Hitler was furious and ordered an investigation. The whole affair was blown when a few divisional commanders asked Hitler at a conference when they would get the new weapon. German troops all over the Eastern Front were clamoring for the new weapon. The trick worked and the weapon went into production at three factories.
The German arms minister, however, knew the need for the new weapon and changed the name to “Machine Pistol”, which is what the Germans called their submachine guns like the US Thompson. However, Hitler, still thinking that troops needed a weapon capable of firing 2000 yards, ordered that production of the weapon not start. It fired a less powerful cartridge and had a lighter recoil as a result. The next submachine gun design to emerge was the MP43 or Machine Pistol 43 from a design developed in 1943. The Waffen-SS used a submachine gun made by Bergman called the MP34 also. A less known model called Erma was also produced as well as a German copy of the British STEN gun, called MP3008. The MP40 was not manufactured by Schmeisser, and the weapon was far more simple and had a much cleaner design, thus it became the standard issue for German troops.Īn earlier design called MP38 had a similar appearance and saw widespread distribution. While it is true that the Schmeisser firm did create and produce its own submachine gun design, it was less than perfect and prone to trouble. Many times the term “Schmeisser” is used in reference to a German submachine gun. The most common submachine gun used by the Germans during WWII was the MP40. Instead, ranges had shrunk down to 400 yards and a less powerful cartridge was needed. The way in which German troops used their weapons changed and a rifle with a range of 2000 yards was no longer needed – except for specialists and snipers.
After initial use, results were less than satisfactory and as soon as a better design came along, production was halted. The Mauser design won out over the simpler Walther design and many thousands of the Gewehr 41(W) were made available to the troops on the Eastern Front. Two designs were submitted for trials in 1941, one by Walther (the maker of the famous PPK and the P38 pistols), and the other was submitted by Mauser. While the German standard rifle was a bolt action rifle, the Germans did attempt to design a successful automatic rifle as well. It was a standard-issue for German troops in WWI and, in its modified 98k version (k for Kurz, or short), in WWII as well. This weapon was a 5-shot, bolt-action rifle that actually dated back to 1898 when it was first adopted by the Imperial German Army. The standard German infantry weapon was the rifle, originally designed by Mauser, and dubbed the Karabiner 98k.
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