How many soldiers did carry handguns?

[Joe]

Kyrie, your above posting is very accurate. The SS also used hand guns produced at the Radom factory in Poland. Look at a lot of the wartime action photos and see what type of pistol they most often used.

Medical personnel carried sidearms while at or near the front lines. When partisans of the occupied countries started taking "shots" at their German occupiers, all military and political personnel had to be armed for their own protection. There is a great picture in the front of Sill's book, "Imperial Lugers" that shows medical personnel in a horse drawn hospital train under attack and fighting back. There is also a posed photo of 5 medical personnel each with a Luger. I think that if medics in the Imperial German Army were armed, they were also armed after 1939.