"No more Lugers"

This is some more thoughts to the thread below and I just wanted to bring it back to the top. Concerning the figures given by Walter and the 4 million plus pistols destroyed by the allies after WWI. This is a tough number to accept as it would indicate that if all of the 1 million plus Lugers that were made for the imperial German Army had been confiscated (and I could only believe a much smaller number had survived and were turned in)then the Luger composed about 1 fourth of the total service pistols used. This low percentage simply does not stand up to known facts about alternative pistol production during the first world war and that would include Reichs Revolver use which I could not believe would have exceeded a few hundred thousand. Also one must consider the numbers stated in Jan Still's work on Weimar Lugers, which basically states that as many as 100,000 to 150,000 combined military and police used and stored Lugers were on hand during the Weimar period and hence all of these would have also seen Third Reich use. I believe that from personal observations of availability of Imperial era Lugers that show Weimar markings and/or modifications that Still's numbers are probably correct. As to P.38 use in WWII, one must understand that large quanities of P38's did not reach the field until 1942-1943.

I doubt that the total number of P.38's in service surpassed the number of Lugers in service before some point in 1944...and then only marginally. I have never found any evidence that P.38 were considered to be priority issue over Lugers in front line units...photos show that the premier Army, SS and Luft. Paratroop units were using a lot of Lugers into the last days of the war.