It's interesting to see other commenters saying that manipulating IDs wouldn't occur to the Germans, it reminded me of an interesting anecdote from Hitler's rise to power: "It was in January 1920 when a numeration was issued for the first time and listed in alphabetical order Hitler received the number 555. In reality, he had been the 55th member, but the counting started at the number 501 in order to make the party appear larger." [0]
I think it's more likely that many were aware of the security issues, but it wasn't worth the coordination of coming up with a scheme, giving it to all spare parts suppliers in a secure way, etc. potentially slowing down the war effort. I bet the Allies used a lot of serial numbers too, despite this work.
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It's interesting to see other commenters saying that manipulating IDs wouldn't occur to the Germans, it reminded me of an interesting anecdote from Hitler's rise to power: "It was in January 1920 when a numeration was issued for the first time and listed in alphabetical order Hitler received the number 555. In reality, he had been the 55th member, but the counting started at the number 501 in order to make the party appear larger." [0]
I think it's more likely that many were aware of the security issues, but it wasn't worth the coordination of coming up with a scheme, giving it to all spare parts suppliers in a secure way, etc. potentially slowing down the war effort. I bet the Allies used a lot of serial numbers too, despite this work.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Workers%27_Party#Adolf_...