Interesting piece.
 

I've no desire to purchase this piece but the markings are interesting. I was wondering if anyone here would know more about the markings than what is already stated.



http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/Vie...Item=337561826

Maybe it's not such an interesting piece................

What's the current opinion on the "KL" Lugers?
This is a subject that I don't follow...

Hey Ed, It has only been about 8 hours since you posted the link... give us time to have our coffee before we offer advice or knowledge...

The forum search engine is your friend... Here is an OLD thread that discusses possibly the same Luger but you can't be sure since the thread is old enough (11 years) that the associated photos have fallen off the edge of the server... but the discussion, including the humor, is still valid.

http://forum.lugerforum.com/showthre...light=Kl+Luger


The best advice in the thread is from "Navy", who for those who don't know, is my late friend Tom Armstrong, whose knowledge was second to none in this collecting community... Tom said "The KL meaning is unknown;" ... I don't think that has changed.

Thanks John...I take it from the jokularity about the piece that it's almost become a legend. I would think that if it's been around this long and disputed this long, some german vet or knowledge from a german vet back then would have chimed in. I had never seen it before and was curious. Tom's response still stands. Unknown.................

Thanks again..............

One thing I noticed, even though the first konzentrationslager was established in 1933, the abbreviated letters used was 'KZ' not 'KL'. Even today as one travels around germany the roadside signs direct the traveler to a "KZ' Site.

I have always found this marking of great interest, there is a WW2 film of US troops entering I believe what was Mauthasin Concentration camp. On the back of one inmates jacket is a large painted "M/L"....always gave me some reason be delieve M/L was tied to police/guard weapons....forgive my spelling

The most probable explanation for me is the reworked by the company Klett in Suhl.

I have the impression that, even 2 or 3 generations later, there is still social stigma attached to admissions of connection to concentration camps. In this respect, I don't find it surprising that no one has said they were stationed at one, or had a pistol thus marked. Also, the German vets are disappearing just as fast as ours; so this kind of info/testimony will be even more rare as time proceeds.

And correctly so.

That said, those stationed at concentration camps were army and ss staff, so they would be equipped with material that came through normal army and ss/police procurement channels. So I seriously doubt that any material used in the camps was marked in another way than normal military and police issue material would be marked.

...just FYI, the last statistics I saw indicated that the USA is losing between 1200 to 1800 WW2 vets a DAY... :eek:

If it comes to WW2 concentration camp vets, Germany can't lose them fast enough...

They were bottom feeders in the 1940s and remain such until this day. They were scum and should be treated as such.

There were no Heer personel stationed or on duty at KZ camps, strictly SS Totenkopf units and those units rotated their personel from the camps to the front line. The Army would never adhere to such duty.

The German Army, Heere, or whatever has plenty of proven complicitly in atrocities in the East and West as well.
Germans for any number of reasond share some guilt over their servile complacency to the
3rd Reich.

Not simple, by any means, considering post WW1 conditions and the polce state atmosphere.
Their paternalistic culture created a natural resource of folks willing to blindly obey most anything they were ordered to do.
Refusal had serious consequences, but overall, most went along with the program.

I'm no expert, but have spent 50+ years reading into it.
Some good training and practical experience as a military advisor showed me a lot about human nature in culteral behavior.

Then you can agree, atrocities are committed by all armies, including our own in all conflicts including Nam.

Of all the assassination plots against Hitler, no SS were involved but most all were concieved and carried out by the German Army General Staff.

Anyway, this subject is getting away from the original post. Historians can debate who did what and when until the world ends. There is no clean hands, just some more dirty than others.

Not so fast-atrocities as policies, ie mass murder, genocide were not business as usual in the American army in Vietnam.
Sometimes bad situations bring out bad actions in marginal folks as the 9th Infantry troops happened to be in those days.
This was an isolated deviant occuance and you know that.
Lot of actual history to be read on the event if you bother to look into it.

It was not mass murder astrocities within the german 'army', Waffen SS, japanese army, Russian army, yes, but not the German Heer. If it was astocities it was what you explained, "bad actions of marginal folks". I am 65 and have studied military History all my life so I did...bother to look.

Easy guys... please restrict your comments to the LUGER this thread is about... we are getting way too far off track and I will have to lock this thread if it continues.

History is recorded only by the victor.