Foreign (auslander) Forces
The foreign (auslander) armed services were also well represented. These include English, American, Danish, Dutch, Belgian, Ethiopian, French, Swiss, Italian, Hungarian, Romanian, (British) Indian, Chinese and Japanese.
The French forces include the French Army (marching and combat figures), marching French sailors, marching French colonial forces ("French" and "native"), and a short line of the elite chasseurs alpins (mountain troops). The Belgians were represented by infantry—marching figures and combat figures; there was also a short line of figures wearing the distinctive green beret of the Ardennes Rifle Corps.
The Italians were represented by marching infantry and several combat figures; there were also marching officers and men of the elite bersaglieri rifle units with their broad-brimmed hats and black cockerel feathers. Italian figures in tropical uniforms, and (black) African colonial soldiers were produced in small numbers.
Hausser-Elastolin made most of its foreign figures by adding a head with the correct helmet to a headless conventional body and then painting the figure accordingly. That is why English, American and French soldiers are armed with German-style "potato masher" hand grenades rather than the Allied "pineapple" hand grenade, and why they carry a standard German gas mask canister. However, there are also some foreign figures that were made from special castings—those of Belgian and French soldiers wearing long greatcoats being the best example.
Several other European nations took note of the greater protection afforded by the German stahlhelm design and used it for their own forces. This made it possible for Elastolin to create figures representing some foreign armies simply by painting standard German figures with German heads in the color(s) of a foreign uniform. Therefore, it is helpful to have a good reference book such as Andrew Mollo's The Armed Forces of World War II to correctly identify them—particularly when distinguishing between German, Hungarian and Swiss personnel.
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