This article presents a detailed examination of the German Maxim Machine Guns as they were deployed on the battlefields of World War One. It focuses on the two most common patterns, the Maxim '08 and the Maxim 08/15.

Both of these guns were the product of a long series of inventions and refinements undertaken by Hiram Maxim an American Inventor. Maxim's automatic rifle system would be adopted in one form or another by the Germany, Great Britain and its Commonwealth, Russia, the US, China and a host of others. The Maxim system would ultimately be one of the most successful weapons of the era and continue to be used well into the latter half of the 20th Century.

Maxim's automatic rifle system, or Machine Gun, consisted of a water cooled, belt fed automatic rifle that fired a standard infantry type cartridge as long as the trigger was depressed or ammunition was in the feed mechanism. The gun cycled to extract the spent cartridge, load a new cartridge and advance the feed belt in one cycle. This cycle was driven by the energy generated by the recoil action of the fired cartridge and the return to battery by a coil (Fusee) spring. The system was easy to maintain, field strip into components and reliable as long as it was kept clean and adjusted.

The Maxim Machine Gun was to dominate the battlefields of the Great War however the German application proved to be one of the most significant impacts on modern warfare and revolutionize tactics on the battlefields of the 20th Century.

The Germans were first introduced to the Maxim pattern of Machine Gun in 1888. It was so favorably accepted that the Kaiser himself placed an order for guns to be purchased with his personal funds. By 1892 A German company (Ludwig Lowe & Co. of Berlin) purchased a license to manufacture the Maxims in Germany. By 1899 Maxim guns were delivered to the German Army for use in the field.

A flurry of improvements in the gun's design and improvements in ammunition culminated in adoption of the German pattern deployed in the Great War of 1914-1918, the Maxim Maschinengewehr 08. As the war ground on and the armies settled into their bloody stalemate additional improvements resulted in the Maxim model of 08/15 a much more maneuverable gun built on the same principle.