Opel Blitzwagen

"Beep beep out of the way, eastern front bound."

Opel Blitzwagen was a generic name for the workhorse cargo and utility trucks used during the Second World War by the German Wehrmacht that were built by the Opel company. They could be found on all fronts, from troop transports for Panzergrenadiers to ammo tugs to supply vehicles.

IRL

Germany, due to their focus on Blitzkrieg, decided that having mobile forces was important. While Half-tracks were in vogue during the 30's and 40's to accomplish this goal, the industrial capacity was simply not there to provide all German forces with these armored vehicles. The obvious solution to this problem was to simply use existing trucks already in production to ferry troops with the Panzer divisions. The Opel company built almost 130,000 of these trucks, which were coined "Blitz", meaning Lightning, designating it's primary purpose as blitzkrieg warfare vehicle.

While they were nowhere near as armored as the SdKfz 250, they got the job done effectively. However, these two were not in sufficient number to totally ferry the German army early war, so many soldiers were transported by Horse and buggy in addition to truck and half-track. The Opel Blitz was used alongside its more famous cousin, the Mercedes-Benz L3000, which achieved infamy from being the vehicle used to transport the Ark of the Covenant in Indiana Jones.

The Opel also had a derivative half track called the Maultier, which was built in an attempt to address the hellish mud encountered in Russia on the Eastern front. In addition, it was used to service larger Luftwaffe aircraft such as the ME-323. It is also confirmed that when the Holocaust began in earnest, the Opel Blitz was one of several vehicles used as a "gas van".

The Opel Blitz's biggest shortcoming as far as the German Military was concerned was Numbers and Fuel. The German Auto Industry at the time was not the titan it would become and there was only so much petrol to go around with the army, navy and luftwaffe all scrabbling for their slice of that rather small pie. That said, the Opel Blitz would continue on after the war on the Civilian Market.

Fun Fact: From 1929 to 2017 Opel Automobile GmbH was a subsidiary of General Motors.