M-Model 35121 MG 08 with Crew on Fire Point

At the start of World War I, in August 1914, the army of imperial Germany was considered the best and most efficient in the Old Continent. Such a conviction resulted mainly from the fame of the victories won in the course of the wars with Austria in 1866 and with France in the years 1870-1871. Also, many organizational solutions used at that time in the Prussian army, and later in the German army (e.g. strategic railway lines or mobilization techniques) were copied in other European countries. As in the French and Russian armies, the largest number of armed forces in the German army in 1914 was infantry. However, unlike the army of its opponents, the German armed forces from the beginning of the Great War attached considerable importance to the role of machine weapons on the battlefield. The Germans, in the composition of their infantry regiment, which consisted of 3 battalions, introduced a machine gun company of 6 heavy machine guns as an organic sub-unit. The main armament of this company were Maschinengewehr 08 rifles (MG08 for short), which were essentially developed on the basis of the Hiram Maxim rifle, which was created in the mid-1880s. Although it was a relatively heavy and not very handy weapon, it turned out to be reliable and useful on the battlefield. Nevertheless, the German army, already in the course of World War I, wanted to create a light machine gun, which led to the creation of the MG 08/15, which entered service in 1915. It was a rifle that could only be operated by one shooter, which significantly improved his mobility. As you can guess, the saturation of the German army with machine weapons increased significantly during the First World War.