Mauser C96?
 

Can someone on here please affirm that the Mauser C96 was never adopted by the German military, no one believes me. The weapon was used, but the P-08 was the officially adopted only, not the C96, before or after 1908.

Looks like tens of thousands C96s were sold to German and Austrian-Hungarian armed forces before and in WWI. But it was not their "officially adopted" pistol, just an emergency pistol shortage measure. Since it's not adopted by German, it got the chance to spread across the world.

Certainly not adopted but several thousands were purchased and issued to military units during WWI (and, in a lesser scale, during WWII).

Douglas