The Soldier at the Western Front – The Use of Automatic Weapons
Source 5: Poster of 08/15 (1954)

The 08/15 machine gun was a rationalization project of the royal fabrications bureau for Infantry in Spandau, a predecessor of the German Institute for Standardization. The standardized single parts of the 08/15 therefore could be manufactured in different companies. Even the assembly of the delivered weapons have been realized in different places: Until the end of 1918 the „Gewehrfabrik Spandau“ had delivered 50,000 and the „Gewehrfabrik Erfurt“ 33,000 units. Besides the „Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg (M.A.N)“ had produced 14.000, „Siemens & Halske“ 13,000. „Sauer & Sohn“ in Suhl 11.000, the „Rheinische Maschinen- und Metallwarenfabrik (Rheinmetall)“ 7,000 and the „Deutschen Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken“ in Berlin 2,000 units of the machine gun 08/15. Since then the classification „Nullachtfünfzehn“ (trans.: Zeroeightfifteen) became synonymous for something ordinary, average, mediocre or outdated in colloquial German. The expression could trace back to the tedious routine the soldiers had to follow when they have been trained on the weapon. Pejorative extensions of meaning indicate that the quality of material declined in the course of the war, while malfunctioning of the weapon increased. Since 1936 the stench of inferiority got stuck to the 08/15 when the regular army replaced it with the follow-up model and the reserve- and territorial troops were equipped with the 08/15.

After the Second World War the writer Hans Hellmut Kirst (1914-1989) made the term popular with his trilogy of novels “08/15” (publ. 1954) one of the first bestselling novels in the new Federal Republic of Germany, which was also turned into movies. For Kirst the term represents the tedious drill in the Tradition of Prussian militarism.