‘Why do you collect German helmets?’ This is a question which people are always asking me, sometimes I find it hard to give a definitive answer, but I have been thinking about this a lot lately and here are my reasons.

I have always been interested in history, ever since I was at Primary School. As I got older I realised that war and history are linked intrinsically and I wanted to try and understand just what the men involved in the most destructive conflict man has ever known went through. I find holding an ORIGINAL German steel helmet gives me a kind of catalyst which fires my imagination and somehow enables me to more deeply contemplate and understand the sheer horrific magnitude of this war and the history that I have read about in so many books. But why not an American M1 or British Mk2? The reason Europe erupted into war in 1939 was because of Hitler and the Nazi Party,the Wehrmacht was the tool which was used by Hitler to pursue the 2nd World War, so in short when I hold a German helmet, I am indirectly holding the reason and the cause for WW2 in my hands, and you cant really say that about the aforementioned helmets. I don’t and never will condone or support the actions of the Nazi Party or those that carried out barbaric war crimes, but I think we should all understand that not every man in the Wehrmacht was a Nazi or guilty of war crimes. A Russian woman watching a parade of German POW’s after the defeat at Stalingrad sums it up for me " look at them, just like our poor boys, forced into war".

Next time someone asks me ‘Why do you collect German helmets’, this will be my answer. I hope it makes sense

I would be interested to here what my fellow WRF members reasons for collecting are.