The armored vestiges of the Cold War: a tanks graveyard in Germany

During the Cold War years, many people feared the possible outbreak of nuclear war, but conventional warfare was not neglected.

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Both NATO and Warsaw Pact member armies equipped themselves with large numbers of tanks, in anticipation that it would be as important a weapon as it was in World War II. One of the largest armored parks in the Atlantic Alliance was that of West Germany. Its Army received more than 1,100 M-47 Patton (1951) battle tanks from the United States, and later that country manufactured its own models, starting with the Leopard 1 (1965), acquiring more than 2,400 units.

In the 1980s, the West German Army began to renew its armored fleet with the most modern Leopard 2s, so that its predecessors were left behind. A considerable part of them was sold to other countries. Others rest today in tank graveyards and training camps, being used as targets. Last year, Lithuanian urban explorer Pamirštos Vietos visited a tank graveyard in Germany containing 24 vehicles in all: a Leopard 1 and 23 M-47s, lined up in four equal rows of six units each. He showed them in the following video: