Close-up of Fahrgestell (chassis), Laufrad (roadwheels), and Spannrad (track-guide idlers). Stug III had Gummi (hard-rubber) rimmed roadwheels, but excessive wear often chipped the rubber down to its steel rim. This condition was mimicked by shaving roadwheel edges with XACTO knife, painted with TESTORS Black, and dry-brushed with TESTOR Navy Grey.

To avoid this rubber roadwheel wear-down condition, some German tanks and tank destroyers (ex. Tiger, Panther, King Tiger, Jadgpanzer IV, Jadgtiger) installed steel-resilient roadwheels. Some tanks had all the wheels replaced (ex. Tiger, Panther, King Tiger), while others replaced only the front 4 roadwheels since they handled most of track gripping stress (ex. Jadgpanzer IV).

Inset 1 : Stug III decked out with spare track armor on frontal areas. Its crew wearing traditional Black Panzerjacke (tunics) instead of field-green / grey versions for Assault Gun crews. Spare tracks also bolted onto side hull between the roadwheels and upper return idlers. Lost Battalion Military Reproductions, German Army Products - www.lostbattalions.com/german33-45/heer/heerlist.html

Inset 2 : 1944 Normandy-France battles, German Stug crewman killed when internal ammunition bin exploded as he tried to evacuate, hence flung his body over gun barrel. Such are fortunes of war, nationalistic slogans aside, old proverb holds true that only the dead has seen the last of war. Normandy Battlefield Tours - www.normandybattlefields.com/battle_sites.htm

Debates continue to rage between western Allies and former Soviet bloc over who really won WW2. US/UK vigorously assert that it was June 1944 Normandy invasion which opened a 2-front war against Nazi Germany, thus prevented Germans from shifting mass reinforcements to Ostfront, hence placed Allies in ground striking distance of western Germany Rhur industrial region, leading to ultimate victory.

Former Soviet-bloc (Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia) counters that it was July 1944 Bagration offensive which tied down majority of German forces on Ostfront, prevented them from mass reinforcement of Westfront, and ultimately led to cut-off of German oil supplies in Romania and Hungary, thereby accelerating its military collapse. ex-Soviet bloc also pointed to British Prime Minister Churchill formal request to Soviet Union leader Stalin to accelerate Bagration launch timetable to take German pressure off Allied forces on Normandy front and battling with great difficulty to break-out of bocage (French for hedgerow) countryside in June 1944. Hedge (gardening) - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgerow

Inset 3 : 24 July 1944, with Soviet Bagration offensive in full swing, its forces liberated first German extermination camp at Majdanek (also written Maidanek), near Polish city of Lublin. Sensing propaganda windfall, Soviet investigators quickly broadcast its discovery worldwide and commissioned a formal report on 16 Sept 1944. Majdanek - www.deathcamps.org/lublin/majdanek.html

Soon, other German death camps were overrun in Poland, including Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno (German name was Kulmhof), Sobibor, Treblinka. Although death camps were rumored in the west, its full extent was revealed not until Soviets seized control of region. Operation Reinhard : The Extermination Camps of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka - www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/reinhard.html

• Additional info : Majdanek Jewish Virtual Library - www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/maidanek.html

• Majdanek - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majdanek

• Majdanek Death Camp - www.scrapbookpages.com/Poland/Majdanek/Majdanek.html

• Extermination camp Majdanek - www.cympm.com/majdanek.html

• LUBLIN/MAJDANEK CONCENTRATION CAMP: CONDITIONS - www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005190

• Lublin-Majdanek Camp - cghs.dade.k12.fl.us/ib_holocaust2001/Final_Solution/selected_camps/lubin_majdanek_camp.htm

Camps with Concentration, Death, and Extermination titles are used synonymously in modern history, but differences did exist. Extermination/Death camps (ex. Auschwitz-Poland) were solely designed for mass execution of European Jewry, hence the gas chamber was decided as most efficient and effective means of carrying out this activity. Auschwitz concentration camp - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp

Concentration camps (ex. Dachau-Germany) were used to imprison Nazi-designated undesirables (ex. Jews, sexual deviants, political prisoners) and became strategic resource for slave labor since Germans encountered chronic manpower shortages throughout the war. Prisoners mainly died from malnutrition, worked to death, or illness. Dachau concentration camp - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_concentration_camp

Between 1939-1941, Germans did utilized other extermination techniques (ex. firing squad, incite local pogroms, carbon-monoxide gas bus), but all encountered logistical problems. Majority of personnel assigned to firing squads could only withstand emotional strain of killing unarmed civilians to a limit, after which self composure and discipline began to break-down, hence personnel had to be replaced.

Germans did create SS-Einsatzgruppen (SS Replacement Group) from ranks of Allgemeine-SS (SS political arm), Sicherheitsdienst (SD or Security Police), and Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo). These personnel possessed the cold emotional discipline of carrying out regular mass firing squad executions, its formation could ethnically cleanse a geographic locale, but not large scale eradication of European Jewish race. Einsatzgruppen - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen

Germans and collaborationist regime did incited pogroms against local Jewish population (ex. Poland, Ukraine, Baltic, Balkan), but once the deed was done, bodies had to be proper disposed which required additional manpower, otherwise rampant disease could quickly emerge. Like one WW2 veteran remarked, a disease does not ask if you are Jewish, Gentile, or Aryan, it simply infects any person encountered and decimates local population. Pogrom - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom

Deployment of carbon-monoxide gas buses was more efficient execution means, but they were limited in numbers, only process small number of victims at a time, and at times the gas would burn off before filling the entire bus chamber (resulting in survivors). Thus after much discussion, German political, - government - military arms decided at infamous Jan 1942 Wannsee Conference to construct extermination camps in occupied Poland to facilitate mass execution of European Jewry via gas chambers and crematoriums. Wannsee Conference - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wannsee_Conference

Inset 4 : Although Soviets revealed existence of German extermination camps in 1944, they were far from being WW2 victims. Soviet Union was an accomplice to WW2 instigation via secret protocols signed in August 1939 German-Soviet Non-Aggression pact. When Germans invaded Poland from the west in Sept 1939, Soviets invaded from the east, both nations partitioned Poland into their respective control.

With thousands of Polish military officers, intellectuals, government officials captured by Soviets, some were sent to salve labor Gulags, while others were executed outright. Most infamous site was 1940 Katyn Massacre located in forested region between Russian towns of Katyn and Gnezdovo, estimates range between 2,000 to 28,000 victims. After 1941 German invasion of Soviet Union, Katyn site was discovered in April 1943, in which Germans reap propaganda windfall of revealing Soviet excesses. Photo showed German representatives with exhumed Polish dead at Katyn, stacked like chord wood for maximum body storage in burial pit. Needless to state, modern day Poles privately view both Germany and former Soviet republics (Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia) with equal suspicion. Katyn massacre - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn

Inset 5 : With Concentration Camp title possessing taboo connotation, US history judiciously selected terms of Internment or Relocation Camp to described forced evacuation of Japanese-Americans from western coastal regions during WW2. Magnitude of exodus impacted 110,000 Japanese-American citizens/legal aliens, 22,000 Canadian-Japanese citizens/legal aliens were also forcibly moved in same manner. Note, only region where Japanese-Americans were not mass interned was Hawaii Islands where about 125,000 of them resided. If they were interned the entire island chain civil service logistical structure would have immediately collapsed. Japanese American internment - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment

Photo inset, April 1942 Japanese-American store owner in Oakland-California laments with his sign "I AM AN AMERICAN", his other sign "SOLD White & Pollard" indicated he has sold his store to new owners White & Pollard since all evacuee are compelled to dispose all property and financial assets before departing for years of internment. Camps of California - www.dorothea-lange.org/Photo%20Gallary/photo_gallery_camps.htm

Declassified documents in 2000 also revealed a few hundred Japanese citizens kidnapped by South American governments on bequest of US and sent to these American camps for interrogation and act as "Bargaining Chips" with wartime Japan. Canadian History: Japanese Internment Begins - http://en.epochtimes.com/news/5-2-28/26655.html

Rationale for this mass racially motivated evacuation varies (note Americans of German and Italian-descent were not forcibly interned in such camps during WW2), but sufficient to state 1940s-era US society was quite racially segregated and dejure discrimination against groups of particular race, color, creed, and religion was common place. Some Americans stated removal of these Japanese-Americans was for their own safety to prevent race riots and protect them from mass pogroms after US entry into WW2. Japanese-Americans and the War At Home - teacher.scholastic.com/activities/wwii/ahf/mineta/background.htm

However, its detractors asserted that US President Roosevelt signing of this evacuation executive order condemned all Japanese-Americans of guilt by ethnic association, thus enabled other west coast Americans to disenfranchise this population by seizing lucrative Japanese-Americans business and land possession. The internees were distributed to relocation camps as far away as Arkansas - Louisiana - Wisconsin, most famous of these camps was Manzanar-California which is now designated as US national historical site. Manzanar - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manzanar

This 1942 forced evacuation also impacted 1944 landmark US Supreme Court decision in Korematsu versus United States case. Korematsu v. United States - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korematsu_v._United_States

• KOREMATSU V. UNITED STATES (1944) - usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/65.htm

Although it would take almost 50 years for this injustice to be rectified via a formal US apology in 1988 to Japanese-American internees, the old Latin proverb holds true: INTER ARMA ENIM SILENT LEGES (in times of war, the law falls silent). List of Latin phrases - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_phrases_%28full%29