Întreprinderea Optică Română (IOR) “Romanian Optical Enterprise”, often abbreviated by the acronym IOR, is a major optical manufacturing company established in 1936 in Bucharest, Romania. IOR produces military and civilian optics and associated equipment for export and domestic production. The company is known in North America particularly for its rifle scope (LPS 4×6° TIP2), binoculars, and other optics, which often accompany Romanian military equipment, such as the PSD rifle, sold on the North American market.
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Întreprinderea Optică Română (IOR) “Romanian Optical Enterprise”, Bucharest, Romania (1936-Present)xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The Second World War
The event that began the Second World War was the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany on September 1, 1939. In the two years leading up to the invasion of Poland, Adolf Hitler, Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and state chancellor) of Nazi Germany, and Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, conspired together and signed strategic political and economic pacts to establish their own spheres of influence in Central and Eastern Europe and divide Central and Eastern European countries between them.
Seven days after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union on August 24, 1939, and one day after the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union had approved the pact, both countries, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, had conspired and agreed to invade Poland.
On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west. On September 17, 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east. Within a month, the Polish armed forces were overwhelmed, and the campaign was ended on October 6, 1939. Germany and the Soviet Union then divided and annexed between them the whole of Poland under the terms of the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty.
The Winter War
In the years leading up to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Finland, the Soviet Union demanded that Finland cede substantial border territories in exchange for land elsewhere, claiming security concerns, primarily the protection of Leningrad, 32 km (20 miles) from the Finnish border. Finland refused to allow the Soviets to simply demand and take parts of Finland.
Seventy-five days after the Soviet Union invaded Poland, the Soviets invaded Finland on November 30, 1939, beginning the Winter War. The war ended three and a half months later, on March 13, 1940, with the Moscow Peace Treaty.
Despite their severely limited military strength, especially in tanks and aircraft, the Finnish armed forces fought brilliantly and inflicted severe losses on the Soviet armed forces. The Soviet invasion of Finland made little progress. The League of Nations condemned the Soviet Union, deemed their attack illegal, and expelled the Soviet Union from the League of Nations.
For more than two months, Finland successfully repelled Soviet attacks, inflicting substantial losses on the Russians in temperatures as low as −43 °C (−45 °F). The battles were fought mainly in Taipale, along the Karelian Isthmus, in Kollaa, in Ladoga Karelia, and on the Raate-Suomussalmi Road, in Kainuu. Battles were also fought in North Karelia and Lapland.
Following their initial failures, the Soviets reduced their strategic objectives. The Soviet military reorganized and adopted different tactics, renewed their offensive in February 1940, and eventually overcame the Finnish defenses on the Karelian Isthmus.
This left the Finnish army in the main theater of war near the breaking point, with a retreat seeming inevitable. Finnish commander-in-chief Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim urged a peace deal with the Soviets, while the Finns still retained bargaining power.
Hostilities were ceased in March 1940 with the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty. Finland was forced to cede 9% of its territory to the Soviet Union, especially substantial territories along Lake Ladoga and further north. Soviet gains actually exceeded their pre-war demands.
Finland retained its sovereignty and enhanced its international reputation. The international reputation of the Soviet Union declined.
Soviet losses were heavy, and the poor performance of the Red Army confirmed negative Western opinions of the Soviet armed forces. The perceived weakness of the Soviet Union led German Chancellor Adolf Hitler to believe that an attack on the Soviet Union would be successful. Hitler convinced himself that Nazi Germany should invade the Soviet Union soon.
In the meantime, the Soviet Union looked for a weaker country to exploit, and issued an ultimatum to Romania on June 26, 1940, threatening the use of force.
Two days later, the Soviet Union began the occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina between June 28 and July 3, 1940, simply absorbing these parts of Romania into the Soviet Union. On October 26, 1940, the Soviet armed forces also grabbed six Romanian islands on the Chilia branch of the Danube River.
Initially, the Soviet Union had planned to annex these parts of Romania after a full-scale invasion, but the Romanian government, responding to the Soviet ultimatum of June 26, 1940, agreed to withdraw from their own sovereign territories to avoid a military conflict with the Soviet Union.
Following the Soviet occupation of parts of Romania between June and October 1940, Adolf Hitler saw his opportunity, and the German High Command began planning for the invasion of the Soviet Union, which Hitler approved in December 1940.
Operation Barbarossa
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany and its European allies, Finland, Romania, Hungary, Italy, and Slovakia, initiated Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. This is the event that began the Great Patriotic War for the Soviet Union, and the Second World War for the rest of humanity.
Operation Barbarossa, named after the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa (Redbeard), opened the Eastern Front, the largest and deadliest land theater of war in human history, and brought the Soviet Union into the Second World War as one of the Allied powers.
Operation Barbarossa launched an explosive German and Axis air and ground assault into western Russia that surprised and stunned Joseph Stalin and the Russian high command.
Although Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had accurate intelligence earlier in 1941 about the imminent German attack, he refused to believe it, and did not order a mobilization of the Red Army, fearing that it might provoke Germany. As a result, the understrength and out of position Soviet forces were caught completely unprepared when the massive German air and ground assault began.
The overwhelming German firepower and the lightning encirclement and destruction of entire Russian armies resulted in the catastrophic devastation and collapse of Russian resistance during the first five months of the German and Axis invasion of Russia.
Operation Barbarossa initiated Generalplan Ost, Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s ideological goals for German territorial expansion into Central and Eastern Europe. After Hitler’s rise to power, the concept of Lebensraum became a high priority ideological principle of Nazism that provided justification for German territorial expansion into Central and Eastern Europe, especially Russia.
Generalplan Ost planned for the conquest of the Soviet Union, the eradication of Communism, the extermination of the native Slavic peoples by enslavement, genocide, and mass deportation to Siberia, and the repopulation of the western Soviet Union with Germans to fulfill Hitler’s Nazi ideological principle of Lebensraum (living space) for future generations of Germans.
The material targets of the invasion were the agricultural and mineral resources of Ukraine and Byelorussia and oil fields in the Caucasus.
Ultimately, the rampaging German armed forces captured five million Soviet Red Army troops in Russia and deliberately starved to death or otherwise killed 3.3 million Russian prisoners of war, as well as millions of Russian civilians. Mass shootings and gassing operations, carried out by German paramilitary death squads and collaborators, murdered over a million Soviet Jews as part of the Holocaust.
More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along a 2,900-kilometer (1,800 mile) front. The attack became the largest and costliest military offensive in history. Around 10 million combatants took part in the opening phase and there were over 8 million casualties by the end of the operation on December 5, 1941.
The lightning German assault through western Russia led to the emergency evacuation and relocation of Russian industrial factories located in western Russia far to the east, beyond the Ural Mountains, to protect them from being overrun by the rapidly advancing German blitzkrieg.
On July 11, 1941, USSR State Defense Decree No. GKO-99ss was issued to begin the emergency evacuation of industrial factories from western Russia to Siberia in the east, beyond the Ural Mountains, to protect them from capture by the advancing German armed forces. Many industrial plants and factories in western Russia were relocated east of the Ural Mountains.
The Siege of Leningrad
The siege of Leningrad was a military blockade by the Axis powers against the city of Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) in the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front of World War II from 1941 to 1944. Leningrad, Russia’s second largest city, was besieged by Germany and Finland for 872 days, but never captured.
The siege was the most destructive in history, causing an estimated 1.5 million deaths. It was not classified as a war crime at the time, but some historians have since classified it as a genocide due to the intentional destruction of the city and the systematic starvation of its civilian population.
In August 1941, the German Army Group North reached the suburbs of Leningrad and Finnish forces encircled the city from the north. Land routes from Leningrad to the rest of the Soviet Union were cut off on September 8, 1941, beginning the siege.
The German High Command ordered the Luftwaffe to bomb Leningrad to starve its people into submission, rather than attempt to capture it. Many thousands of Russian families and individuals died of starvation during the winter of 1941–1942.
Supplies were delivered to the city by air, and by ship over Lake Ladoga, when it was free of ice, and over the Road of Life that was built on the lake when it was frozen. A Red Army offensive opened a narrow land corridor to Leningrad on January 18, 1943, but the siege was not fully broken until January 27, 1944.
When the German and Finnish offensive reached Leningrad in August 1941, part of the GOMZ factory was evacuated to Kazan, and was subsequently included within the structure of the Kazan Optical-Mechanical Factory.
Technically, production of GOMZ military binoculars ended in Autumn 1941, but during the initial production period in Kazan, the relocated GOMZ factory continued to use its stylized “pentagon-ray of light” GOMZ logo.
The hammer, sickle, and star marking that was used during the company’s 1940-1941 production in Leningrad, was discontinued during the company’s 1941 and later post-evacuation production in Kazan.
In early 1942, GOMZ factory production markings were moved from the left lens cover to the bridge. Also, in early 1942, the factory again started to use the stylized “pentagon-ray of light” GOMZ logo on its binoculars.
During 1940-1944, the production year was coded as the two first numbers of the production serial number (40, 41, 42, 43, 44). Starting in mid-1944 and later, the full year marking under the serial number was used.
After its evacuation from Leningrad to Kazan, the factory introduced many simplifications to the construction of binoculars. In late 1941 and early 1942, lens covers made of silicium (a cast aluminum alloy) was introduced. Sometimes, cast aluminum alloy lens covers were mixed with older design brass lens covers on binoculars.
Later in 1942, silicium cast aluminum alloy lens covers were replaced with steel lens covers. In 1944, the steel lens covers were replaced with copper plated steel lens covers.
Brass eyepiece diopter adjustment sleeves were also replaced with silicium cast aluminum alloy sleeves. Silicium cast aluminum alloy eyepiece sleeves remained in production up to 1945. Silicium cast aluminum alloy was also used in the production of other parts. In addition, the brass caps of objective (front) lens assemblies were replaced with steel caps.
Early war and mid war KOMZ binoculars are very difficult to find with their original silicium cast aluminum alloy manufactured parts. Over time these cast alloy parts became brittle and broke in use, and had to be replaced with other parts made of different metals.
In early 1942, the rubber covering on lens tubes was eliminated. The tubes were instead painted only with black paint. By late 1942 until the end of the war, the use of rubber covering on lens tubes was resumed. The prewar pattern was changed to the unique KOMZ dot pattern.
After the War
In 1946, the prewar pattern brass body construction and use of brass parts was resumed. The location of the markings were moved from the bridge to the left lens cover. The Soviet hammer, sickle, and star marking, adopted in 1923 and finalized in the 1924 Soviet Constitution, was used again on the left lens cover.
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External links
IOR company website
Valdada Optics
IOR and Valdada Enterprises
of Mfg
| Hungarian version of Sandgelb (sand yellow) “Vulkanite” body covering, aluminum fittings, left prism cover marked with “SŰSS | GOERZ / BUDAPEST” logo, right prism cover marked “6×30 PRISMÁS LÁTSCŐ” over “AM. KIR. KINCSTÁR TULAJDONA” over “13069”, ⊕ reticle within right lens tube, brown leather carrying strap, brown leather case |
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mfg.19xx
| Hungarian gray green “Vulkanite” body covering, aluminum fittings, black Bakelite rear lens fittings, left prism cover marked with “SŰSS | GOERZ / BUDAPEST” logo, right prism cover marked “6×30 PRISMÁS LÁTSCŐ” over “AM. KIR. KINCSTÁR TULAJDONA” over “14858”, ⊕ reticle within right lens tube, mark stamped on front of left bridge support, brown leather carrying strap |
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mfg.19xx
| Hungarian gray green “Vulkanite” body covering, aluminum fittings, left prism cover marked with “SŰSS | GOERZ / BUDAPEST” logo, right prism cover marked “6×30 PRISMÁS LÁTSCŐ” over “AM. KIR. KINCSTÁR TULAJDONA” over “18045”, ⊕ reticle within right lens tube, mark stamped on front of left bridge support, black leather carrying strap |
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mfg.19xx
| Hungarian gray green “Vulkanite” body covering, aluminum fittings, left prism cover marked with “MAGYAR OPTIKAI MUVEK” (MOM) logo, right prism cover marked “6×30 PRISMÁS LÁTSCŐ” over “AM. KIR. KINCSTÁR TULAJDONA” over “19646”, Kingdom of Hungary military property number “71188” stamped on lower rim of right prism cover, ⊕ reticle within right lens tube, brown leather carrying strap, brown leather case marked “KAB” and “1939” |
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mfg.19xx
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| S/N | C/R Mark | Identifying Features | Mfg / Maintenance | ||
| 2196675 Sr. 1518 |
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CZ : 2196675 mfg. about March 1943 |
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| 2196796 Sr. 1996 |
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CZ : 2196796 mfg. about March 1943 |
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| 2196954 B.C.Nr 7 Sr.2154 |
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CZ : 2196954 mfg. about March 1943 |
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| 2197899 B.C.Nr 7 Sr.3099 |
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SK : 2197899 mfg. about March 1943 |
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| 2200146 B.C.Nr 7 Sr.5346 |
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CZ : 2200146 mfg. about April 1943 |
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| 2200664 B.C.Nr 7 Sr.5864 |
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CZ : 2200664 mfg. about April 1943 |
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| xxxxxxx |
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CZ : xxxxxxx mfg.19xx |
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| xxxxxxx |
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CZ : xxxxxxx mfg.19xx |
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| xxxxxxx |
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CZ : xxxxxxx mfg.19xx |
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