[ French Occupation Lugers ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Morphy's
taking a look at not one, but two,
French occupation production Luger pistols.
These were manufactured by the Mauser Company
in Germany under French control.
So on April 20th 1945 the first unit
of the French Army ... rolled into Oberndorf,
that was the 9th Regiment of the Chasseurs d'Afrique.
And the French would go on to occupy and control
the town and its surrounding area for a couple of years.
Of course, after the war, Germany was divided up into
zones of occupation for each of the various Allied countries.
Russia had one, the Brits had one, the Americans had one, the French had one.
The French zone of occupation happened to include the Mauser factory.
So at this time of course the French Army
hasn't had use of its own national arms industry for several years under German occupation.
And so they're pretty eager to be able to supply some more of their own weapons.
Right now they're getting guns largely from the British and the Americans.
Well, when they roll into Mauser there's a ton of
... guns and parts in the Mauser factory complex, this is a massive complex.
A lot of the cool interesting stuff, the current developmental work,
things like the ... new designs for the Sturmgewehr 45,
that sort of stuff has been loaded on a train a couple of weeks earlier.
And they tried to evacuate it down towards Austria to keep working from another location.
Cool story for a different time. Didn't work out for them, needless to say.
But what was left at Mauser included a lot of parts for P08 Luger pistols,
as well as other stuff, P38s, Mauser HSc pistols, Kar 98k Mauser rifles.
And the French would put several of these into production as early as July of 1945.
So just a couple of months after they take over the factory,
the intelligence services from all of the Allied powers come in
and kind of do an assessment.
Figure out what was going on at Mauser, what did they need to look into?
A lot of this was focused on that train load of interesting stuff.
But then they clear out, and it's left simply under French occupation.
And the French look at what are literally hundreds of tons of gun parts and go,
"Hey, we can use those. How about you guys go back into putting these guns together for us?"
And not a terrible option for the German workers at the Mauser plant,
who would then get paid once again and have a job to do.
Something very useful to them under the post-war new economy.
Anyway, there are lots of parts for Lugers, and the French like the Luger.
Kind of everyone likes the Luger, Americans love Luger pistols.
It's a classy pistol, it works well, it's distinctive, and it has a good reputation.
So the French are already getting started with some fighting in Indochina,
they need new pistols, they need new firearms of all types.
And the French forces in Indochina, especially in the late '40s,
were using this incredible mishmash of stuff.
They had like 17 different types of pistol
that were officially being used by the French Army down there.
All sorts of German equipment, as well as American equipment,
French equipment, British equipment, you name it.
And Lugers would play a part in that, these are desirable, useful pistols.
There are a ... couple of famous French fighters in Indochina
who carried Luger pistols as their standard sidearm.
So there are, technically speaking, like five different variations of these,
but ... they're all fairly similar.
So let me go ahead and close in up close,
and show you what differentiates this from every other Luger out there.
The standard configuration that you'll find is this one.
There were a small number of Artillery Lugers made under French control,
but we're talking very small, like a dozen of them known to exist.
And they were pretty much special order things made for special people.
What you'll normally find are the standard 4 inch barrel 9mm Parabellum.
And you will generally find them with blank receivers,
but they will all have Mauser banners on the toggle.
Pretty much standard markings: "P.08" on the frame, the German safety mark.
Now some of the serial numbers are a bit different on these.
I will point out this is actually serial number 43, so it's not an abbreviated serial number.
If we take a look at this guy, this is what you will typically see
with a more than two digit serial number.
It's 1636, and then you've got the last two digits on several of the other parts.
We'll talk about this in a moment.
At any rate, the frame is serialised.
On a typical German production Luger the barrel will be serialised,
but not on the French occupation ones.
Nor will you have a serial number on the firing pin, or a few of the other internal parts.
There is no ... number on the inside of the side plate here,
but you will find a serial number on the trigger, which is under the side plate.
And then side plate, the barrel extension here, the ... takedown lever, and the frame itself.
As well as the toggle.
The magazines are also serialised on the base plate there.
It is an aluminium base plate, and a blued steel body.
They were typically ... supplied with two matching magazines.
This one unfortunately only has one, but c'est la vie.
Now there are five separate variations documented of the French occupation Lugers,
but they're really not all that different.
So this is actually a first variation, it has an extremely low two-digit serial number.
First variation guns only run for about the first 200 pistols total.
And in fact there are only two others documented in this group.
And what makes them distinct is that they use an eagle N,
which is the German commercial proof mark,
above the serial number, right here, as ... the final acceptance mark on the guns.
The second variation runs for guns from about 200 to about 500, it's about 300 total guns.
And for reasons that are unknown, but kind of probably easy to guess,
at that point the French stopped using the eagle N,
and started using a five-pointed French star, similar to what you would see
on the MAT 49 or on the Ruby pistols, as an acceptance mark.
... That makes sense, like they didn't want to use Nazi marks on French guns, cool, understandable.
However, at about serial number 500 they go back to using the eagle N,
and we don't have any good information as to why.
That's the third variation, and on those they move the eagle N from above the serial number
to in front of the serial number.
Not exactly an earth shattering sort of change, but it is distinctive.
And those will run basically to the end of production.
The fourth variant is the same sort of serial number style,
but using a frame marked "42" up here, instead of just being blank like all the rest of them.
Those guns were obviously made using frames
that were left over having already been marked during the war.
And ... there's an estimated production of about 300 of those.
And their serial numbers come ... in the high 2,000, low 3,000 serial range,
and they overlap with other serial numbers of guns that have blank chambers.
So it would appear that at some point they either found
or just decided to make use of a batch of ... barrel extensions
that already had "42" stamps on them.
There is then a fifth variation that is very subtle.
There's only one known P08, and I'm not even going to bother with the fifth variation
because it's basically again the same slight numbering variation there.
The one other thing you will occasionally see on these is this "BH" mark.
And that is "Bundesheer", and it is the Austrian Army.
It's not entirely known how these guns became property of the Austrian Army.
Austria was not allowed to have armed forces until 1952,
so they definitely did not get them directly from Mauser.
And this is clearly a post-war stamp, these were not wartime guns.
And ... in the case of Lugers like this, you'll find this on
... basically all the different variations of the French occupation Lugers.
So there are a couple of theories, the one that seems most likely to me
is that by the time the Austrian armed forces were being set up they were looking for small arms.
The French at that point already were bringing in the MAC 50,
and didn't have as much need for these Lugers as they would have originally.
And some of them probably went from ... French units in Austria to Austrian troops.
Just handed over from the Gendarmerie to the Austrian Police or Austrian Army,
something like that.
At some point maybe someone will find documents that explain
the exact transition how these came into Austrian service.
But you will find them like this.
And so Austrian troops, Austria in general, was familiar with the Luger,
and it made a perfectly adequate, good sidearm for Austrian forces in the 1950s.
Now the one other mark that I want to show you,
there is one other distinctive mark in these, and
to see it what we'll do is pull the pistol apart.
And what we see now are two very small stamps,
one here on the toggle, and one here on the barrel extension.
And they are sort of a stylised "WR" for works revision.
This is a proof stamp that was used pre-war by Mauser
to indicate parts being acceptable for use.
They stopped using this mark during the war,
and it comes back with the French occupation guns.
And it is surmised, and it certainly seems reasonable,
that this was simply a stamp that was added
once parts were gauged and found to ... have proper fit for use in assembling more Lugers.
If you think about it, the grand total of production of the Luger under French occupation,
well, the highest known serial number is 3334.
So we're probably talking about 3,500 guns total over the course of a year.
This would run ... basically until August of 1946.
And so they weren't producing a ton of parts compared to what they normally would be,
and so they had a new system for identifying ones, presumably pulled from old stock,
that were suitable for use, and so that's that WR stamp.
And you will find it in these two positions on
all authentic French occupation production Lugers.
Now I think the story of where these went is also rather interesting.
Because it wasn't just the French Army.
These pistols were also, at the time that they were being assembled,
available for sort of commercial sale.
Like not commercial sale to the German populace,
who are definitely not allowed to be having pistols at that point,
but available for sale to soldiers.
So there's at least one account in the book "The Parabellum is Back!",
which is by the way a fantastic source of information on these.
If you want to know more about them,
exact serial number lists (or as much as has been recorded),
definitely check that out. I'll have a link to it in the description text.
But there's an account there, a first-hand account from an American officer,
who ... found an excuse to go over to Mauser and showed up with some cash.
And bought six of them for a bunch of his buddies
to replace basically the really worn-out, beat-up Lugers
that they had been able to take as battlefield souvenirs. So, you could buy them.
And a lot of the ones that are on the collector market now
are like this guy, in immaculate condition.
Which suggests that they did not go to Indochina with the French, however some absolutely did.
When these were first being assembled under French control,
a good chunk of them did go to the French Army.
The French Army ... didn't have a modern 9mm pistol.
The most modern thing the French Army had at this point was the 1935A and S pistols.
Which by the end of World War Two, it's pretty clear we're going to want 9 Parabellum.
The 7.65 French thing was cool at the time,
but no, let's just standardise on the known good cartridge, 9 Parabellum.
So the French would start developing a submachine gun, the MAT 49,
as well as a pistol, the MAC 1950, in 9 Parabellum.
In the meantime they're already fighting in Indochina, and the Luger was considered a
good to go, top of the line, ideal service pistol for French Indochina use.
And so you see some of them show up there.
Now the French in Indochina were using an absolutely huge mishmash of gear
from all over the world. A lot of German equipment, a lot of American equipment.
You see M1 carbines, you see G43s, you see MG 42s, you see Lugers.
All sorts of stuff down there before the French Army could really
kind of standardise and re-equip itself in the early 1950s,
once they've got the Model 49 rifle, the Model 49 submachine gun, and the Model 50 pistol.
So once they kind of come out of front-line military service
they're pushed back into sort of rear-echelon roles.
There's a ... French manual for the Luger that specifically mentions
that it's intended to replace the Ruby and the 1892 revolver for guys like drivers
who ... need some sort of gun, but they're like last on the list of priority to get the new stuff.
Well, much better to give them something in 9mm Parabellum,
ammunition supply is easy, and, hey, they're really good quality pistols.
I should point out these were extremely well-manufactured, high-quality guns by Mauser.
This was post-war,
there was none of the wartime simplification rush to get these guns out.
They were done right, they were really nice, and are really nice examples of Lugers.
At any rate, better to give one of these guys to a driver,
and get rid of something that's in .32 Auto or 8mm Ordnance.
So they would serve in that role for a little while.
Eventually they were pretty much all seconded over to the French Gendarmerie,
who were even lower in priority for new arms than the Army.
The Gendarmerie would keep them in service until about the 1970s,
when they were pretty much all surplused off.
So, a lot of the ones that are in the US these days are in just immaculate condition.
And that probably represents guns that were purchased as souvenirs by American officers.
There's no documentation on this, unless you have some specific provenance to a specific gun.
But one like this one that's just absolutely beautiful,
was probably a souvenir that was never used in anger.
We already talked about the Austrian use of them,
and that Austrian mark that you'll find on them occasionally.
So that's sort of a separate side path that some of them took.
At any rate, I think these are really cool,
they're some of the very last Lugers to ever be produced by the military.
There was a re-introduction of the Luger in, I believe, the 1970s
for the commercial market.
But what you're seeing here are like the very last military Lugers.
Which I think is really neat.
Anyway, they're also fairly scarce, ...
it was remarkable to me to find two of them here at the same time.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.