Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at Legacy Collectibles
to take a look at a pretty esoteric piece of information.
Today we're going to take a look at Walther PPK and PP pistols
that were specifically contracted to and issued to the SS and the RSHA.
The RSHA being a subgroup of the SS that was founded by Himmler
in 1939, and it was specifically to kind of conglomerate a bunch of
secret intelligence and secret police agencies.
So the SA, and the Gestapo and the ... Criminal Police.
Anyway.
There is often a lot of interest in what guns were used by the SS?
And was this gun used by the SS? And usually when you see this
being displayed or being collected, you'll find guns that have big ... obvious SS runes or death's heads or various
emblems like that on them. And these are virtually always fake.
What I want to look at today is what does a real SS gun look like? And how do you know what it is?
So, we have four ... different versions of PPKs and three versions of PPs that are known SS or RSHA contracts.
Now the way that we know this information is kind of actually very interesting.
It is from actual German records. So when the United States Army went into Germany in 1944 and '45
... the German records were kind of impeccably maintained (with the exceptions of the ones that were
burned to avoid them being captured by Americans).
And these records will include things like the serial number and model and all the specifications
of guns that were purchased by and issued to agents of the SS or the RSHA.
So you'd go into an SS office and there'd be card indexes of all sorts of information.
And the US ... archives and also the German archives include a lot of this information.
And what some researchers were able to do is look at all of these serial numbers and say,
OK, these are guns that we absolutely know went to the SS. If we put all these ... serial numbers together,
do we see special characteristics to these guns that indicate that they were part of contract batches for the SS?
And the answer is yes, and that's where these specific types or characteristics come from.
So that sounds a little bit confusing. Let's just dig in, and I think you'll catch on as we start going through the different types.
Alright, so we're going to start with PPKs and then we'll do PPs.
And the general rule here that we're going to be working from is that SS guns were special contracts ... sold specifically to the SS,
and are thus distinct from the general production for the commercial market or the German military.
So, the way that you can identify special contracts is generally by serial numbers on the magazines.
So general production never had serialised magazines. These SS guns all do.
Now other special contracts to, say, railway guards or bank guards,
those could also be special contracts and they could have numbered magazines.
That's why we have a couple specific serial number ranges and varieties.
So our first variation of SS PPK is serialised
... at the muzzle end of the slide. So you can see the numbers there.
And then they also have the standard serial numbers on the frames,
and then they also have a matching serial number on the spine of the magazine.
Originally each gun was issued with two magazines, so they will be numbered 1 and 2 above the serial number.
Now this first variation does sort of have two sub-types, because some of the guns are RZM marked
and some of them are not.
And overall the known serial number range for this first variation is 838,769 through 999,999
and then 100,000 through 192,925 K. [These numbers are listed in the description text below.]
Again, it's important to note that not every gun in that serial number range is SS because that's like
150,000 guns. It is guns in that range that have numbered magazines and serial numbers on the muzzle.
Now the second variation is generally referred to as "K under". And the reason for that is that these have, again,
a non-standard serialising practice where the K in the serial number (and by the way, this is a practice that was established,
the PPK started off like at 760,000 for a serial number range, and once they hit a million
they went back and started over at 100,000 and added a K for ... PPK as a suffix). So
the later production PPKs actually have lower serial numbers, counter-intuitively.
And typically on standard production that K would be just right after the serial number.
So a special contract here ... it was specified that they wanted the K under the serial number like this,
and they wanted the guns serialised on both the frame and the slide, and
the magazine.
And in fact, if I pull that magazine out of the gun, you'll see we have two matching mags here.
They're both the K under the serial number. And they're numbered number 1, which has the finger rest, and number 2 which does not.
This second variation is found in serial numbers from 206,019 K to 234,852 K.
Again, not necessarily every gun in that serial number range is an SS gun, just the ones in that range that have
the spine numbered magazines and slide and frame "K under" serials.
Alright, with our third variation we're getting even more esoteric. This is the "K after" pattern.
And it will have a serial number on the slide, which is not standard,
however, the serial number has a K suffix located after the serial number.
... This is how the serial numbers are generally done on all of the guns, down here on the frame with the K after the number.
The non-standard element is having it up here on the slide below about 350,000,
because at about serial number 350,000 they started marking the slides on all of the guns.
So as I said, we're getting even more esoteric.
And again, one of the key elements to this is if it's an SS gun, it will have serialised magazines.
So there you go. And again we've got a 1 and a 2, and this time the 1 and 2 are located under the serial number.
This variation will be found from serial number 242,844 K out to 330,358 K.
Alright, and our very last variation of the PPK here is basically the military finished gun.
So this is a late-pattern gun, it's got black grips on it, it's got the much ... cruder finish to it
because this is fairly late wartime production and standards are getting rough for everybody.
Now by this time serialising the slide had become standard practice.
So this does not differentiate this as an SS gun. What does is the fact that it has a serialised magazine.
And on this variation the magazine serial number is on the baseplate of the magazine, not on the spine.
So these are guns where if you have one in this serial range
(and by the way, the serial number range for this ... variation is 382,985 K through 426,712 K),
and if you don't have a matching magazine it is impossible to determine if this was or was not an SS gun.
Because it is this magazine that is the one discernible defining element that can tell you that it was an SS gun.
Alright, there are three variations on SS PP pistols, that's the longer version.
Now I've got two here, I don't have an example of the very first variation. So you're going to see these two
while I tell you briefly that the first variation is a gun that is serialised on the slide and on the frame
and on the spine of the magazine, but it's relatively early production that has no "P" suffix.
So that first variation is found from serial numbers 977,985 through 981,212. It's a fairly small range.
And again this is guns that have serial numbers on the slide, frame and the spine of the magazine.
Now the second variation is the "P under" which is basically identical in concept to ... the "K under" PPKs.
What we have here is a gun that has a serial number on the frame and a serial number on the slide,
they both have P suffixes located under the serial number.
They will also have serial numbers on the spine of the magazine.
The serial number range where you will find these is from 124,774 P through 125,168 P. So a fairly small range.
Our third variation would be the "P after", which again is basically identical in concept to the "K after" PPKs.
So these are guns where you will have a serial number on the slide,
which again is not normally done on these guns this early in production.
It will also have a serial number on the frame, there will be the P suffix after the serial numbers.
And then both of the magazines will be marked on the spine and that's the ... other distinguishing non-standard feature.
So interestingly, where earlier we had magazine number 1 that had the finger rest, this one is on 2.
Magazine number 1 here is a plain floor plate. ... When the PPs and the PPKs were issued
they came with one finger rest mag and one non-finger rest mag
because the finger rest gets in the way in the spare pouch in the holster.
Our serial number range for these is 144,343 P through 204,905 P. And I know I've said this before,
but again, this does not mean that every gun in that serial number range went to the SS,
it means guns that were in that range that also have serialised slides and serialised magazines were SS contracts.
Our fourth and final SS PP variation is effectively the same as the late-war version of the PPK.
And unfortunately I don't have one of these to show you either.
The distinguishing characteristics are that they have serial numbers on the frame and the slide,
although that was standard practice for all production guns by that point, and then they will also have serialised magazines on the baseplate.
So this, but that long.
And the serial number range for those is from the 331,000 P range through 333,000 P range.
Now just to make this even more confusing, you will sometimes find serialised magazines
that have nothing to do with the SS, which kind of runs counter to everything I've just explained.
However, the reason for this is that police arsenals often serialised their magazines,
just as a matter of kind of standard practice.
These are fairly easily distinguished from the SS style because when police armouries
serialised their magazines they did so after the production process was done.
Which means after the finish was applied, after the magazines were hardened (if they were hardened).
And they were done using a different process where you can see
clear and significant distortion to the magazine where these numbers were hammered in place.
They were also numbered with individual stamps, so the marking overall looks kind of haphazard and non-linear.
So there's an example.
Here's another example with a slightly different font.
Here's one where they numbered it way down at the bottom of the magazine.
Here's one a little higher up, and on these they're using Roman numerals one and two.
Well, on the actual SS contract magazines, there are a couple things to look for.
The numbers on these magazines are very clearly marked on there. There's no distortion.
They're clearly done as a single operation, you know, the numbers aren't stamped on individually one digit at a time.
And the font for these numbers will be identical to the font on the slide of the pistol.
So if in doubt compare the magazine to the slide and if they don't match,
and I guarantee you something like this one wouldn't match, then you know you don't have an SS gun.
Alright, you've done well, we have just one more thing that I want to cover and that is SS holsters.
A lot of people will say, "OK, I have this SS pistol, what is the appropriate holster that it would have gone into historically?"
And the answer is, well, it's a complicated answer. The SS used a wide variety of contract holsters
which generally had no specific distinguishing marks to indicate their SS use.
However, all of the SS holsters were black. They did not use brown leather.
So holsters like this are typically appropriate (this is actually a really nice condition one).
They were made by AKAH, so this crossed rifle logo down here is AKAH's logo.
And they were of this pretty generic pattern that was kind of used for a wide variety of small German military pistols.
There is however one specific model of holster that was only used by the SS. In general, holster
designs were used by the SS and the military and the police and a whole bunch of other people.
This is the only one that is exclusive to the SS.
Now that doesn't mean that every SS pistol came in one of these, but it does mean the reverse.
Every one of these was used by the SS. And the difference here ... this is also still made by AKAH,
but it uses the Theuermann patent, which is this sort of funky design which is intended, I believe, to lift the gun
when you pull the cover of the holster open.
This is a fairly distinctive design. This in black specifically, because these were also made in brown,
but these in black were exclusively ordered by the SS.
Well, hopefully if you collect World War Two German small arms this has been of some use to you.
If you don't collect these, this is some pretty esoteric information and I'm impressed that you're still watching at this point.
... So I'd like to thank Legacy Collectibles for giving me the opportunity to bring out all of these different
variations to show you what the real thing actually looks like.
One of the cool services that Tom at Legacy is happy to offer is free authentication of SS pistols.
If you send him pictures, serial number and characteristics of the gun he's happy to authenticate
whether it is or is not actually an SS contract gun.
And sometimes he'll be able to tell you a little more information about it, if he has that available in his records.
And, from his perspective, it also allows him to add more guns to his records which helps increase and improve the scholarship
on this subject. Because this is all reverse-engineered data so to speak, we don't have the actual contracts from the SS.
We just have the actual guns, and you can work backwards from that to figure out which they are.
So improving that database and that information is always a good thing.
His email address is info@legacy-collectibles.com.
Send the email to Tom and hopefully get some extra information on a gun you might have. If not, well,
thanks for watching.