Though the Third Reich started it, the Allies ended it in spectacular fashion: with that "it" being WWII. As part of the comprehensive crushing of Germany required to defeat Hitler's regime the Allies dropped roughly 1.9 million tons of bombs on Germany during the war, with the vast majority of this destruction coming in the war's final year. During the entirety of the Allied Combined Bomber Offensive (a round the clock offensive led by the British Royal Air Force at night and United States Army Air Force during the day) approximately 500,000 Germans were killed.

If that were the end of

Regardless of your feelings about automatic rifles and their place in modern society, there is no denying the military utility of such weapons as brutally efficient killing machines. And of the innumerable automatic rifles created in the past seventy five years perhaps none had the impact of Mikhail Kalishnikov's reliable, simple, and effective AK-47 (and its modern variants).

On December 23, 2013 former peasant, World War II veteran, and eventual Lt. Gen. Mikhail T. Kalashnikov passed away in Izhevsk, the capital of the Russian republic of Udmurtia.