Thread: Luger clones?
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Old April 11, 2024, 02:00 PM   #17
44 AMP
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Join Date: March 11, 2006
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DWM never made a single "Luger", technically. They made the Pistole Parabellum.

Georg Luger redesigned the Borchardt pistol to create the Parabellum. The fellow in charge of US marketing for the Parabellum (I forget his name but you can find it with some research) used the name "Luger" because he believed that American buyers would find it easier to remember and more appealing than the "foreign sounding" Parabellum.

Stoeger apparently thought he was right, and after some years and negotiations, purchased the legal rights to the name "Luger" and in a bit of uncommon foresight, kept that legal right, renewing it as needed, and, I think still owns it.

Quote:
My question though to those that do know . . . isn't the reason that the Nazis started producing the P-38s = at least partially - was because they were cheaper and quicker to produce than Lugers? Judging from the P-38s I've seen and handled over the years - it seems like a feasible explanation?
It is exactly the reason, partially.

When Nazi Germany began their rearmament and expansion of their armed forces in 1935 the focus was primarily on new designs. New designs of planes, tanks, and small arms were part of that. Germany had Lugers, and could make Lugers, and they continued to do so, but the Walther design, adopted in 1938 was going to be the primary pistol. Lugers were to be the secondary service pistol. The Walther design was simpler, more modern, the parts were simpler to make, so less time and labor was needed per unit, and that made them cheaper to manufacture.

Germany kept making Lugers, the rapid expansion of their military left them critically short of pistols, a condition that was never fully rectified, which is why you see so many different types and non-German pistols in German service.

Germany ended production of the P.08 in 1942, so that the production capacity could be used for other things deemed more vital to the war effort.

Under the German rearmament plan, something was going to (eventually) replace the P.08 as their primary service pistol. They chose the Walther because it was the best GERMAN thing offered, and I'm sure the fact that it was simpler (and therefore less costly) to make had a role in that, as well.
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