D-K Productions is a collaboration between the rGerman company Sport System Dittrich (SSD) and an American partner. SSD has been making reproductions of German World War Two small arms for something like 20 years – including Sturmgewehrs. Their guns are really good recreations of the 1940s originals, but there have long been issues importing them into the US. This was solved at last by forming a US company and doing the receiver manufacturing here in the States. While the company has plans to offer a whole bunch of different models, the one currently available is the BD-44, a copy of the standard production model of MP-44/StG-44.
I was really impressed by the use of not-finish-machined forgings for parts like the stacking rod and gas block, correctly duplicating the original German production. The stampings look good, and the handling matches the original guns (don’t expect it to be AR-level ergonomic!). The gut “feel” of the gun is an excellent match for an original MP-44. The 8×33 chambering and use of original magazines (alongside new-production magazines made by D-K) is the correct choice, of course.
I did not like the mismatch between the magazine well and magazine stops, and I did have a couple malfunctions in the two magazines I ran through it so far. Not that the gun I have at the range is my second one; the first one (which is what you see on the table) had consistent feed problems and D-K replaced it when I sent it back to them.
Whether the gun is worth the steep asking price is a personal decision, naturally. Hopefully this video gives you the information necessary to make your decision if you were considering getting one!
Tour of the SSD facility in Germany: https://youtu.be/XN10HDr3Z_Y
My video on the BD-38: https://youtu.be/Bh6dpfbQqHE
Will someone loan Ian an original magazine and see how that works? Not getting the magazine right has doomed otherwise good auto-feed designs.
I do get the point about if you want a fully authentic reproduction of a historic gun, do you reproduce design flaws?
I have reproduction black powder pistols (like the Walker Colt) that do not have the issue of weak metallurgy. Can stuff the full, supposed, max load of 60 grains of BP in to it without worrying that something unpleasant will happen. Quite happy about that.
So I can’t be a purest that says all warts need to be reproduced.
Reproduction of these ww2 german guns is apparently cursed, as not only ambitious H&M 4 calibers project failed (last october Palmetto armory dropped the bastardized STG attempt taken from H&M, as well),
also a “gunlabs” repro of much simpler “last ditch” VG 1-5 failed to gain results now already 10 years after preorder.
Is this another example of how well Germany was able to manufacture weapons that the rest of us are lucky that the Germans ran out of time and resources. Otherwise their military technology would have become unstoppable?
Actually, not. The Germans never got their production lines to the point where they could churn enough of these Wunderwaffen out to have any affect whatsoever on the war.
Sure, they had wire-guided AT missiles and nightscopes for rifles and tanks. Unfortunately, they didn’t get them very far out of the lab, because they never got their acts together.
German tank production was batch production; every one of their tanks was effectively a one-off, and usually had to have parts hand-fitted or sent back to the nearest depot/factory for repair above a certain level. Even if they had a spare Panther transmission in the inventory, out in the field? Odds were quite good that they’d be unable to make it work.
German industry of the era was shambolic, much like a lot of the UK was also shambolic. Too much emphasis on the craftsman vs. line-replaceable parts that were uniformly manufactured and able to be fitted to various different machines.
There’s a graphic out there that shows how many different vehicles that the Sherman final drive assembly fit vs. how many few of the German equivalents fit. I forget where I saw it, but there was a paper that went over how much damage the higher-performance specialized parts of the typical German vehicle did to their logistics. You had, at one point, nearly a thousand tanks and other armored vehicles in the East that were unavailable to the tactical commanders because they were broken, and the right parts weren’t anywhere near where they needed to be… Plus, because of the way they ran their logistics pipelines, too many subordinate units were hoarding parts and not cross-leveling to adjacent units that needed the parts to get their vehicles back up and operational.
A detailed look at the whole of German production and logistics structure would be illuminating, because when you look at all the bits and pieces laid out in front of you that you can find documentation for, the wonder is more “How the f*ck did they get as far as they did…?” than anything else.
I’m not aware of anyone having done that work, however. The sheer ineffectuality of German logistics compared to the Western Allies is mind-boggling; the few places that they got things right, really didn’t matter in the end. Yeah, sure… better fuel cans, better machinegun doctrine and weapons, but… Overall? None of that made up for the lack of real depth to their industrial base and the incredible amount of misuse and waste they allowed. Hell, mandated, really… The fact that they held to such schizophrenic production until Speer came along? Mind-boggling; every little Nazi official had to get his piece of the pie, and to hell with economies of scale or sensible utilization of resources.
The hell of it is that a lot of the “wunderwaffen” pulled resources out of producing the actual weapons they needed, and the weapons that needed to be upgraded as the war went on… Weren’t. Not in any way that really helped win the war.
Speer portrayed himself as a great rationalizer of production, but that doesn’t seem to really be the case. He also made himself out to be something of a nonpolitical technocrat, where actually he was a trusted Nazi, and got a lot of his boosts in production by the simple Nazi methods of (1) lying, and (2) ruthless expansion of the use of slave labor. He did introduce the innovation of making U-boats in sections inland and then bolting them together at the coastal shipyard, which might have been a good idea if the sections had actually fit together; actually they required a lot of rework to fit. But he also did stuff like counting factory-repaired aircraft as new production.
When I read his memoirs I saw a lot of patting himself on the back for being so clever, but very little about how he actually did it. Rationalizing production is a complicated thing to do, requiring a lot of thought in each case, so I was expecting a lot of war stories like Elon Musk’s tale of trying to automate gluing a fiberglass blanket on top of the Tesla battery, having problem after problem, then eventually wondering whether they needed it at all, and finding that the safety people thought the blanket was there for noise while the noise people thought it was there for safety… and ending up just deleting the damn thing. But Speer didn’t have such stories.
This is interesting topic, maybe his “rationalization” was on strategic level sorta like ordering who will produce what, or not produce something anymore, in what numbers and such. I’m speculating here, but maybe you had firms making, idk, random stuff like vacuum cleaners and directive came; enough of that crap, now you make 90% of your production – bomb fuses, etc.
The first time I read Speer’s work, I was credulous and entirely naive about it all. The second time I read it, I saw holes everywhere, just like with the crap the German officers wrote after the war.
You don’t find much in there that’s not self-serving and blaming Hitler, which I suppose is something I should have taken as a warning sign. The reality is that all those assholes wrote to make money after the war, selling to credulous types in the West who bought into their bullshit. Speer, like the others, was literally singing for his supper, so he told his audience what it wanted to hear. And, what made him look good…
In the final analysis, you have to look at what came out of that whole conflict: Nowhere in German wartime production do you see much at all in the way of rational sanity, and you also don’t see much in the way of sanely and rationally utilizing industry outside of Germany. They certainly could have, but where di did they do it? Most of the time, they stole the factory equipment, moved it to Germany, and then brought in expat labor that they treated as one grade above slaves. If they hadn’t been schizophrenic looters with the mentality of pirates, you’d have seen some actual utilization of French industry and decent treatment of the French labor force. Same as they didn’t do everywhere else… The whole thing was nuts, when you go to look at it. They conquered those nations and then basically left them and their industries to their own devices, looting whatever they could, rather than building them up and using them for their war effort. Which really made no damn sense, at all. I mean, OK… There the French arsenals were, and none of the Germans thought to go through and examine them for the things they should have been easily able to figure out that the French had been doing, like the semi-auto rifle. Why didn’t they do more than a cursory search of the system, and find out what the hell had been accomplished?
I mean, consider the alternatives: French MAS semi-autos taken up and developed, then issued in German calibers to German troops. Given the superior nature of that rifle compared to anything the Germans had in the pipeline at that point, and the utter disuse of those French arsenals for anything significant, how would that have worked out? Surely better than what we saw in the reality of things where the Germans ignored all that industrial potential.
Of course, the whole thing falls down on the fact that a rational Nazi regime would have been a not-Nazi regime by the very nature of things.
The stunning thing to contemplate is just how far they managed to get, being as incompetent as they were. They should not have been able to do what they did, and it was only the ineptitude of the Allied leadership (mostly Stalin…) that enabled it all.
Competent Allied leadership would have seen Hitler’s ambition put down sometime before the Fall of France, but that would have meant that Stalin wasn’t propping him up with resources for reasons unknown.
Storm, if you’re looking for sources on this stuff, the book “The Wages of Destruction” by Tooze is pretty good (though a bit on the boring side). There’s also a recent book “The Secret Horsepower Race” by Calum Douglas which focuses on aero engines. As a Formula 1 engine guy he really knows the subject cold, and he did a lot of trawling through old archives. Don’t be put off by the cost of the book: per kilogram it’s a good deal. That weight of high-quality paper doesn’t come cheap, and he fills it like a guy who is used to arguing on the Internet: lots of extended quotes from archives, so as to not just hint at his point but prove it. (Speer doesn’t play a big role, but the role he might have played would have been to reallocate nickel from flak guns to aero engine valves, countermanding or subverting the Fuhrer’s direct order to do the opposite. The German engineers had no end of trouble trying to make valves out of what they well knew to be inferior materials.)
Kirk, there was this shortcoming of nazis treating occupied countries with colonialistic approach, which alienated most people in them, and that was especially true in eastern europe where they could have rallied the people formerly suffering under communist despotic regime, but they mostly got “untermensch” treatment instead. In ww1 for example from what I known, such thing did not happen and they even won the eastern war. Of course, then they did not have had such “supremacist” ideology, but of course, you still had royalistic stuff tied to aristocracy which is its own brand of supremacist story.
@Storm,
That’s the basic flaw in all the Wehraboo bullshit fantasizing about “How the Nazis could have won…”
In order for them to win, they’d have to be “not Nazis”. That’s as simple as it can be said, and once you subtract the lunacy from the Nazi ideology, what was left? Absent the built-in superiority complex, how do you persuade your German people to do the necessary? The Nazis needed a national myth, in order for the fraud to work, and that national myth was tied in so deeply to the system they established that it wasn’t even funny. Say you’re a low-level sort, out in the weeds of rural Prussia or Bavaria: What motivates you to join the Nazi party, if you’re not getting a leg up on everyone else, and you don’t get to loot the local Jews of their property and lives? Where’s the funding going to come from, in order to rebuild post-Great Depression and WWI Germany, funding that’s relatively pain-free for the “average German”?
The whole thing was a house of card, what I’d describe as an “incompetence-ocracy”, where the leaders making decisions were just the ones who could yell the loudest and convince Hitler of their “rightness”. It worked for a little while, but once the spinning plates started falling off all the sticks, well… It had to be war. Which was why they started the war they’d always planned about five years earlier than they had told the leadership of the military it would be starting. They ran out of other people’s (Jews, mostly…) money.
Norman,
one book or publication that I never heard existing, which would be very interesting to talk and think about, is the amounts of war materiel that was lost in sinked atlantic shipping from US to Europe, like not in tonnage, but xxx xxx number of firearms, types of tanks etc. When specifically named it would give better understanding then bland tonnage fact. Of course, if its known and how much of it was known – maybe some shipping logs contained falsifications (for later purpose of insurance if it was tied to it…)
Hi Ian.
Great video presenting the MP44. I really enjoyed it eventhough I’m one of the truely “lucky bastards” owning an original german WWll MP44. As far as I know, we’re only a couple of owners of these magnificant weapons here in Denmark. Mine was bought from a weapon store/manufacturer in Germany some years ago. The actual weapon was deactivated in Austria by the original “owner/user” by drilling several holes in the barrel. The MP44 was purchased by the german dealer/manufacturer years later and re—activated by installing a new Lothar-Walther barrel, removing most of the internal parts in the trigger housing (related to “Dauerfeuer”) welding the fire selector in the “E” position.
The finished weapon was then presented to the german authorities for test/approval as a “semi-auto” weapon in Germany. The MP44 was handed over to the german army (Bundeswehr) who brought it to their museums collection to make sure that a simple parts swop between a fully functional MP44 and the “my” MP44 could not allow “full auto” functionallity. Based upon the sucessful test of the weapon a court decision was made and an approval issued from the german authorities.
I bought the “muster waffe” (test weapon) and had it imported to Denmark, where is was approved as a “sport weapon” i.e. a manual loading rifle. I have by the way manufactured the special devise (designed by Hugo Schmeisser) as an “adjustable gas plug” for deactivating the selfloading function for using the grenate launcher with the MP/STG44 as described the the book Sturmgewehr by Hans-Dieter Handrich – and it actually works! By the way my original 30 round magazine marked MP44 made by “fxo” ie. Haenel (bicycle factory) works very well without malfunctions when loading max. 28-29 rounds.
how lucky to own a piece of history, i’ve always wanted a stg44 (dream gun),but 6200 bucks is high for reproduction one, but who knows maybe before i die , i’ve always thought it was the coolest thing ever made,way before its time
I wanted an actual MP-44, until I purchased a non-firing replica. Holy Crap! What a boat anchor! I thought the Thompson SMG was heavy and awkward, The word ergonomics doesn’t belong in same sentence with MP-44. Buy a replica or just handle one and the gun lust will disappear.
You’ve just illustrated the precise reason so many of these projects fail. People say “Yeah, I’ll buy one…” and then when presented with the actual steel? Not so much…
I would suggest to any would-be weapons manufacturers that the number of people who say “I will…” is nowhere near the number who are going to actually put down money when the time comes. Especially for historical reproductions.
You have to look at what drives a lot of this stuff; the Old West reproduction market was initially driven by the spate of post-WWII Western movies and TV shows. It was a result of huge cultural drives that just aren’t there for things like the StG44 reproduction; what are you going to say to your neighbors? “Oh, I’m into WWII cosplay, and I really love being the Nazi SS-Mann…”? Nuh-uh. Not happening.
If you were selling StG44 repros for about what the average plinker went for, say a Marlin Camp Carbine or something? Yeah, they’d be successful. Not at the price point they have to sell for, though… The market ain’t really there, no matter what the guys milling around at the SHOT show might say.
I think a key attribute for anyone doing this sort of “bring back the dead” work is self-delusion. And, that it has to act on several levels… First, you have to convince yourself that it’s all about the weapon, not the milieu it came out of. Then, you have to further convince yourself that there are enough people out there who’re similarly inclined to make it profitable, and you have to ignore the niggling doubt about how many of them are wannabe Wehraboos.
Frankly, I think the hypothetical neighbors could scarcely tell the difference between an STG44 and any other scary semi-auto rifle. Certainly, my coworkers who do have interest in guns have enough trouble distinguishing the AK from the SKS! If they able to tell apart scary guns they’re rarely the sort to lambast one for owning an evil “Nazi” gun or at least no one has done so to me for my Luger or Walthers.
The BD-44 apparently sells in Europe well enough for SSD that they bothered to bring it to the US despite all the hurdles. I think the re-enactors and the two prior generations raised on WW2 video games will provide enough of a market to continue bothering to make a small number of receivers every year in the US.
An anecdotal end-note to all this, there remains enough people interested in German firearms with money in the US that G43’s rarely sell for less than $3,500 on online auction sites.
US(A) is worlds biggest firearms market, whole Europe with its increasingly prohibitive gun laws is nothing compared to it (and grim future for shrinking market),
so company making such guns would be heavily inclined to do everything, including bringing the production there, if it can help getting on US market.
I personally think price is at least 30% too much, and it gives a luxury, rich mans item.
However, making it too common and price available risks in exposing some design and production flaws and thus receiving much criticism due to the statistics of big numbers, as x number of buyers would probably complain on something.
I wanted an actual MP-44, until I purchased a non-firing replica. Holy Crap! What a boat anchor! I thought the Thompson SMG was heavy and awkward, The word ergonomics doesn’t belong in same sentence with MP-44. Buy a replica or just handle one and the gun lust will disappear.
still want one just not at 6 grand, unless iam rich, all the stuff you said is all good and dandy but the stg is still the father of all assault weapons , modern anyway, i want a nemo omen in 300 win mag but for 5 grand not in my budget, i settled for glfa 300 win mag, and i wouldn’t care what my nabors say about me liking nazi stuff, other than the cruel crap they did to jews , they had good aircraft weapons and good looking uniforms
Reed G said:
“…and i wouldn’t care what my nabors say about me liking nazi stuff, other than the cruel crap they did to jews , they had good aircraft weapons and good looking uniforms”
And, in the final analysis, that was about all they really had going for them: Flash, no fire.
I’ve no doubt that once enough time has passed, and enough people have forgotten, the Nazis are going to be enshrined as underdog heroes and lauded for their “virtues”. Everything else is going to be forgotten, especially their massive incompetence at everything military outside of tactics and operational art. I’m glad I’m not going to be around to see it.
I think there’s a lot to be learned from them, but the majority of the lessons are more in terms of “what not to do” vs. “outstanding examples of the military arts and sciences”.
The Stg44 is an example of everything wrong with the German war machine: It was simultaneously cutting-edge tech, highly realistic in terms of what they needed for the way they fought, and utterly mad in the “big picture” stuff like military/industrial policy and grand strategy. The time and place for replacing their basic infantry individual weapon was not in the middle of a total war for the regime’s survival, and the fact that they lacked the internal self-discipline to recognize that fact and avoid expending the resources on it all…? Same with all the tanks; someone should have been the grownup on the scene and told all the little batch-production types to get off their ass and do what the Americans were doing, and build some decent mass-production plants. Do a quick compare/contrast on Willow Run vs. all the crazy diffuse stuff the Germans did all across Europe. Were they halfway sane, they’d have avoided all that idiocy and concentrated on set simplified standard production instead of all this high-tech, high-craftsmanship batch-by-batch construction. I mean, for the love of God, there were differences in between individual tanks of the same batch, right down to different models of turrets and engines. Can you imagine being the poor bastard maintenance officer somewhere out on the steppes, knowing that you just didn’t have what you needed to repair your stuff, with the commander yelling in your ear to get more tanks operational…?
There’s a memoir out there that I read a bit of wherein the German maintenance officer is writing about the crap he had to go through, in order to keep his divisional tanks running. He had to keep personal notes on which tanks had which parts, and it was a nightmare trying to integrate everything with operational needs. He detailed one incident where he had to send one of his crack maintenance sections fifty or more km into Soviet-controlled territory in order to salvage one specific hull, because that was the only one in the sector that had the parts they could cannibalize to get two other vehicles back up.
The Allied issues paled by comparison. Most of the time, everything fit and was cross-compatible; you could take any of the Sherman parts (almost…) and stick them in another Sherman, even if they were two different engine types. The schizophrenia in the German system is almost impossible to comprehend for anyone even vaguely familiar with US/NATO practices and standards.
“(…)simplified standard production(…)”
They developed Panzerkampfwagen III/IV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_III/IV