What was the point of the spike on Great War era German helmets? Practical, or ornamental?
They’re for heating bratwurst over an open fire.
Sua
It was purely practical. When the German soldier was cornered, out of bullets and his bayonet lost, he would put his head down and charge his enemies like a rhino.
When not in face-to-face combat, the spike could be used to hang his lunch pail off, thus keeping it out of the mud and filth in the trenches.
Now a lot of people are going to come along and give you the old myth about it being purely ornamental: don’t believe them. This myth is so widespread that even this site: The German Pickelhaube, 1914-1916, which purports to be a scholarly article on the helmet, recounts it as fact.
You’re bivouacked, with nothing but rainwater and dirty socks to make soup out of. Do you really want to compound your suffering by having to hold your helmet (a.k.a. cookpot) in the fire? No, you want a handy way of shoving it down in the embers and having it stick there without wobbling about.
Those crafty Huns don’t sit around complaining about stuff: they invent solutions.
i’ve always wanted one of those… i wonder where i could get one?
Try eBay.
I though this was one of those trying-to-explain-to-the nurse-at-the-hospital threads.
You have to think they must have had some curious cases in the Deutschland MASH.
Back when those pointy helmets were first introduced, rude strangers with long handled hammers and axes were prone to try to bring their hammers down on your head. The part of your helmet that was least able to deflect that type of blow was the very top. Put a spike on the top and you reduce that area to the minimum possible. Sharpen and polish it up and folks start making up horror stories about head butting Prussian Rhinos, which can’t hurt.
Tris
Of course, Knead is joking, as he knows that the early helmet with the large spike were made of leather.
The spike was ornamental, but a remnant of a protective feature, as tris said. The french had a crest.
You know folks, in GQ is is usually better to post the RIGHT/ helpful answers 1st, THEN the jokes.
You are all wrong.
The WWI Germans were all members of the Hell’s Angels.
At Verdun, German soldiers were instructed to unscrew the spikes from their helmets in order to avoid hanging up in barbed wire. This action turned out to have an amazing, unintended effect. After the Germans overran the first French line, they rushed the second. French machine gunners held their fire, on the assumption that the approaching Germans were retreating French. It seems that the spike was the best way to distinguish between muddy soldiers in the field.
Sofa is this the part where you are still giving info or making a joke?
What makes you think the spikes unscrewed? They didn’t.
Everything is on the internet, including The German Pickelhaube
Tris
I cite Alistair Horne’s {i]The Price of Glory*, although I’m not prepared to name the exact page or quote just yet.
I do, however, have my roommate, the unregistered PoopOnYou, who upon finding me frantically paging through the aforementioned book suggested, “why don’t you ask that guy to look at a real German helmet instead of those piece-of-shit biker helmets that those f*cking Harley riders wear?”
PoopOnYou rides a Honda, and a Shoei helmet, in case you are wondering. One of the partially successful demonstrations of a similar helmet worn by him was prominently displayed here for awhile, after a long skid along the pavement at Deal’s Gap. Perhaps I will convince him to register.
Meet him at the BBQ, should he elect to sign up.
BTW, that superprior post was not intended as a French joke.
Nor did we think it was funny, even in French. 
Tris Thanks for correcting me. My exposure to spiked helmets had been limited to pre-war ones. And I know they didn’t unscrew.
You would think I would investigate before making such a statement.