In 1942, the SS devised a plan to rent out concentration camp labor to companies in the German armaments industry. Several different rifle production lines were set up to make use of this source of cheap labor, and the one we are looking at today is Steyr’s plant at the Gusen camp (a subsidiary of Mauthausen). A rifle production line was established there in March 1943, and in June 1943 Stern signed a contract to supply the SS directly with 10,000 K98k rifles per month. This production was outside the standard Wehrmacht inspection protocol, and the rifles are recognizable as SS contract guns by having receiver codes of bnz43, bnz44, or bnz4 in addition to:
– Lack of WaA inspection stamps
– No letter suffix on serial numbers
– Serial numbers only on receiver, bolt, safety, trigger guard, stock, and hand guard (later also floor plate)
The Gusen production line was not always able to produce as many parts as needed for the SS contract, especially receivers early on. To complete the necessary rifles, parts were brought in from other Steyr factories (in particular the plant in Radom, Poland). These supplemental outside parts were marked with single “S” runes to indicate their special destination, and to bypass regular Wehrmacht inspection. Thus the rune-marked receivers are actually the non-camp-produced ones, contrary to general assumption.
At any rate, this special SS contract lasted until 1944, when it was cancelled and Gusen production rolled into the standard Wehrmacht logistics program. In September 1944 the Soviets occupied Radom, and the loss of the rifle factory there forced the Wehrmacht to find a replacement source of arms. Before that Gusen parts were also used to supplement other factories, but after October 1944 its role fundamentally changed.
What a disgusting presentation. Focusing on markings minutiae and ignoring production history. No mention that Gusen was a forced labor death camp specifically created to work prisoners to death including American and allied prisoners of war. This rifle should be destroyed. Not admired as a historical artifact. Take a look at what happened at Gusen.
Always with the negative waves man.
The history is what it is. Destroying the artifacts it produced and erasing the records does nothing to bring back those victims of it.
Hell, if anything? I’d wager good money that the German use of slave labor did rather more damage to the war effort through apathy and sabotage than it brought actual benefit, and the sad fact that they resorted to it ought to be recorded as the massive failure it represented. On the Allied side, the majority of the factory effort behind the scenes was performed by voluntary, well-paid workers whose output rarely failed. On the Axis side, wherever there was slave labor or imported workers? There was actual sabotage carried out, to the point where the vaunted German war material just crapped out. Sand in engines, unfinished minor machining in the oil passages, things like that all contributed. Unfilled shells, bad fuses… All the legacy of the slave labor system.
The real monument to the people who were in those camps lies scattered throughout Europe in the form of dud shells, crashed aircraft, and a ruined German war machine. I think that the objects they were forced to create should be kept around and honored as a testament to why free men will always outperform serfs and slaves.
You can find a similar legacy left behind by the Soviet industrial efforts.
And, of course, the shortcuts and idiocies we’re still cleaning up, here in the US. Hanford, I’m looking at you…
Stephen:
You are the sort of person who would destroy hundred year old ivory to protest against elephant poaching.
There’s a certain commonality of reasoning here, with regards to the gun control freaks. They think the objects are somehow imbued with the characteristics of the makers and users; it’s a form of primitive animism, entirely irrational.
I see a WWII German weapon, I see a tool. Nothing more, nothing less; the uses those tools were put to are entirely irrelevant to the tool itself. How many of these Mausers were captured and turned against their creators, for example? Shall I say that an SS-rune rifle captured and used by a Yugoslav partisan is somehow better, less “wrong” than one that was used by the SS and never captured? Is that rational?
That said, there are limits to the idea of the object being merely a tool; were you to somehow get ahold of the Soviet pistols used at Katyn, for example…? Then, revere them for what they represented? That, I think, would very much be a wrong thing. If you can tie the object to a particular crime, and you want to possess it because you think that crime was laudable, then we have a problem. If you’re merely completing your collection because you want to have one each of every Kar98k ever produced? That’s a different order of business, entirely. That’s also about what Ian is doing here, and I don’t have a problem with it.
@Kirk
if you were take Marxism as written by marx…
he does claim material objects to have supernatural powers of controlling social relations
I’m not saying that the Marxists took dialectical materialism seriously. If they had, both Marx’ and the Bolsheviks ideas of revolution would have to be seen as contradictions of the idea of “scientific socialism, as, socialism could only arrive (“with the inevitability of a law of nature”) when the material productive forces were ready
and the most that a revolutionary movement could do, was offer obstetric assistance at its birth.
yet they persisted in revolutionary activity.
the TLDR;
I can see how someone who has swallowed that crap, might be able to believe that material objects can determine human actions
Interesting to percieve all this “slave labour” horribly, yet forgot that advesaries of Germany, sans USA, all had extensive colonial empires (France, Belgium, UK) where they, for decades, treated their untermensch subjects even more severe.
Seldom it is mentioned or known.
When I was a child I visited the Mauthausen camp, which had been turned into a memorial for the people enslaved and killed there. The gas chambers and the crematoria left a lasting impression on me. I also saw the quarry where they worked the people to death. Mauthausen is a testimony to why the right to keep and bear arms is one of the most important civil rights. History is what it is and should be remembered, good, bad or ugly.
The weapons legislation in the Weimar Republic was far more liberal than it’s in Germany today. That didn’t prevent the “Machtergreifung”. Hitler was elected by the people. A strong democracy with women and men who don’t fall for populists prevents dictatorship, not guns!
Like you I think, that historical documents like the discussed gun should not be erased from history. They belong into museums, where they should be put into the historical context. This too could prevent the repetition of history.
I can understand both sides of this one. There is nothing to admire about the nazi rule of Germany, and for a short time, much of the rest of the world. This rifle is an artifact of that time. What history might make of it pales along side what this weapon was produced to do.
That said, it takes a substantial amount of courage to present this. It wasn’t disgusting. It took some guts to present this to you. What controversial position have you people ever reported on, under your name, in public?
These weapons are a fact of life from history, and I would suggest further dialogue (with the gloves off, guys). But don’t blame Ian for failing to pretend that the Nazis didn’t exist.
CG
this is a little outside the subject matter, however–we took care of a 90 year old scot who had been sized as a prisenor of war in Hong Kong by the Japanese. Because he had electrical knowledge he was assigned electrical control of a steel plant in japan. what he did to sabotage the Japanese war effort was to pull one one power wire off the main electrical pump for the lubrication of ALL machinery in the mill. (all ran off 660 volt system and removing only one wire out of six would EVENTUALLY cause the motor to seize up thus depriving all bearings etc of oil/ grease). He did this twice without the soldiers knowledge, (which shut down the steel plant for about a week each time) but the Japanese civilians (who were actually treated worse than the pow’s) did not report it to the soldiers because it would mean immediate execution by sword (so as to not waste a bullet). They reported to the soldiers that they no longer had need of his knowledge – which resulted in his being transferred to a REGULAR POW camp _ where he experienced the horrors you probably have heard of. Needless to say this was close to the end of the war with Japan and he survived . WAR IS HELL (on both sides!!!)
Sounds like bona fide war make-believe story…
Last such fake story I’ve heard, of a guy who lend away his shotgun in war, just to find it again hundreds of miles away on a random dude (who supposedly bought it from someone), claiming he recognized it by a scuff mark on receiver that he repaired with cold blue. Problem is that said model he mentioned has, from what is commonly know – aluminum receiver, so all this cold blue BS could not work anyhow.
When I hear such tales I reply with my uncle’e adventure. In 1948, he dropped his new wedding ring overboard while fishing on Montana’s Flathead Lake. Naturally he red the day. Then in 1998, fifty years TO THE DAY later, his grandson was t rolling for trout on the selfsame lake. Reeling in the mother of all Loch Lavelin lunkers, he slot open the stomach only to find…NOTHING WHATSOEVER! Moral? There are fewer marvels in the world than get thought up in bar rooms.
Strange stuff does, however, happen.
We had one of our officers in one of my old units attempt suicide rather dramatically… Stopped his pickup in the middle of the Tacoma Narrows bridge and jumped. He was, amazingly, one of the very few people to ever survive doing that.
As you might imagine, there was a metric ton of surrounding drama in the old unit before and after that. Sufficient unto a bunch of us who were in that unit and who had returned to that post in other jobs that happened to put us in the same shop were sitting around one day, during lunch, shooting the proverbial feces. The subject of this attempted suicide came up for some reason, I think because someone else had done it and died. Now, one of the guys in our office was someone who’d worked directly for the officer that attempted it and lived, and he related all the dirt that went into the whole thing. I hadn’t been in that unit when the whole thing went down, and only knew the story through the grapevine, but I’d heard it. Three of the senior NCOs in the office that lunch knew of it, and all chimed in what they’d observed.
Now, the coincidence? The bizarre thing? That exact, very same afternoon? We finished lunch, went back to work, and I was basically manning the phones while all the senior guys went off to meetings and the usual BS that goes on in a major headquarters. In walks this guy in civilian clothes, who looks vaguely familiar to me, but not so I can really place him. He’s looking for the NCO who’d worked most closely with the guy who’d attempted suicide-by-bridge, and asked to me to make sure he got his card and all the rest of the usual thing when someone visits and doesn’t find who they’re looking for.
At the time, I didn’t think anything of it. When the Master Sergeant in question came back from his round of interminable meetings, he found my note and the guy’s card on his desk, and then went off on me, saying that it wasn’t funny. I’m like… What? What are you talking about?
The very guy we’d discussed at lunch just happened to drop by and look for the Master Sergeant literally within an hour of randomly discussing his suicide attempt…
The coincidence weirded us all out, for days. I sat down with a calculator, because I was doing a stats class at the time, and depending on how you chose your variables, the odds on that were literally billions to one.
Universe is a strange place. Don’t mock it…
I believe in it too Kirk, its called synchronicity or similar new age BS term concept.
It happens from time to time in life, not often so its memorable, now it first comes to mind; I was exiting my house going to town center and suddenly I remembered one guy that I didnt see or even think about for many months, maybe a year or so. Fast forward 10 minutes, I saw him in town.
Or stuff like remembering a song, and suddenly it starts playing on a radio.
Or, even more severe, suddenly remembering a guy with a rare surname from my school (that I saw last when I was 8 years old, because he moved out),
while I’m listening a radio, and a minute later caller joins the radio show for iirc some quick caller awards and gives to host that very same surname (it would be even creepier if it was also the same name, in other words, same guy) etc.
But the most drastic stuff I experienced, it was 10 years ago, which left me flabbergasted, was when I dreamed that one good friend at the time had scored a big money sum on a game of roulette (he liked to gamble). When I woke up, he called me to inform me of his recent win that just happened (like 2-3 thousand dollars) !! Of course, it was not like he was calling me every other day and informing me of wins, so its a purely statistical coincidence.
For a long time I was puzzled how in my sleep I managed to predict, or better yet, sense, that he won the money, and I still dont know the answer.
New age BS also preaches about some kind of psychological “internet” all braines are wirelessly connected…
Btw, I meant dialog with the gloves ON. Not off. ON.
I apologize for any confusion this may have caused.
cg