Kriegsbauart information

Kriegsbauart (German, 'wartime class') refers to railway goods wagon classes that were developed during the Second World War for the Deutsche Reichsbahn. The start of the war was an arbitrary dividing line for the classification of goods wagons, and did not represent any technological change. In the period shortly before the war, goods wagons were already being designed from a military perspective. This was particularly true for the stake wagons of 1938, which are occasionally referred to as a 'pre-war class' (Vorkriegsbauart) of wagons.

The transition from the welded Austauschbauart goods wagons to the first Kriegsbauart classes was therefore defined, not so much by design changes, but far more by a concentration on fewer types of wagons and their construction in greater numbers. The cause of this was the rapid increase in transportation tasks, because the railways in German were sucked into the events of war as never before. The Deutsche Reichsbahn was seen as an indispensable partner of National Socialism, both for the transportation of vehicles, troops and supplies as well as the deportation of Jews to the Nazi concentration camps.

From 1954, the Deutsche Reichsbahn in East Germany put many goods wagons through its reconstruction programme. Some of these ''Reko'' goods wagons [de] were in service until the start of the 1990s.

For consistency, the division of the goods wagons described in this article is based on that in the Austauschbauart article.