Hi guys
thanks for tuning into another video on Forgotten weapons.com I'm Ian McCollum and today I have an
interesting Luger to take a look at this isn't
fancy special super rare in any particular
Historical sense but what it does have is a really interesting backstory to it
this gun has pretty much been everywhere in German history in the last hundred years and
it's the
Combination of proof marks and manufacturing marks and property marks that really show a tremendous historical trail to this
Specific pistol so let's take a closer look and let me walk you through where this gun has been
so mechanically, this is a standard po8 Luger and
If we look at the top on the toggle, we start with a DWM stamp
That is deutsche waffen und munition, Fabrique
they were the the main factory making Lugers at first other companies started later on but PWM was the original and
then we have a
1917 manufacturing mark
so this was a World War one era Luger almost certainly saw use either police or military used during World War one and
then it has a 1920 stamp above that that indicates that the gun was collected and
Inventoried and refurbished and was part of the Weimar Republic's legal
legally allowed armament between the world wars so that
1920 basically that 1920 stamp is on there to prove that the gun was inventoried
So if you ran into a military firearm that didn't have that second date stamp, you would know that it was
illegally possessed
Germany the German government wanted everyone to turn in the guns that they had
So as to comply with the the allied military control of Germany during the 1920s
So this pistol went back into Weimar service most likely as a police gun?
It has as a pinhole here
For attaching a special police safety that was instituted
That would prevent the gun from firing when the slide was removed
That's one of the safety issues with the Luger is that normally if you have a round chambered you can actually fire it
With just the slide assembly. And so that's the sort of thing that leads to unintentional discharges when
policemen take the guns apart to clean them not realizing there's a round chambered and then accidentally fire it so this has
Indications that the safety itself is no longer there, but it appears to have been mounted at one point
So part of its use as a police gun during the Wiemar era
Then it would have passed into service during World War two
We don't have any specific evidence on the gun of its World War two use but we know it was in Germany through the war
because
We have some more markings here on the front grip strap
so this somewhat crude looking stamping tells us a number of additional things about the gun this star burst right here is
the marking of the Volkspolizei
That's the the German police the East German police after world war ii and
Then these three letters SWS
Indicate that this was a police gun and they tell us where it was used which was Weissensee
The leading s tells us that this was actually put into
police property use when Weissensee was in the Soviet sector and
That sector only existed for a fairly short time. So right after world war ii this pistol went back into police use with
soviet control in soviet-controlled
Germany in Weissensee and then we have another milestone up here
that crown n to 95 and a shield is
A much later West German commercial proof mark indicating that this gun came on to the commercial market
and became legal for
resale in 1995 and what happened in between there is that there was actually at the the end of
The the East German government. There was a large arms Depot discovered in Weissensee. It was a Stasi arms Depot and
It had something on the order of a thousand submachine guns 1,500 pistols a bunch of mg 42s
most likely machine guns anti-tank rifles
Panzerfausts it was kind of a huge hidden Arsenal in Weissensee
And that Arsenal was pretty well
ransacked a lot of the guns that were in there were not properly turned in and destroyed and
This is almost certainly one of them that was
Liberated from the the Stasi armory and Weissensee and then a couple years later
commercially proofed in West Germany
So to make it legal for sale and came back on the market and we can see more evidence of that on the magazine actually
The gun has been outfitted with an East German Volkspolizei magazine
you can kind of tell these by their construction they have an aluminum base plate and
They have a proof mark here
2/1001 indicates that it was manufactured by Haenel in East Germany and
This magazine is its magazine. Number two, the guns came were issued with two magazines and its serial numbered 2650
Which is matching to the gun?
This gun was there in World War one?
It was there at the Treaty of Versailles through the Weimar Republic
Through Hitler's rise to power and the rearmament of Germany pistol was still there through World War two then into the Soviet occupation
and then passing into the East German government and
this pistol then outlasted the East German government was still
there in
Germany when the wall came down
reproofed by West Germany and now back in commercial hands
I
Always enjoy finding guns that have not just not just historical provenance to one event or two events
But in the case of something like this pretty much all of German 20th century history everything that happened there
This pistol was there to see so that makes something really interesting to look at and a really cool piece
To have in a collection. Thanks for watching
You