of the considerable might of the communist state's National People's Army - tens of thousands of tanks, fighter planes, vehicles and smaller weapons, as well as 300,000 tons of ammunition.Īt first, Germany's military was curious: Finally they could examine every product of the eastern war machine. Jeeps, hospital trucks, dump trucks, radar trucks, personnel carriers, water trucks, amphibious vehicles, even trucks that lay pontoons - just name it and Ballschmieter has them by the thousands. PEENEMUENDE, GERMANY - Gerhard Ballschmieter runs the world's largest used truck lot, row upon row of Soviet and East German military vehicles lined up as far as the eye can see, filling what used to be the main runway of this historic air base.
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