Preparing the scene for the republication of his The Luger Story in paperback (June) John Walter discusses the appeal of the Luger: ‘The Luger is undoubtedly the best known of all automatic pistols, thanks in no small way to crime fiction and the efforts of the cinema: if a pistol is required - particularly by the bad guys - a Luger has always been the most popular candidate. It obviously looks suitably sinister, but why should it have attained such great public recognition? The subject of countless articles and several dozen books, the lure of the Luger is still difficult to pin down. The unsavoury aspects of the Third Reich obviously account for a tiny part of the enthusiasm, but the interest of most collectors seems to get held more by minutiae: identification of a new holster maker, or a previously unknown variation of a proof-mark. This is an area in which the Luger excels. Another major factor lies in availability. Production was insubstantial by pistol standards - at about three million, far greater than any pre-1945 design except the 1911-type Colt-Brownings. Thus there were more than two Lugers for every Walther P.38, and three for each Mauser C/96. It is even possible to tie an individual gun to a specific military unit, fixing it in time. The Luger is the only mass-produced pistol to which this desideratum applies, as the Colt-Browning - at least its equal in numerical terms - is rarely marked in this way whilst the Walther P.38, despite appealing greatly to collectors, appeared only after the coding systems had been abandoned. Yet the Luger was notoriously difficult to make and very wasteful of raw material. It requires careful maintenance and can be temperamental on the firing range. And I certainly would not trust my life to one - I’d rather have a .45 M 1911A1 Colt-Browning, for all its wrist-breaking recoil. So why does the Luger fascinate me? This is largely due to the projection of such a vibrant image onto the present day, even though the design is so patently a product of nineteenth-century technology that it could easily have been consigned to the scrap-heap of history. In addition, though millions of words have already been written, the loss of so many German records in 1945 has left great gaps in the Luger story. Work undertaken in Germany has disproved some of the more outlandish theories, but determining the history of the Luger remains a Holy Grail-like pursuit. We still do not know exactly how the Borchardt pistol of 1893 became the Borchardt-Luger of 1898, nor how much of the glory to credit to individual designers. Production figures are still being argued at length, as assessment of rarity (and by implication, desirability) are robustly contested - a vital part of the ‘Luger Industry’, of course, as some guns could easily sell for six-figure sums. Though I have already contributed Luger (1977) and The Luger Book (1986) to the information available, new research and a vital need for a compact, reliable one-volume study persuaded me to begin again. The Luger Story is the result.’ The original hardback edition of this book received excellent reviews: ‘When I first picked up this book my immediate reaction was to thank the publisher for producing it in a sensible and useful size. We are becoming accustomed to A4 and larger formats, but this book is handleable and transportable ... well written ... contains much useful information to the collector, shooter and historian ... well illustrated ... an excellent book, well written, well presented, easy to read and handle and at a reasonable price for such a specialist publication.’ - Max Sarche in the Newsletter of the Arms & Armour Society. ‘A readable book, telling a fascinating story ... will be an asset to the many shooters now taking a greater interest in the world of classic guns.’ - Guns Review. ‘A fine addition to any library.’ - Small Arms World Report. ‘New bible for Luger lovers ... of great interest ... fascinating.’ - Soldier. Back to Greenhill Military Book News No. 106 Table of Contents Back to Greenhill Military Book News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 by Greenhill Books This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com