9. WORLD WAR II, A GREAT GENERATION OF GUNS
THE NAZIS INTRODUCED THE ASSAULT RIFLE, BUT THE QUALITY AND QUANTITY OF AMERICAN WEAPONS GAVE THE ALLIES A CRITICAL ADVANTAGE.
Marines bombing a Japanese outpost in the 1945 battle for Iwo Jima. The 36-day fight led to 27,000 American and 18,000 Japanese casualties. In the quiet of the aftermath, an American officer observed: “Hell with the fire out, but still smoking.”
Overpowering Hilter
WEAPON DESIGNERS MADE GREAT ADVANCES WITH MACHINEGUNS AND VERSATILE RIFLES.
A U.S. flotilla converged on Normandy’s Omaha Beach after D-Day fighting forced the Germans to retreat.
Americans surged onto a Normandy beach a few days after the June 6, 1944, offensive.
U.S. Marine Raiders helped drive the Japanese off the Solomon Islands in 1943.
U.S. Army soldiers manned antiaircraft artillery in North Africa in 1943.
World War II hastened the pace of weapons innovation, firearms included, with predictably devastating effect. From 1939 through 1945, warring armies suffered 25 million casualties. Thirty million civilians died as a direct result of fighting and bombing, while disease and starvation caused another 20 million civilian fatalities. In absolute terms, World War II is the most lethal conflict humankind has ever seen.
At the more scientifically advanced end of the weapons spectrum, the U.S. development and use of the atomic bomb to force Japan’s surrender in 1945 changed forever the calculus of war and geopolitics. In a far more modest development, the U.S. Army replaced the bolt-action rifle with a self-loading (semiautomatic) model as the standard infantry weapon. The reliable M1 Garand allowed American GIs to achieve higher rates of fire while maintaining accuracy at a distance.
The Germans didn’t lack for inventiveness, gaining an edge in machinegun proficiency with the feared MG42. Germany also developed the versatile Sturmgewehr (“storm” or “assault” rifle) 44, which combined the attributes of a submachinegun’s rapid fire with the handiness of an infantry weapon.
In the end, American industrial might overwhelmed that of Germany and the other Axis powers. The quality and sheer quantity of American weaponry outmatched what Hitler’s factories could produce. This capacity allowed the United States to sustain Great Britain during its darkest hours in 1940 and 1941 and, after the U.S. committed its own forces, to compel Germany and Japan to submit.
THE WORLD AT WAR
APPROXIMATELY 690 MILLION PEOPLE FROM AROUND THE GLOBE SERVED DURING WORLD WAR II, INCLUDING 16 MILLION AMERICANS.
1936 October: Nazi Germany and fascist Italy signed a treaty that became the basis of the Axis powers.
1937 July: Japan invaded China, starting the war in the Pacific.
1938 September: Germany incorporated Austria; Britain and France signed the Munich Agreement, ceding portions of Czechoslovakia to Germany
1939 September: Germany invaded Poland, formally starting World War II in Europe, as Britain and France declared war on Germany; the Soviets invaded Poland from the east.
1940 July: Germany attacked France, leading to an armistice, with Nazis occupying the northern half of the country and the collaborationist Vichy regime governing the south.
1941 December: Germany invaded the Soviet Union; Japan bombed Pearl Harbor; the United States declared war on Japan. Germany and its Axis partners declared war on America.
1942 November: A Soviet counterattack near Stalingrad trapped Nazis and began to turn the tide. on the Eastern Front.
1943 July: U.S. and British troops landed in Sicily; Soviets liberated Kiev.
1944 June: Allied troops liberated Rome
1944 August: U.S. troops marched down the Champs-Élysées
1944 December: Germans launched the Battle of the Bulge, a final and ultimately unsuccessful offensive in the West.
1944 August: Allied troops in Paris.
1945 May: Soviets captured Warsaw; Soviets encircled Berlin; Hitler committed suicide.
1945 May: Germany surrendered to the Allies.
1945 August: The U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and three days later another one on Nagasaki; Japan agreed in principle to unconditional surrender.
1945 September: Japan formally surrendered, ending World War II.
Dawn of the Battle Rifle
EACH COUNTRY’S GUNS WERE UNIQUE, BUT EVEN THE UPGRADED MAUSER AND ARISAKA WERE ECLIPSED BY THE AMERICANS’ SUPERIOR M1 GARAND.
M1 GARAND
Country: United States
Date: 1945
Barrel Length: 24in
Caliber: .30
Garand semiautomatics easily outfired the slower bolt-action rifles of the Germans, Japanese, and Italians.
MAUSER KARABINER 98K
Country: Germany
Date: 1942
Barrel Length: 23.5in
Caliber: 7.92mm
Soviets captured millions of Mauser 98Ks by war’s end.
ENFIELD NO. 4 MARK 1
Country: Great Britain
Date: 1939
Barrel Length: 25 1/5in
Caliber: .30
Britain’s modified infantry rifle was also manufactured in the United States and Canada.
MOSIN-NAGANT CARBINE MODEL 1944
Country: U.S.S.R.
Date: 1945
Barrel Length: 20in
Caliber: 7.62mm
The lighter, shorter bayonet-ready Mosin was needed for close combat in cities like Stalingrad.
WALTHER GEWEHR 43
Country: Germany
Date: 1943
Barrel Length: 22in
Caliber: 7.92mm
The G43, with its optical sight, was issued primarily to snipers.
ARISAKA TYPE 38
Country: Japan
Date: 1905
Barrel Length: 31 1/2in
Caliber: .25
Most militaries entered World War II equipping their troops with World War I–era manually operated repeating rifles. Americans received the Springfield 1903 bolt-action; British, a shortened version of the Lee-Enfield Mark 1; Germans, a member of the Mauser family; and Japanese, a weapon in vogue during the turn-of-the-century Russo-Japanese War. Over the course of the war, militaries moved toward more advanced self-loading, or semiautomatic, rifles like the American M1 Garand, equipped with an eight-round clip of .30-caliber cartridges.
Germany
The German wehrmacht, or infantry, initially armed its soldiers with upgraded versions of Mauser bolt-action rifles such as the Karabiner 98K, which fired a standard 7.92mm Mauser round. More than 14 million were manufactured between 1935 and 1945, with variations for paratroopers and snipers. In 1948, the Mauser factory was dismantled, although some of the machinery was salvaged and used by the German manufacturer today known as Heckler & Koch. In 1943, the German army introduced the Gewehr 43, a 7.92 x 57mm self-loading rifle that increased firepower with its 10-round detachable box magazine.
Japan
The Japanese relied on a bolt-action model dating to 1905 and called the Arisaka Type 38/44, because it was introduced in the 38th year of the Emperor Meiji’s reign (a naming convention unique to the Japanese) and updated in 1944. A derivative of the Mauser, the Arisaka fired a 6.5mm round. It was replaced later by a more powerful 7.7mm version known as the Type 99. The 99 had an unusual folding monopod attached to the front of the wooden stock. The Japanese military experimented with copies of the U.S. M1 Garand semiautomatic—referred to as the Type 4 and Type 5—but did not perfect their versions in time for widespread use in World War II.
United States
American GIs carried a superior .30-caliber semiautomatic rifle named for its inventor, John Garand. The M1 Garand fired one bullet for each pull of the trigger, but with its eight-round disposable en bloc (a French term meaning self-contained) clip, a soldier could reload rapidly and fire up to 40 bullets a minute. After the eighth round, the en bloc clip would automatically eject upward, making a distinctive “ping!” sound. By the end of the war, U.S. factories had produced more than five million M1s. In 1942, the U.S. Army introduced a lighter M1 carbine for use by officers, tank crews, and truck drivers. With an 18-inch barrel, this intermediate-size weapon was more manageable than a 24-inch-barrel infantry rifle while still being able to fire a cartridge with more range than M1911 pistol ammunition.
Great Britain
The British, meanwhile, armed their infantrymen with updated versions of the Lee-Enfield rifle of World War I vintage. The new Lee-Enfield No. 4, the Mark 1, introduced in 1939, had a modified bolt and receiver and a redesigned rear sight. The exposed muzzle of the No. 4 allowed British designers to customize certain Lee-Enfields to accommodate a tubular antitank grenade launcher. The fin-stabilized grenade could be mounted over the rifle muzzle and fired with a blank cartridge.
Soviet Union
The Russians updated the Mosin-Nagant rifle of 1910 for use in World War II. Designers shortened the barrel to carbine length (20 1/4 inches) and otherwise revamped the weapon to make it less expensive to manufacture. The final version, the Mosin-Nagant Carbine M1944, had an integral five-round magazine and a folding cruciform bayonet; it fired 7.62 x 54mm rounds. The People’s Republic of China continued to knock off the Russian rifle for years after World War II, even after it had become obsolete. The Red Army also issued a self-loading rifle, the 10-round Tokarev SVT40, which was issued to noncommissioned officers and snipers.
John Garand: Father of the M1
Born in Saint Rémi, Quebec, John Garand (1888–1974) moved with his family to Connecticut as a boy. As a hobby, young Garand enjoyed target shooting and soon applied his knowledge of guns to design work. During World War I, he approached the U.S. War Department, suggesting it manufacture a light machinegun he’d devised. The conflict ended before Garand’s invention could get into production, but his talent landed him a position at the U.S. armory in Springfield, Massachusetts. There, Garand was asked to focus on a rugged, self-loading infantry rifle. Over more than a dozen years, he perfected a gas-operated prototype patented in 1934, known as the M1 Garand.
In World War II, the M1 gave American soldiers an edge in combat as the Garand fired more quickly and accurately than standard-issue bolt-action Axis rifles. General George Patton declared the M1 “the greatest battle implement ever devised.” The M1 remained the standard U.S. Army rifle through the Korean War and was still being issued during the early 1960s to American troops sent to Vietnam.
Although more than six million M1s were produced, as a government employee, Garand was not entitled to royalties. U.S. lawmakers considered rewarding him with a $100,000 bonus, but the provision never passed Congress.
Early Assault Rifles
THE STG 44 OFFERED MORE POWER THAN A SUBMACHINEGUN BUT LESS THAN A BATTLE RIFLE.
FALLSCHIRMJÄGERGEWEHR 42
Country: Germany
Date: circa 1944
Barrel Length: 19 3/4in
Caliber: 7.92mm
Designed for paratroopers, the FG42 has an angled grip for aiming downward.
M3 SUBMACHINEGUN
Country: United States
Date: 1943
Barrel Length: 8in
Caliber: .45
Dubbed “the grease gun,” the sheet-metal M3 was light, cheap, and effective.
MASCHINENPISTOLE 40
Country: Germany
Date: 1942
Barrel Length: 9 3/4in
Caliber: 9mm
Inexpensive and made of sheet metal, the MP40 inspired the M3 submachinegun.
STURMGEWEHR 44
Country: Germany
Date: 1945
Barrel Length: 14 3/10
Caliber: 7.92mm
The StG 44 is the predecessor for modern assault rifles like the M16 and A-K47.
BROWNING AUTOMATIC RIFLE M1918A2
Country: United States
Date: 1940
Barrel Length: 24in
Caliber: .30
The BAR, which fired the same cartridge as the M1 Garand, came with a 200-page field manual.
The term sturmgewehr (“assault rifle”) was coined by Adolf Hitler to describe a new type of weapon that addressed the needs of soldiers fighting on urban terrain. Introduced in 1944, the Sturm- gewehr 44 (or StG 44) came with a shortened version of the cartridge used in the Mauser M98 battle rifle, had a compact barrel, selective fire (semi- or fully automatic), featured a high capacity detachable magazine and a novel “above barrel” gas system of operation.
Carbines and Submachineguns
SEMIAUTOMATIC M1 CARBINE
Country: Uniited States
Date: 1941
Barrel Length: 18in
Caliber: .30
Between June 1942 and August 1945, nine primary contractors turned out more than six million versions of this carbine.
REISING M50 SUBMACHINEGUN
Country: United States
Date: circa 1941
Barrel Length: 14in
Caliber: .45
Easily disabled by dirt and debris, the Reising was sometimes called ‘the poor man’s Thompson.”
SMITH & WESSON LIGHT RIFLE
Country: United States
Date: 1940
Barrel Length:9 3/4in
Caliber: .35
The rifles, made for the British, were said to be difficult to operate.
PPSH-41 SUBMACHINEGUN
Country: Russia
Date: 1941
Barrel Length: 10 3/5in
Caliber: .45
The easily made, user-friendly PPSh-41 was rushed to Soviet front-line troops.
THOMPSON M1A1
Country: United States
Date: circa 1943
Barrel Length: 10 1/2in
Caliber:.45
The $200 M1 Thompson (below) was popularized by gangsters in the 1920s, but the simplified, less costly M1A1 (above) was a coveted combat weapon during World War II.
Devising an Improved Machinegun
NEW TECHNOLOGIES ALLOWED USERS TO SHOWER THE ENEMY WITH BULLETS IN A STEADY, DEADLY STREAM.
Army Air Corps trainees practiced firing positions in 1942 with empty Thompsons at Mitchel Field on Long Island, New York, before going to the firing range with real bullets.
MASCHINENGEWEHR 42
Country: Germany
Date: 1943
Barrel Length: 24in
Caliber: 7.92mm
From his bunker overlooking Omaha Beach, a 20-year-old German soldier fired thousands of MG42 rounds over nine hours, killing scores of Americans and earning him the nickname, “Beast of Omaha.”
BROWNING MODEL 1919A4
Country: United States
Date: circa 1942
Barrel Length: 24in
Caliber: .30
The M1919A4 was used as a light infantry, aircraft, or anti-aircraft weapon.
BROWNING M2
Country: United States
Date: 1944
Barrel Length: 36in
Caliber: .50
After nearly 85 years of service, “Ma Deuce” is still considered one of the world’s most effective machineguns.
The product of many minds in many places—including political and military enemies—firearm technology has never advanced in a simple or straight line. Even as John Garand gave U.S. infantry forces an advantage with the self-loading M1, other designers and military leaders turned their attention to refining the crew-manned heavy machinegun and devising a smaller, lighter submachinegun usable by an individual.
The M1 Garand offered long-range accuracy, power, and simplicity. The submachinegun, by contrast, fired less potent pistol-strength cartridges but allowed users to spray bullets steadily and at amazing volumes, achieving greater lethality at close quarters. World War II proved the effectiveness of automatic weapons that could be transported and fired by individual soldiers.
The “Trench Broom”
John T. Thompson, a West Point graduate who worked in the U.S. Army’s ordnance department during World War I, advocated development of a handheld automatic weapon. With military bluntness, he referred to his idea as the “trench broom,” a lightweight hip- or shoulder-fired machinegun that would “sweep” away the enemy and end the stalemate in Europe.
The submachinegun Thompson devised fired the same .45-caliber ACP cartridge as the Colt M1911 pistol, but could carry 30 rounds in a stick magazine, which was most common, or 50 rounds in a rotary drum-shaped magazine. Introduced too late for use in World War I, Thompson’s creation was adopted in 1928 by the U.S. Navy as the M1928A1. During the interwar years, what Hollywood dubbed the “tommy gun” (a.k.a. the “Chicago typewriter” or just the “chopper”) became better known for its appearance in the hands of Prohibition-era G-men and the gangsters they chased. During the Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929, Al Capone’s henchmen used tommy guns to mow down members of a rival syndicate in a Chicago garage. According to tabloid lore, some of the dead were cut nearly in half as a result of the withering hail of bullets.
The Army did eventually adopt an improved version of the tommy gun as the M1A1 submachinegun, which became the standard sub- machine gun for U.S. troops in World War II, typically with a 20- or 30-round magazine. Less portable than Thompson’s submachinegun, the Browning Automatic Rifle, de- signed by John Browning, packed a more powerful punch. The gas-operated .30-caliber BAR had a 20-round magazine and weighed 20 pounds. Another Browning creation, the M2 automatic, fired .50-caliber rounds with immense stopping power.
Germany’s military designers demonstrated an uncanny flair for automatic weapons tailored for individual use. In 1940, Hitler’s armorers introduced the Maschinenpistole 40 (MP40), the first mass-produced standard-issue infantry weapon that didn’t have any wooden parts. Confusingly, the highly admired MP40 was colloquially known as the “Schmeisser,” although it had not been designed by the famous German designer Hugo Schmeisser. German factories produced some one million MP40s, which were considered superior to such American rivals as the .45-caliber M50 Reising used by some U.S. Marine Corps units.
Named by the Führer
Introduced in 1943, the German Sturmgewehr, or assault rifle, represented the most advanced automatic weapon of its era for an individual soldier. Heavily used against the Soviets on the Eastern Front, the “selective fire” weapon could issue a stream of bullets in fully automatic mode or one round per trigger pull in semiauto mode. It fired a 7.92mm cartridge from a 30-round magazine. (The crew-served, belt-fed MG42 machinegun generally was fired from a bipod or tripod and could fire up to 1,200 rounds a minute.) Hitler himself bestowed the Sturmgewehr title on the MP44, thinking that the forbidding name would have propaganda value. In the decades after World War II, the Sturmgewehr became the basis for more modern assault rifles such as the Soviet AK-47 and the American M16. But luckily for the Allies, Hitler’s favorite arrived on the battlefield too late to turn the tide for the deteriorating Axis powers in 1944 and 1945.
Audie Murphy’s Triumph
AN INFANTRY COMMANDER SINGLE-HANDEDLY HELD OFF AN ENTIRE COMPANY OF NAZIS WITH HIS M1 CARBINE.
Audie Murphy, celebrated for his battlefield heroics in France, replayed some of those World War II scenes in 1955's To Hell and Back.
World War II hero Audie Murphy (1925–1971) received every military combat award handed out by the U.S. Army, as well as medals from the French and Belgian governments. The product of a poor family in Texas, Murphy aspired to soldiering from boyhood. His first attempts to enlist after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 failed, as all three branches of the military—Army, Navy, and Marine Corps—turned him down as underage and underweight. In June 1942, he finally won acceptance into the Army. After several years of distinguished and much-honored service in the Mediterranean and European theaters, Murphy had his greatest moment of glory in January 1945 at the age of 19 when he single-handedly held off an entire company of German soldiers for about an hour during a battle at what was known as the Colmar Pocket in France.
As a 3rd Infantry Division company commander, Murphy ordered his men to retreat to covered positions in the woods while he remained alone at his forward post, firing an M1 carbine and using his field telephone to direct Allied artillery fire. Murphy then mounted an abandoned, burning M-10 tank destroyer and began firing its .50-caliber machinegun at the advancing enemy. Reportedly, he killed or wounded 50 German soldiers and retreated only after he’d been wounded in the leg and ran out of ammunition. Disregarding his injury, he rejoined his men and led them in a successful counteroffensive against the German unit.
For these actions, he received the U.S. Medal of Honor and was promoted to first lieutenant. After the war, Murphy went on to a successful career as an actor, playing himself in To Hell and Back (1955), but also suffered from what today would probably be diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder. He slept with a loaded pistol, was addicted to sleeping pills, and late in life had money trouble. He died in a plane crash before his 46th birthday.
Winston Churchill Aims to Raise Morale
He looked like a Chicago gangster of the 1920s: pinstripe suit, fat cigar, and tommy gun. The iconic image of Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain holding a Thompson submachinegun was not, however, a nostalgic whimsy but a characteristically clever Churchill gesture to rally British spirits in the face of the German onslaught. During England’s darkest days in July 1940, Churchill posed with the famous American weapon during a visit to troops near Hartlepool. He sought to raise morale in anticipation of a feared German land invasion. Nazi propagandists claimed that the widely disseminated photo showed that the British leader was no better than an American Prohibition-era criminal.
Churchill, though, understood that he needed to provoke Britain’s patriotism and martial spirit at a time when some of his countrymen were calling for peace talks with the Nazis. The tommy gun Churchill held was one of a small batch the U.S. shipped to England specifically for this purpose—to signal American support for the Allies, even before Franklin D. Roosevelt believed he had sufficient political support at home for U.S. entry into the war against Hitler. The British moved the imported tommy guns around their country so they could be photographed in the hands of troops and create the false impression that British forces were all outfitted with the potent American submachineguns.
World War II Pistols
JAPANESE PISTOLS HAD A REPUTATION FOR BEING UNRELIABLE; NOT SO THE COLT 1911, WHICH WAS THE STANDARD-ISSUE FIREARM FOR U.S. ARMED FORCES.
COLT MODEL 1911A1
Country: United States
Date: 1943
Barrel Length: 5in
Caliber: .45
An upgrade of the M1911. The U.S. military used variations of the M1911 until the family of handguns was replaced by the M9 Beretta in the 1980s.
WEBLEY MARK 1 NAVY PISTOL
Country: Great Britain
Date: 1913
Barrel Length: 5in
Caliber: .455
Webley self-loaders were used as personal sidearms by British forces in both world wars.
BERETTA MODEL 1934
Country: Italy
Date: circa 1935
Barrel Length: 3 1/4in
Caliber: 9mm
The M1934 was Italy’s standard-issue sidearm and dictator Benito Mussolini’s preferred weapon.
WALTHER P38
Country: Germany
Date: 1938
Barrel length: 4 9/10in
Caliber: .35
This Walther replaced the Lugar PO8 as Germany’s official military sidearm.
REMINGTON RAND M1911A1 PISTOL
Country: United States
Date: 1942
Caliber: .45
Remington Rand, an office-supply company, made weapons and parts during the war years.
LUGER 9MM
Country: Germany
Date: 1900–1945
Caliber: .35
Germans sometimes booby-trapped the Lugers of their fallen soldiers to kill souvenir-hunting Americans.
TULA-TOKAREV 33
Country: U.S.S.R.
Date: 1933
Barrel Length: 4 3/4in
Caliber: .30
A lighter-weight knockoff of Colt’s Browning-designed M1911 pistol.
ENFIELD NO. 2 MARK 1
Country: Great Britain
Date: 1926
Barrel Length: 5in
Caliber: .38
Produced by the Royal Small Arms Factory, the Enfield replaced the standard-issue Webley Mk4. But an acute arms shortage sent the Webley back to the battlefield.
COLT POCKET HAMMERLESS PISTOL
Country: United States
Date: 1903
Barrel Length: 3 3/4in
Caliber: .32
The Colt hammerless was mainly used by government-service noncombatants.
Armies on both sides of the conflict equipped their officer corps with self-loading, or semiautomatic, pistols such as the German Luger and Walther and the American 1911 designed by John Browning and manufactured by Colt. Handguns weren’t accurate at any significant distance and were intended primarily as self-defense weapons for infantry commanders, tank crews, and pilots. On the whole, the pistols of World War II didn’t feature any significant technological advances over their predecessors World War I.
United States
During World War II, U.S. forces continued to carry the trusted Colt 1911 .45-caliber pistol, familiar to movie goers from such films as Saving Private Ryan (1998). In one of the movie’s climactic scenes, the mortally wounded Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) bravely, if futilely, fires his 1911 at an approaching German tank. Select British and American special forces also used the Browning HP 35 (Hi-Power), a highly regarded 9mm pistol manufactured in Belgium beginning in 1935 that was John Browning’s final creation.
Great Britain
Many British officers and airmen continued to arm themselves with Webley Mark 4 and Enfield No. 2 Mark 1 revolvers as well as Smith & Wesson Model 10s. To prepare for a German ground invasion, British police and the Local Defense Volunteers were issued Ross rifles, Webley semiautomatics, and more than 20,000 U.S.-provided .32 Colts. British spies sometimes carried Welrod silenced pistols. But when it came to handguns, the British military generally stuck with revolvers.
Russia
The Russians carried a knockoff of the John Browning design for the 1911 called the Tula-Tokarev, or TT, a reference to the Soviet arsenal at Tula and to Feodor Tokarev, a former Czarist officer who later designed arms for the Communists. The eight-round weapon first introduced in 1933 has a Browning-style recoil-driven self-loading action.
Germany
The German army gradually replaced the Luger pistol with the highly regarded Walther P38, a military version of a 9mm police handgun developed by Carl Walther. The rugged P38’s grip was made of Bakelite, an early form of industrial plastic. The standard handgun of Germany’s Axis ally Italy was the Beretta M1934 9mm manufactured by the descendants of the early 16th-century Beretta family gunsmiths of Venice. The Beretta grip houses a nine-round magazine.
Japan
In contrast to the generally well-regarded German and Italian pistols, the Japanese armed officers and certain troops with semiautomatic handguns notorious for their unreliability. Named for Colonel Nambu Kirijo, Japan’s leading gun designer, Nambu pistols frequently fired accidentally, because of defective cocking mechanisms, poor workmanship, or both. Allied bombing of Japanese factories late in the war further reduced the quality of Nambu handguns.
Carl Walther:Arming the Germans
Carl Walther (1858–1915) began making hunting rifles in 1886 in what was then the German state of Hesse (now Thuringia). In 1908, Walter’s oldest son, Fritz, diversified into handguns, and by the late 1920s the Walther factory was manufacturing the Polizeipistole (PP), a police pistol, followed by the Polizeipistole Kriminalmodell (PPK), a smaller model designed for detectives. With the rise of the Nazi regime, the Walther family won a lucrative contract to replace the Luger with a 9mm version of the PP known as the P38, the standard German sidearm in World War II. For most of the war, the Walther company exploited slave labor provided by the Nazi regime. Allied forces eventually destroyed Walther’s plants, but Fritz Walther retained his designs and restarted manufacturing in Ulm, West Germany, in 1953.
During the cold war, the Walther PP and PPK became globally popular double-action pistols and were widely imitated by other manufacturers. The pistol’s cachet increased in the 1960s when Ian Fleming put a sleek Walther PPK in the hands of secret agent James Bond (who’d begun his globe-trotting career with a Beretta pistol). And Bond wasn’t the only pillar of popular culture to prefer the Walther. Elvis Presley owned a sliver-plated PPK inscribed with the initials TCB for “taking care of business.” Today, Smith & Wesson manufactures the PPK in the United States in cooperation with Walther Arms.
Weapons of the Resistance
HOW POLISH, DANISH, FRENCH, ITALIAN, AND NORWEGIAN PARTISANS ARMED THEMSELVES.
FP-45 LIBERATOR
Country: United States
Date: 1942
Barrel Length: 4in
Caliber: .45
About 50,000 Liberators were dropped out of bombers into occupied Europe.
RADOM VIS PISTOL
Country: Poland
Date: 1936
Barrel Length: 4 3/4in
Caliber: 9mm
Insurgents secretly continued producing Poland’s adopted service arm until 1945.
STEN SUBMACHINEGUN MARK I
Country: Great Britain
Date: 1941
Barrel Length: 7 1/2in
Caliber: .35
May 1944: Guerrillas in the Italian mountains.
French resisters in Montpellier on January 1, 1944.
Although overwhelmingly outgunned by Nazi occupation forces, the resistance organizations of several European countries cobbled together armaments smuggled in by Allied forces, captured from the Germans, and in some cases, manufactured in underground workshops.
Great Britain
Designed and rushed into production in 1940, when Great Britain feared an imminent German invasion, the Sten submachinegun was originally intended to defend the beaches, fields, and streets of England. Produced by the millions, the Sten became one of the most recognizable British small arms of World War II and also a weapon that Allied forces smuggled to resistance forces in German-occupied regions. “Sten” is an acronym referring to its inventors, Reginald Shepherd and Harold Turpin, and the Enfield arms factory where they worked. The weapon held 32 rounds of 9mm ammunition and was accurate to only about 300 feet. Each all-metal Sten cost only about $10 to produce, compared to $200 for an American M1A1 Thompson submachinegun. The Allied military got what it paid for: The Sten was prone both to jamming and, if set down carelessly, discharging an entire magazine. Clever British troops turned the latter tendency to their advantage, tossing cocked and loaded Stens through a door or window. Upon impact, the guns would fire in all directions until empty—an effective way to slay Germans without storming a building. Polish, Danish, French, and Norwegian partisans all built do-it-yourself versions of the Sten and used them in their resistance movements.
Poland
The Polish resistance produced the 9mm Vis pistol, also known as the Radom, a derivative of the American .45-caliber M1911. After the Germans relocated Polish gun factories to Austria, the resistance secretly resumed production from stolen parts and crudely fabricated components. Polish guerrillas also designed and made their own submachinegun, the Blyskawica, or “lightning” gun. These were loosely modeled on British-made Sten guns dropped into the country by the Allies. A more direct knockoff of the Sten, the Polski Sten, was made from nonmilitary material such as ordinary metal tubing and springs.
France
In addition to smuggled Sten submachineguns, the Maquis guerrilla groups relied on British-made Welrod suppressed assassin’s pistols manufactured by the Inter-Services Research Bureau at Welwyn Garden City. The Maquis focused energetically on stealing firearms from the Germans, including Mauser rifles and carbines and the MP40 submachinegun. Of the latter, one French resistance fighter is said to have quipped: “They are as common as Parisian street hookers, and they get about as much action.”
In the Air and at Sea
MILITARY SMALL ARMS ADAPTED WELL TO THE VARYING REQUIREMENTS OF ALL THE U.S. ARMED FORCES.
U.S. Marines prepared for an offensive on Iwo Jima in early 1945.
Royal Navy soldiers monitored their coast with a British-made Lewis machinegun in 1940.
This newly designed PT boat, outfitted with developing weaponry, didn’t make it past the trial stage.
Increasingly sophisticated aircraft changed the rules of battle during World War II; a U.S. Marine Corps gunner on Guadalcanal Island.
Throughout the war, the Army Air Corps and the Marines modified small arms for their special needs. The Army Air Corps, for example, required “fixed mount” machineguns for the wings of fighters, while the Marines altered the Browning .30 caliber ANM2 with the stock from an M1 Garand. A pair of M2 machineguns was turned into an antiaircraft weapon by adding water-cooled sleeves over the barrels and shooting a “wall of lead” for enemy planes to fly into.
In the Cause of Espionage
SMALL, PORTABLE AND OPTIMALLY QUIET, THESE ARMS OFTEN COMBINED UNLIKELY FEATURES WITH LETHAL ENDS.
OSS HI-STANDARD
Country: United States
Date: 1942
Length: 12 1/2in
Caliber: .22
The Hartford Arms 1925 target pistol morphed into a spy gun 15 years later.
WEBLEY & SCOTT MODEL 1911
Country: Great Britain
Date: 1911
Length: 6 1/4in
Caliber: .32
WELROD ASSASSINATOR
Country: Great Britain
Date: circa 1942
Barrel Length: 8 1/2in
Caliber: .32
To maintain deniability and secrecy, manufacturers refrained from putting their stamp on the pistol. The earlierst Welrod looked like a bicycle pump.
APACHE KNUCKLEDUSTER
Country: Belgium
Date: 1870s
Length: 5in
Caliber: .20
Named after a French street gang who used these in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
STINGER PEN GUN
Country: United States
Date: 1942
Length: 3 1/2in
Caliber: .22
The OSS instructions read: “It can be fired from the palm of the hand at a person sitting in a room or passing in a crowd...and can be distributed to patriots of occupied countries.”
LE PROTECTOR PALM PISTOL
Country: France
Date: 1882
Barrel Length: 1 1/2in
Caliber: .32
In World War I and World War II, both sides adapted existing firearms and developed new ones to suit the needs of spies, special forces, and saboteurs. Special-purposes weapons featured stealth, sound suppression, and portability. During World War II, the British Special Operations Executive and its American counterpart, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), also supplied weapons to resistance groups in Nazi-occupied Europe, including the Liberator, an inexpensive single-use pistol dropped by airplane behind enemy lines.
LIFE Covers the War’s Guns
WEAPONS WERE A CORNERSTONE OF LIFE MAGAZINE’S COVERAGE OF THE WAR, THE FRONT LINES, AND BEHIND THEM.
July 10, 1939
February 23, 1942
November 20, 1939
April 6, 1942
May 27, 1940
July 13, 1942
June 5, 1944
July 27, 1940
September 7, 1942
June 12, 1944
October 28, 1940
February 22, 1943
September 11, 1944
December 29, 1941
March 27, 1944
October 30, 1944
No other magazine covered World War II with the depth and breadth of LIFE. Twenty-one of the magazine’s photographers spent 13,000 days outside the United States, often in combat zones. The images they sent home were searing and memorable, ranging from the rubble of the Battle of Britain to the sands and jungles of Guadalcanal. Covers featuring guns transmitted an especially powerful message.