Why were commercial military‑pattern rifles being made in Germany in late 1944?

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]And it's a rifle that never actually went to the German army, to the Wehrmacht.

[00:00:04]And it was assembled in 1944, late 1944.

[00:00:07]And you might think that's a pretty weird time for guns to be available, military pattern rifles to be available on the commercial market in Germany.

[00:00:17]Like late 1944, the the Wehrmacht kind of needed every gun it could possibly get. And even that still wasn't going to save it.

[00:00:24]So, what's the deal with this rifle?

[00:00:26]Well, these are guns, there's a batch of commercial production guns like this one. And they all have some little subtle differences to them. They're not uniform because they are late war, scrappy sort of manufacture.

[00:00:40]But they're assembled largely with parts that are able to be reclaimed from a variety of sources and then assembled by small shops outside of the regular factory system. So, this one in particular was assembled by a company called Fritz Langenhan, which you may recognize from their production of.32 caliber pistols in World War I.

[00:01:00]Like Langenhan pistols are are a neat piece of German World War I