Living in Europe helps :)

Carrying a pistol over here is a pain in the butt anyway. Permits everywhere, accounting for every single round of ammunition, unloading and loading the magazines time and time again for safety reasons. It gets boring and irritating very quickly. Not to mention that you'd have to do even more paperwork and a whole lot of explanations when one pulls the trigger anyway. So most in the military don't mind leaving their pistols in the barracks arsenals and just do their daily business without a side arm.

When I did my guard duty at the army base gates, the pistol and uzi magazines had been loaded and unloaded so many times that the ammo was practically useless. Not to mention the quality of the guns and magazines. I was issued an Uzi with a repair tag, it was still on the gun when I left....

So do you suppose anyone actually died at the hands of a German officer armed with a 2nd Model Luftwaffe dagger? I suspect they claimed only a few weinersnitchels.
dju

Gerben

I totally agree with you.

The funny thing is that also our police forces when they are not on duty leave their guns at home in the safe, some of them once told me that "... in any case I' not allowed to use it, too many responsibilities.."

I live in a quiet area thank God.

Sergio

Vlim, you are discussing the point from the perspective of a modern, post war Europe while the original question pertains to practices at the turn of nineteenth century. While the German Empire and later the Nazis where able to arm a wide variety of troops with firearms, I still maintain that in its origins, when only officers could afford them, a sidearm was seen as a badge of rank.

Alan, not much changed between pre- and postwar europe in that respect.

A gun was a gun, not a badge of rank. The carrying of swords and daggers was (and still is) done on special occassions, as part of a dress uniform.

There were a couple of guys, including Goering, who suffered from a chronical overdress condition. They were looked upon as a bunch of pimps and drag queens by their direct contacts.

If you take a look ad period photographs and fim footage, you will notice, that expecially on official occassions, no higher ranking officials are carrying a gun in public or during leasurely meetings. Only on official portraits and during duty you will see them with holsters/guns.

If you look at period photos of Hitler speaking at ralleys, parades, etc, the officers around him are unarmed. I thought it was a security issue, but maybe not.
dju