Which Came First: The Stick and the Egg

Media featuring WW2 have a flare for the dramatic. Americans wield iconic M1 Garands and invariably drive around in jeeps. Germans sleep at MG42s and will inevitably scrounge up a tank. In movies and video games there is a satisfying duality between the Axis and Allies; not only ideology separated the two, but a dichotomy of technology as well. Americans throw "pineapples," Germans throw "potato mashers" (what Damian Lewis is holding in this picture).

Undoubtedly this is because the Stielhandgranate (stick hand grenade) is a recognizable piece of military equipment from the Second World War unique to the Germans (that whole Eastern Front thing? I don't know what you're talking about). It's unfamiliar design and curious operation evoke a very foreign feeling towards Wehrmacht soldiers. Americans (and - when pictured - British and other Allies) invariably appear with grooved, fist-sized grenades like the Mk II "pineapple" grenade. Never mind the fact that the US had copied the basics of this design from the British Mills Bomb during the First World War.

Depicting Germans exclusively using Stielhandgranaten a convenient avenue of influencing the audience's perception that the Germans were vastly different in culture. The truth, however, is that the favored German grenade was very similar to the Allies' design, with a funnier (yet still food-based) name: the egg hand grenade.

German military production favored two types of grenades: the Stielhandgranate (stick hand grenade) and the Eihandgranate (egg hand grenade). Mass production of the Eihandgranate began in June of 1940 and soon far surpassed the production numbers of the iconic potato masher. Even including production numbers from 1939 and 1940 (before the "egg" grenade came into use), 9 million more egg-shaped grenades were produced during the war (84.2 million to 75.4 million stick grenades). In fact, the only modern movie or video game to actually display the Eihandgranate is The Pianist (where they are never used).

Aside from potential identification errors by the audience, there's a reason Eihandgranaten aren't usually depicted in movies and games. They don't appear in historical photographs as prominently as their stick-y counterparts. This has little to do with their actual prevalence on the battlefield; the grenades tended to be kept in a soldier's pockets until needed (unlike American Mk II grenades, which tended to be clipped on to assault webbing). This gives them much less visibility than Stielhandgranaten, which tended to be tucked into the belt.

Here's another chance to catch a glimpse of these elusive eggs.


In case you're wondering why all these eggs and sticks seem to have roots: explosive German grenades used a friction-based fuze. The soldier would yank on the bead, pulling a cord attached to a wire coated with abrasive, which scraped through the friction-sensitive compound in the detonator...similar to lighting a match (or pulling a stick of sandpaper through a tube of match heads). Like a Rube Goldberg machine, except it explodes. Generally the cord was secured inside the grenade's housing, except when they would need to be used on short notice (instances of exposed cords getting caught and prematurely detonating the grenade happened occasionally).

The Eihandgranate consisted of a fuze and detonator in one convenient package. So convenient in fact that by 1943 the German army had essentially changed its stick grenades to be Eihandgranaten with attached handles. Originally, the stick grenade's detonator was housed in the handle of the grenade. This meant the soldier had to unscrew the handle and insert a detonator into the head of the grenade and then screw the handle back on before the grenade could be used, prompting the famous text on the side of the charge: VOR GEBRAUCH SPRENGKAPSEL EINSETZEN, reminding the soldier to unscrew the handle and insert a detonator before taking the grenade into battle.

(If you think that implies soldiers are incredibly aloof, you probably don't want to know what's printed on the M18 Claymore mine)

Both types of grenades favored concussive force over fragmentation - and for this reason are often dubbed "offensive grenades" (as opposed to passive-aggressive grenades, maybe?). That is, German grenades relied on the raw force of the explosion to incapacitate enemies, allowing soldiers to more safely use the grenades at shorter distances (such as charging an enemy trench). Although the German army had developed fragmentation sheaths for use on stick and egg grenades, it was really the Allies' that preferred fragmentation (the Mills Bomb mentioned earlier had an effective range farther than any soldier could throw it, thus the idea of a "defensive grenade," one a soldier would only want to use in cover). They tended to use a smaller charge of explosive to blast apart a shell of metal, which would break apart into high-speed fragments.

So the next time Band of Brothers is on TV, just imagine that the German soldiers have some Eihandgranaten nestled in their pockets for warmth.



"Speak softly and carry a big egg" just doesn't have the same weight...unless your antagonist has ovaphobia.