Big Yankee Fan wrote:
I just thought of this while going through my late Dad's stuff awhile back. My Dad was an excellent photographer starting while he was in high school when he and my Grandfather built a dark room in the basement of their house in Brooklyn. This would have been about 1939-1940. I recall that one of the camera's he used most to take pix of my sister and I when we were little (early '60's) was a Leica rangefinder camera. Don't recall the name. I think he sold it. Anyway I recall a story about Germany supplying the USA with Leica's as war reparations after WWII, which is how he was able to afford it. Thinking about it now, how could that be? Anyone ever heard of this before? Just curious...
I just thought of this while going through my late... (
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No, I have never heard of "war reparation" Leica.
However, my Dad was a USAF officer and pilot. Our family spent several years in England in the late 1950s and Dad bought Leica gear there at very good prices, through the Post Exchange (PX).
Here's a photo of his gear (which he gave to me some years ago)...
IIIC and IIIG cameras, 5cm f/1.5 Summarit, 3.5cm f/3.5 Summaron, 9cm f/4 Elmar lenses and various accessories.
Those are Leica M39 "screwmount" cameras and lenses that were purchased around 1957 to 1959. The IIIG camera (last of the M39 models, in fact) and a Leitz Summarit 5cm f/1.5 lens cost him all of $150, according to the receipt that's still in the box. Perhaps part of the reason for the favorable prices was that Leica was transitioning from the screwmount to the M-series with bayonet mount lenses. But there also were discounts for the military.
Probably what you are hearing is post-war reconstruction (Marshall Plan), which was done by the US both in Germany and in Japan. Essentially, after the war the US deployed occupying military and other resources to help re-start the economies of the defeated countries... The idea being that this would help avert yet another major war. The camera industries were among a number that were strongly supported under these programs. It was common for cameras to be marked "Made in Occupied Japan". In fact, prior to WWII Japan's camera industry was thriving internally, but had little market share outside the country. Some of the brands we know well today were unknown outside Japan. During WWII, the Japanese camera industry was restricted to only produce gear for the war effort and a lot of consumer cameras were left sitting on shelves unassembled. Right after the war during the reconstruction, production was restarted and there was a concerted effort to export the gear, in part through special deals for the occupying military.
German camera manufacture already had a fairly global marketplace. More-so than Japan. Leitz, Schneider, Zeiss and many others were already well established and shipping photographic products worldwide prior to the war. It was a different situation there, due to the division of Germany and Berlin between the U.S. and the USSR. Even camera manufacture was divided.... some brands (Praktica, Exacta and others) were the Soviet side side of the "Iron Curtain", while Leica and others enjoyed a more global marketplace.
The post-WWII reconstruction lasted roughly 5 years after the end of the war.... to around 1950. But a lot of it's "footprint" and effects continued. It even intensified in a sense in Europe due, to Cold War divisions and a heavy military presence through the 1950s and beyond. This effected everything! Not just the camera industry. It was the dawn of the Space Age when Russia launched Sputnik, the first satellite. It was also when the US and USSR were scrambling to build as many nukes as possible, testing them on atolls in the Pacific, building fallout shelters at home and showing kids "duck and cover" films in school.
I suspect what you've heard about are the reconstruction efforts and the later military buildup in Europe, which established large bases that included the PX system selling discounted products (some of which were made specifically for that market).