Late war German Army Camouflage

General Discussion
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I have been modelling for decades, before the computer age in fact, so I have hundreds of books and magazines, covering a multitude of schemes. I thought I knew everything there was to know!

However I was recently watching a WW2 film on Youtube, taken by the US Army film unit commanded by George Stevens, who had worked in Hollywood before the war. These films are better than books in that they show German vehicles how they were, rather than how an author would select a subject and use it in isolation, that might be taken as a standard finish.

In a bit of film he shot in the spring of 1945 over the Rhine, there was film of a German Army convoy that was probably shot up by P-47D Thunderbolts. Amazingly the convoy included a captured US ‘M3’ type half-track, that the Germans had painted half in German Dunkelgleb, but the front end they had not yet been painted so it remained in OD. No markings were visible nor the type of winch it had. The rear body amour had M3 squared off armor plates, rather than rounded corners used on International Harvester M5 used by British Army, so I guess it may have been captured in the Battle of the Bulge. What a strange subject but one that wont earn you any awards at your local military modelling show!

As it that isn’t enough, according to the Australian Armour & Artillery Museum, in Cairns, Queensland German Armour like their Stug III built in early 1945 up to VE Day may have had a base color of chocolate brown, to which dunkelgleb and rotbraun was applied as camo. So far I have not found any other references to this. Zimmerit paste had been discontinued in September 1944

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The most common very late basic color of both Regular and SS tanks leaving the factories was usually Oxyde Red, or a form of a darker shade of Willow Green. Due to lack of regulation Paints available, anything available was then applied upon the basic surface.
It was not uncommon, especially in the field, that German crews would find either Russian, British or American paint canisters and apply whatever they found to additionally camouflage their tanks.
The only German tanks who still sported a regulation camouflage were the previous surviving types, although in very worn down conditions.
Another way was to simply camouflage them even with mud and covered with vegetation if paint was not available, although that solution was rather short lived.