First and foremost, German soldiers took Soviet SSh-39 and SSh-40 helmets from fallen Russians.
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They were considerably heavier than German models but provided better protection against shrapnel and ammunition from submachine guns, which were widely used by both side in the war. Soviet helmets became particularly valuable to Germans at the end of the war when Germany's economy was unraveling due to a shortage of resources, meaning the steel used to manufacture helmets had become even thinner.
The Russian winter was particularly hard on the German army, and so Wehrmacht soldiers supplemented their own equipment by taking winter pea jackets and caps with earflaps from the Russian dead.
But, without a doubt, the item the Nazis sought out most during the initial stages of the war was the Tokarev self-loading rifle (SVT)—the newest Soviet semi-automatic weapon, which had gone into service just two years before the start of the war.
During the siege of the Brest fortress in the first days of the conflict, the German infantry could not get into range of their besieged inside until the Soviet soldiers ran out of ammunition. A well-trained infantryman with a full magazine could fire off up to 25 rounds per minute of the SVT’s 7.62x54 mm ammunition, which was capable of piercing a brick wall from a hundred meters away.