Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at IO Inc., Inter Ordnance,
taking a look at a German pattern Mauser 98k
manufactured by Czechoslovakia after World War Two
specifically on contract for East Germany,
that eventually ended up in Central Africa.
It's a heck of a cool story, I think.
So, this is a "tgf 1950" pattern Mauser.
so named because that's how its marked on the receiver.
Interestingly, so here's the first cool thing. That tgf
looks just like a German ordnance code, and it's all lowercase,
it's formatted just like the German ordnance codes that
the Brno Factory, who made this, used during World War Two.
However, tgf actually stands for Tschechoslowakische (I don't speak German) Gewehrfabrik,
or Czech Rifle Factory, in German that's tgf, Czech rifle factory. Czechoslovakia in German starts with a "T".
If you're into German tanks, you may recognize the Panzer 38(t), that indicates Czechoslovakia.
At any rate, Czechoslovakia, the Brno Arsenal in particular, manufactured Kar98ks for the German military
during World War Two under German supervision, as well as some other small arms.
After the war they continued to make guns for commercial export to bring some ... hard currency back into the country.
Czechoslovakia was not part of Germany, and thus they were not subject
to some of the arms restrictions that Germany was after the end of the war.
So they sold these guns to a variety of countries, among them Ethiopia,
which we actually did a video on a little while back, and Israel and some other places.
In 1948 there was a communist takeover of the Czechoslovakian government,
it kind of joined the Soviet Bloc behind the Iron Curtain.
And at that point they actually continued operating the plant for a couple more years.
A little bit odd given that the Soviet Bloc didn't use Mausers, didn't use 8mm Mauser, which is what this is chambered for.
But clearly there was some value to it, if nothing else because it was an existing production line,
currently operating relatively inexpensively to make some guns.
So the very last batch that the factory produced of Mausers was this tgf 1950.
And they did it specifically for East Germany. Now East Germany, they didn't use these as military rifles.
These were, I don't know exactly, police, border guard, I think border guards,
the guys who weren't getting the top of the line stuff. Which were, well, AKs and submachine guns after World War Two, so.
Mechanically there's not really much that differentiates this from a standard Czech Mauser.
However, there are a few things. So let's start with the markings.
On the top of the receiver here we have "tgf", Czech rifle factory, and 1950 date.
These are all dated 1950, so I believe that's a contract date, not the actual year of production.
And that's done just like the standard German manufacturing codes.
On the side of the rifle we have a serial number, right there where you would expect it.
This T in a circle is a typical 1950s style Czech proof mark. We have a little HK in a circle here, that one's partly worn off.
And then also partly worn off (this one's a bit worse for wear) we have a Czech crossed swords acceptance mark.
Since you saw it already, I'll point out this. This is almost certainly not East German, I suspect this is Ethiopian.
We'll get to that, and that's just an inventory rack number.
Back here though I'll point out we have a Kriegsmodell style late-war pattern of butt plate.
There is no disassembly disk, it has this hole in the stock in lieu of that.
We also have the late style of nose cap here, and it is serial numbered.
So this is the type that's welded along the bottom.
Now the most unique mechanical part of this is the trigger guard and magazine floorplate, because
this uses an early type of milled floor plate. You can see it's got the locking screw on here,
which actually isn't quite properly installed at the moment. It's got the locking screw up here,
this is all milled. And by the way, both parts are again serialised.
However that has been welded to a stamped trigger guard.
The style of that trigger guard manufacture is very similar to the earlier
post-war Mausers that the Czechs made with the enlarged sort of winter trigger style of guard.
But on those the whole assembly was stamped, here it's just a stamped trigger guard welded to a milled floor plate.
The front band is a cool thing worth noting here, because there are actually at least three different variations of these
that were put on by the factory. So we have this pattern where it's a solid band
with a sling swivel on the side.
These are all held in place by a proper spring retainer there.
We have this pattern which is a fixed bar instead of a sling swivel, also properly fitted.
And we have this pattern, much like the first, but with the sling swivel on the bottom,
and with its rather flamboyant sling on it.
Now it's worth pointing out that two of these, this one (note the serial number ends in 69),
... the band is actually numbered 69.
And this one, serial number ends in 80.
This one's a little harder to see, but you've got 8,
(get it in the light), 0, it's right there.
I don't know how well that's going to show up, but it is actually serialised there, 80.
This one's a little trickier. Serial number ends in 05,
We have a zero and a something, right there.
However, this particular rifle is completely matched otherwise, including the bolt.
And it seems to me very unusual that a rifle would have like all other matching parts and not a front band.
So I think there's a very good chance that this is also factory original.
And I also want to point out yet another bit of oddness here. This one, that has the band on the bottom,
it still has the standard slot in the stock for a Mauser pattern sling.
However, it was also fitted with a sling swivel on the bottom of the stock.
Now this one isn't serialised, but it doesn't really need to be because the front band is serialised,
so we know that's original and so this certainly is as well.
So I only planned to show you guys one of these, I figured that would cover it.
But then of course, the deeper you go, the more you start looking at things,
the more interesting little variations you find like the three different front band styles.
So now we've got three of them here in the video. Anyway, let's talk about ... where they went after East Germany.
Now we come to Ethiopia.
So this rifle of course is in East Germany as of the 1950s, and the 1960s, and into the 1970s.
And in 1974 the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie I is overthrown,
and he is replaced by a Marxist government in Ethiopia
Not surprisingly, they start to shift their alliance structure towards the Soviet Bloc,
away from American and NATO military support and towards the Soviet Union
and it's compatriots like East Germany.
So in 1977 the East Germans start talking with the Ethiopians. And in 1979
they sign a formal pact of basically friendship and assistance, to ... mutual trade.
And at the same time Ethiopia is dramatically increasing the size of its armed forces,
from like 40,000 in 1977 to 200,000 in 1983.
You can't do that without getting a lot of armaments. Now they got a lot from the Soviet Union,
especially big hardware, tanks, airplanes, that sort of thing. But when it came to small arms
they needed a lot, didn't necessarily have to be the most up to date stuff,
and so the East Germans started sending them actually quite a lot of military assistance.
They sent Lugers, and they sent Mauser rifles.
So these tgfs made this interesting kind of round the world trek from Czechoslovakia to East Germany,
and then eventually all the way down to Central Africa, in Ethiopia.
Then, of course, fairly recently these were part of a big cache of African arms
that Inter Ordnance found and purchased and brought in to the United States.
So if you're interested in this sort of thing, check out Inter Ordnance's website.
I can't post a link directly to it on YouTube, but you can find it pretty easily I suspect.
And they are selling off the most interesting, kind of the cream of the crop, of this huge batch of
interesting, varied arms of all sorts from Africa.
They're selling the best of them directly through their own website, so check it out. Hope you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.