No More Lugers

[Walt]

According to Walter's "Luger Book", the Allied Commission collected 4,560,861 pistols of all types after WW I, and destroyed 4,533,907 of them. Assuming that the remaining 6.954 were certainly not all Lugers, these relatively few surviving P-08's would have been those reworked for the Weimar military and police with only those weapons captured or hidden by their owners instead of being turned in, making up theÃ?Â*balanceÃ?Â*of WW IÃ?Â*datedÃ?Â*Lugers available since the end of theÃ?Â*war. All in all, an extremely tiny percentage of production. In addition, following WW II, Walters quotes an example of many thousands of Lugers thrown into the English channel by returning British troops who had picked them up from surrendering German troops in Denmark. Seems the Brits did not trust their fighting men enough with personalÃ?Â*weapons toÃ?Â*allow themÃ?Â*to bring these 'illicit' pieces home as souvenirs. He cites an individual saying that a diver could probably walk from Calais to Dover on tossed out parabellums. So many made. So few left.