Dienstglas, E.Leitz / Wetzlar 6x30 M H/6400 Binoculars

Here is a set of early WW2 German military binoculars. I picked these up in the 1970's at a very cool, and very funky, junk store up in the little Northern California mountain community of Cohasset. The store was called Voses and was a family run business. The family primarily bought out old estates for the antique furniture, but often ended up with lots of "junk" that went with it. The furniture was refinished and re-sold, and the "junk" ended in the "store" at CHEAP prices. A very fun and funky old store.......... That's where these binoculars came from. As I recall, I paid about $5.00 for them. The leather case came along later. I bought the case here in Port Townsend, at a yard sale, a year or two ago, for a couple of dollars...... another bargain! The case is U.S. Military from an unknown date, but fit the German Binoculars perfectly.

Here's the info on the binoculars:

They were manufactured by E. Leitz / Wetzlar prior to February, 1941. In 1941, Germany started using three letter codes for the manufactures, instead of the complete names, so that the enemy would not be able to tell where the equipment was made and then bomb the factories.

These glasses are standard field binoculars (Dienstglas), that were used widely by German military field soldiers in all theaters of the war. The magnification is 6x30. There is a range reticle-scale in the right hand lens of the binoculars and the barrel cap is marked "H/6400" indicating the range scale and "M" for metric. Each eye piece is calibrated and focus individually.



The U.S. leather case is nearly identical to the correct German issued case that would have come with the binoculars. The case snap is the US type "lift the dot" style, where the German type would be a spring tensioned type latch like the type used on the German Gas Mask Canister in the previous post.