So they're finally finished and standing neatly on the table - your WWII German infantry, There they are, with their regulation Gewehr 98 or Kar 98 rifles, with the unit commander and his deputy with their MP38's (or, Schmeisser if you like -although the MP38 and it's derivatives were not Schmeisser designed weapons). Platoon after platoon of them, all very efficient looking. But, are they accurate? Well, depending on where your troops are meant to have been stationed, they could have been armed with any number of different machine pistols/submachine guns. I'm going to run through a few of the possibilities here.
At the start of the war, the German Army had a number of Machine Pistols in service. The Schmeisser designed MP28/II was a design improvement on the 1918 pattern Schmeisser machine pistol (which was still in service with the police). It had a wooden rifle style butt and forward hand grip with an air cooled barrel. The 20 or 32 round box magazine was fitted horizontally and projected out to the firer's left. These were manufacturer for export and a major order was made to the Belgians. The Belgian weapons made their way back to German in 1940 and were issued to second line units, as were the remaining available MP18s. A weapon following very similar design principles - the SI-100 - was manufacturer in Austria, and several thousand fell into German hands following the annexation of Austria. Another WWI survivor which was still in use was the Luger artilleriepistole, a luger pistol with an 8" barrel, a detachable stock and a 20-round box magazine - this was not capable of automatic fire, but a magazine could be emptied in 30 seconds.
A design developed between the wars by the Bergmann company was the MP32. This was similar in appearance to the MP28/II, but had the magazine projecting to the firer's right, and was available in short (7.8 inch) and long (12.6 inch) barrel versions. The MP32 also had a bayonet fixing. This weapon was not ordered by the German Army, but was bougrit by the Danes in small numbers. Following the capture of Denmark, these weapons came into German army service. There were a series of improved MP32 designs which were, overall, very similar looking. The MP34/I was bought by the German police, and the MP35/I was selected as the standard Waffen SS weapon in 1940 - 40,000 in total of this design were made.
The next major smg bough by the German forces was the Erma MP E. This had a rifle stock, a forward pistol grip and a box magazine of 20 or 32 round capacity projecting horizontally to the firer's left. This was purchased for front line unit use up until 1942 and was transferred to training and second line units after that time.
The MP38, another Erma design, was in production for the German Army from 1938 until early 1940. This instantly recognizable weapon, oddly credited by the Allies to be a Schmeisser design (does anyone know why?) would be modified, updated and simplified for production throughout the war - around one million of the MP40 updated design were produced during the war. Variants included the MP40/II which had a double magazine arrangement which allowed the second magazine to slide across into the firing position when the first was expended. Few were made and they were used on the Russian Front.
From late 1944, the German munitions industry began making copies of the British Sten gun, itself a copy of the MP38/40 design, but using a horizontal magazine fitting. The Sten was a very simplified design lacking all frills and it met two requirements for the Germans - it used the minimum of material and it was thought to be useful for partisan use on the Western Front. Some 28,000 exact copies (down to the British markings) were made and further 10,000 modified designs (with the magazine in the vertical position) were issued to home guard units.
By the later stages of the war a final family of weapons was being issued - the Mkb42/MP43/MP44 Assault Rifles. Although there were differences between the 42 and 43 designs, they were basically very modern looking assault rifles - a wooden rifle stock, with a pistol grip and a vertically mounted curved box magazine holding 30 rounds. Somewhere around 60,000 of these weapons were produced.
In addition to the many variations of German SMG's, there were also a number of captured/Allied produced weapons which found fairly wide use in the German Army. The Italian Beretta Model 38A looked like the MP28 style of SMG, but had a vertically mounted magazine (10, 20 or 40 round capacity). Both this and a modified version, the Model 38/42 (which looked rather like an MP38 but with a wooden rifle butt) were used by the Germans in Italy and North Africa. The Finnish Suomi m/31 was yet another MP28 style weapon but with the options of 20 round box magazine or 50 and 71 round drum magazines, all fitted vertically below the barrel. The Suomi was sold to Denmark and Norway and came into German use following their occupation. A wide variety of Russian SMG's were also used - the PPD 1940 with it's drum magazine was particularly popular and some were rebarreled with MP40 barrels and fitted with the MP40 magazine so that they could take standard 9mm ammunition.
So if you look again at your wargame platoon, remember that of the SMG's produced in Germany, something like one in eight was not an MP38/40 and this figure is much higher in the early part of the war and also for second line troops. Troops fighting on the Eastern Front may very well have captured Russian equipment (the Russians made literally millions of SMG's, thus, many thousands of useable weapons must have been captured by the Germans). German troops fighting in Southern Europe and North Africa may very well have Italian equipment. Putting this mix of weapons into your units should have negligible effect on their wargames fighting ability (except, perhaps in very detailed skirmish games), but it will make them more historically accurate and also more interesting to look at! Breaking up the uniformity will also serve as a reminder that, despite the claims of German war propaganda, their forces were often equipped with a hotch-potch of equipment form a variety of sources, pressed into service with little regards to the strain on the logistics chain.
Finally, this article was inspired by reading THE SCHMEISSER SMG by Chris Ellis and Peter Chamberlain. Greater detail on all the weapons mentioned in this article can be found in this very well illustrated and highly recommended book.
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© Copyright 2002 Hal Thinglum
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