DAK Defenses MOC

 During 1942 the fate of the African Theatre of War was decided when Rommel was stopped in El Alamein at the doors of the very important Suez canal. After a first battle which finished with a stalemate there was a second one where the Allied troops were able to defeat the Italo-German forces and push them many hundred kilometers back into Lybia to never step in Egypt again. 

Due the circumstances of the war in this front and because the front itself was too wide the Germans built fortificated static positions like the one represented here and sorrounded them with mines and barbedwire in what is called "Devil's garden". An estimated 3 million mines were laid before the battle according to Wikipedia site.

In this new MOC (My Own Creation) I show you today I did my best to represent an example of the German defenses around El Alamein. 

Main picture of the MOC

Inspiration for this build (and information for this post!) is taken from these pages from a book called "Afrika Korps. Rommel's warriors" from the collection "World War 2 Elite Troops" from the publishing company Tikal (Susaeta Ediciones).

Reference picture for the build

As you may have noticed my build isn't as big and either has barbedwire or any similar stuff around it but that's because a lack of parts to do it bigger.

These positions consisted of 16 to 24 men with a 37 or 50mm PaK anti tank gun and a mortar sometimes. In the scene I represented in my build the soldiers are putting their new PaK 38 in it's position. 

This PaK 50 design of mine is from 2013-2014 but I think it still looks decent nowadays

In the flanks there were machine guns. To represent this I put a MG 42 laying on the ground in one flank as you can see below.

Behind the soldier above you can see the space for the mortar. Shown below too.

And that's all the information I can give you. The book says these positions where very useful to stop the Allied units. I had fun building this. I find it kinda different to what I usually build. The tan color is one of my favourite and this almost all tan build looks amazing to the eye I would say. At least for mines. The North African front (and whole African fronts to be honest) are amazing to study and learn about. I find it a super interesting topic. War there was something else. It may not have been as tough as the Eastern front but this war of movements in an almost plain desert of thousands of kilometers had crazy things not seen in any other place like the Long Range Desert Group depots/bases behind enemy lines or the (obviously) very high temperatures they faced during the days and cold in the nights. I really hope you enjoyed reading this and the whole MOC itself. In a future post I may upload my DAK army showing you the minifigs more in detail and giving more information in case anyone wants to build them. Here are the rest of the pictures and the YouTube video.

AliExpress DAK minifigs offer an amazing base to start with

Long life to my old PaK 50 design!

Many hours and patience put into these hand-painted gear

Probably my favourite minifig of the MOC. Dark Brown Kar 98k is something else :-)

The Battle of Berlin MOC

 The Battle of Berlin was the final major offensive of the European theatre of World War II. It took place from April 16 to May 2, 1945, as Soviet forces launched a massive assault on Nazi Germany’s capital.

Led by Marshal Zhukov and Marshal Konev, over 2.5 million Soviet troops attacked from the east, while German forces, including old men and young boys from the Volkssturm, desperately defended the city. Intense urban warfare erupted, with street-by-street and house-by-house fighting.

By April 30, Soviet troops reached the Reichstag, and Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker. On May 2, Berlin officially surrendered to the Soviets. The battle marked the end of Nazi Germany, leading to Germany's unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945, and the end of World War II in Europe. 

So happy to finally be able show you my latest project. I have been working on it since mid April and I put a lot of effort and time on it as you can imagine. It is 96 studs long and 48 wide. It is the MOC I created with more parts used. It is also the tallest. The battle of Berlin is one of my favourite battles to study because I just find interesting the mix of different units used on the city (From Kriegsmarine ground units to Luftwaffe including the Wehrmacht and the Volkssturm of course) and the prototype weapons they used to try an impossible and desperate defense of their Reich. As it is one of my favourite battles to study I created different MOCs over the years including a a quick stopmotion many years ago. Months ago the idea of creating a U-Bahn (underground) station came to my mind. I love "different levels" builds and I enjoyed a lot creating this one. It has 3 and the building has some more. Another thing I wanted to achieve with this build is to have something to see in all it's four sides same like I did with my Arnhem MOC from months ago. 

Had fun building this MOC but I have a bittersweet feeling because I didn't have the parts to finish it with a bigger building and had to do a ruined one which I'm not sure if fits properly the rest of the building. As the MOC progressed I ran out of parts. 

I posted on my YouTube channel and in my Tik Tok short videos of the building process but here are some pictures:

Many books

These pictures show how I raised the floor for the build

Enjoyed a lot the 3 hours spent on building this kitchen

The kitchen I made even is barely seen finally on the MOC

And now some pictures I took of the complete build: 

This part looks poor compared to what I had in my mind but I lack parts to do proper civilians 

YouTube video of the build: