The Militar Historisches Museum in Dresden is a big, modern, well-funded museum with an extensive collection. It is clearly being managed by an 'artist' rather than an 'engineer', and the focus seems to be on telling a story, rather than just displaying artefacts - however they do have a lot of artefacts. Outside there is a large collection of major pieces - mainly army equipment. An interesting touch was a comparison display which had West German equipment lined up face to face with their East German equivalents (e.g. Leopard 1 vs T-72, Gepard vs ZSU-23-4 etc). I was surprised how recent some of the equipment on display was - for example they had a Patriot launcher vehicle on display, which I would have thought was still current inventory.Amongst the items were 3½ warships. Outside they had a Libelle class MTB from the East German Navy that had been retired in 1989. They didn't apparently have names, but this one was #961. It was up on stocks, which made it hard to see/photograph, because even for someone of my height, you were effectively looking up at it from below.Inside the building they had a Marder human torpedo in good condition (apart from a cracked Perspex dome.
They also had a very interesting historic submarine - called Brandtaucher - it was built in 1851! and sunk shortly thereafter, but was subsequently raised.And the half-warship was the middle section of a Seehund - there was no information about the origin of this specific boat, or how it got to be in the Museum.All signage in the museum was bilingual, and reasonably comprehensive. There was a gift shop there, that sold a large selection of books - however there were very few on naval topics, and the books tended to focus on social aspects of the military rather than technical. On that note, it was clearly evident that the museum was quite sensitive to giving any perception of militarism, and the signage was also often quite candid about some of the darker aspects of German military history. But despite all that, the museum is worth a visit if you are in Dresden - entry is only 5 Euros - but note that they are closed on Wednesdays (although I think you would still be able to walk around all the external exhibits, which are probably half of what you would want to see anyway). As for Dresden - they have had an unfortunate history due to the impact of both the RAF and the East German Town Planners, however there are some nice historic areas left, so it is still worth a visit.
