“Some people like steam trains, others like tanks,“ he pointed out.¹

A torpedo, a battle tank and other World War II Nazi weaponry were found in the basement of a villa in a wealthy burb of Kiel, Germany on Wednesday. According to authorities, as of Thursday they were still working on removing the war machine.

Found in a “raid” in Heikendorf under the governance of Kiel prosecutors, the arsenal’s owner somehow managed to fit a 1943-vintage Panther tank in his dank cellar. A modern German tank has been the primary source of muscle in fishing out the rolling hunk of metal, which the Bundeswehr (Germany army) have been at the helm operating.

According to The Local, the fact that elderly European packrat had all of this in his possession was no secret to anyone in the town.

Apparently the old tank was actually good for something — blizzards.

1. The Local:

Prosecutors were alerted to the existence of the weapons by Berlin prosecutors, who searched the villa for stolen Nazi art around a month earlier, the spokesperson for the Kiel prosecutor said.

But the villa owner’s lawyer claimed that the tank could no longer fire its weapons and that he was therefore not breaking any law, reports the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ).

And for the mayor of Heikendorf, Alexander Orth, the find also came as no surprise.

“He was chugging around in that thing during the snow catastrophe in 1978,“ Orth told SZ.

The mayor was not prepared to pass judgement on the villa owner, who is said to be in his 70s.

“Some people like steam trains, others like tanks,“ he pointed out.