Hoax?? (long)

[Patrick]

I would advise you not to take Marvin�´s contribution "Wood Grips vs Plastic Grips - When" particularly seriously. When I first read it, I immediately took it to be a joke - and it seems that a number of other contributors were not prepared to believe it either.


As you know, August Weiss, who was production manager at Mauser and was also responsible for the transfer of Luger production from DWM in Berlin, is no longer alive. G�¶rtz was responsible for finding and interviewing Weiss, who also published his detailed notes and his diary for the war period.


There is no further information that was not contained in his notes and in these diaries. Suffice to say that there is no mention of Marvin�´s report in any of these documents.


Helgoland (not "Holigoland") is a minute island in the North Sea, approximately 35 statute miles from the nearest German coastline. The outcrop of rock once belonged to Denmark, was captured by Britain and given to Germany in exchange for Sansibar. Only a small fishing community lived there before WWII - and they also lived off shipwrecks and piracy. Germany needed the island to protect its North Sea harbours and the small population was evacuated.It would have been all but impossible to introduce plastic production facilities to the island at that time. The island was heavily fortified and was one of the few places where THERE WAS NO CONCETRATION CAMP.


Ms Reitsch was one of a coterie of lesbians who professed infatuation for Adolf Hitler. This was possibly hysteria, but also opportune, as even the insinuation of being homosexual was sufficient as an entry qualification to the death camps. After she was captured by US forces in Bavaria, she changed her allegiance to the Holy Ghost and became a religious maniac. Reitsch was a test pilot who preferred to fly suicide missions. She demonstrated the world�´s first helicopter inside the Deutschlandhalle and came close to death as the vehicle had no tail rotor. Hitler was standing underneath and the Gestapo suspected that Reitsch might have intended to kill the F�¼hrer in a suicide attempt. R. also test flew the V1 flying bomb. During the last days of the war, Reitsch waited in her Fieseler Storch aircraft in front of the F�¼hrer bunker and left only minutes before the Russians captured the airstrip. Her diaries have also been published and there is absolutely no record of her flight to Helgoland etc.


Neither is there substantiation for the claim that the SS had a monopoly on the colour black. This is a total myth. Black leather was used extensively for leather equipment throughout the Wehrmacht and German Panzer personnel wore black. G�¶rtz has gone into the change from brown to black grips at great length. He found that brown plastic used more expensive and rare raw materials, whereas black plastic was cheaper to make. The industrial soot provided a more uniform colour.


The cuckoo (not "cookoo") clock manufacturer and the trick cyclist put the finishing touches on quite a good hoax (I�´m almost envious and might try something similar myself some day). The remaining question is: did Marvin concoct this or was it someone in Germany. I have been living here for over twenty years and have never yet experienced a German sense of humour.


Is this an attempt to expose the credulity of the Luger Board?


Patrick