Blank Toggle DWM/BKIW Lugers

[Don M]

A question by Eric (http://forum.lugerforum.com/showthread.php?t=25442) has spawned a lively discussion of the Lugers produced with blank toggles by DWM/BKIW. These have been known as "sneaks" among collectors and were thought by many to be an attempt to hide Luger production from the Allies. However, recent research has indicated they were manufactured in 1927-28 for a contract with the Riff Tribe in Morocco that subsequently was canceled for political reasons. The pistols were sold later to the German police. (See earlier thread for more background.)

Since the topic has evolved beyond the original intent of Eric's post, I have chosen to post my next contribution here under a more descriptive title.

I have queried my database of police-marked Lugers and searched for 29 DWM Lugers in the "s", "t" and "u" suffix blocks. The results are quite interesting. With respect to the blank toggles, there are three distinct serial number groups.

s Block – SNs 30s to 7064s

I have recorded 17 examples, all but one of which have DWM toggles. Those Lugers with DWM toggles were issued to the Prussian Schupo and Police Schools. The one blank toggle (7064s) was issued to the Prussian Landjägerei.

t Block & lower half of u Block – 498t to 5469u

There are 186 examples, nearly all of which have blank toggles and were issued to the Prussian Landjägerei. There are 28 recorded DWM toggles (15%) scattered throughout this range. Other than Landjägerei pistols, 13 were issued to the Prussian Schupo and Police Schools and 1 to the Hessian Police.

Upper half of u Block – 6607u to 9761u

There are 24 examples, only one of which has a blank toggle, the rest are all DWM. All but 2 were issued to the Hessian Police; the 2 exceptions went to the Prussian Landjägerei.

The blank toggles are almost exclusively found on Lugers in the t block and lower half of the u block. While most went to the Prussian Landjägerei, some were issued to the Prussian Schupo and Police Schools. Since my database includes only police-marked pistols, I checked these results against Dwight Gruber’s more comprehensive database of commercial Lugers (version 3.1, 1/1/2008) and found the same pattern.

Dwight’s database indicates that a very large percentage of the recorded Lugers in the t and lower-u blocks had blank toggles. This suggests that approximately 15,000 were produced. While this seems large compared with August Weiss’ reference to “a few thousand,” it is hard to know what his scale of reference was.

Another puzzle that is presented has to do with manufacture dates and serial numbering. Weiss states that the Lugers for the Riff Contract were manufactured in 1927-28. The conventional wisdom is that all or nearly all of the Lugers in the s, t and u blocks were manufactured in 1929. The apparent conundrum is how or if a large number of blank toggle Lugers with t and u suffixes were manufactured before those with s suffixes. I can imagine all sorts of convoluted explanations but it seems likely that many of the Lugers we call 29 DWMs were manufactured before 1929.

[cirelaw]

Don, Truly FACINATING!!!

[Mauser720]

Don -

Excellent research! Thank you.

I tried to find out more about the Rif Contract in order to understand the "few thousand" Lugers, and also to try to understand how at a time of such political turmoil in Germany anyone could have possibly thought it was a good idea to sell Lugers to Berbers in Morocco.

Today there are about 4 million Riff speaking people in Morocco, and another 2 million in Europe. So a "few thousand" Lugers initially does not seem credible. However, there was a war of independance going on in the region. During 1920 to 1927 the resistance was led by Emir Abd-elKrim el-Khatabi of the Beni Ouriaghel tribe. There are at least 20 principle tribes in the Riff region, and his particular tribe does not seem to be considered a principle tribe. Nevertheless, irregular troops under his command eventually defeated approximately 50,000 Spainish troops in Spainish ocupied Morocco. He was eventually defeated by a combined force of Spanish and French troops. In my opinion, if you consider who he was, the types of troops he was leading, and the fact that he was not from one of the principle tribes, it does seem more reasonable that only a "few thousand" Lugers were involved in the original contract. These tribesmen were not organized like typical European military forces.

I have also wondered what on Earth the Weimar Germans were doing to even consider such a clandestine plot to sell Lugers to a bunch of what we would call irregular partisan troops in North Africa. However, we are reminded that Imperial Germany did have a colony in East Africa, and this was stripped from them when they surrendered in 1918. But the point is they already knew the value of colonial assets. And according to one source, there were "outright subsidies paid (to the Riff rebels) by German concerns interested in exploiting the mining riches of the Riff." So it is likely that was their motive for even considering a deal that on the surface seems so ill advised.

Now the 15,000 Lugers you have identified is a number more in line with what Gortz & Sturgess claim did go to the Prussian police.

In summary, it is only my initial opinion there must have been two incidents in which unmarked Lugers were produced; i.e., a small number for the Riff, and a larger number for the Prussian police as reported by Gortz & Sturgess.

And I think you must be absolutely correct in discovering that many of what were thought to be 1929 Lugers were actually made prior to 1929.

[cirelaw]

Do I sence another work on the horizon?

[Don M]

Ron, in referring to the Riff Contract in his book The Luger Story, p. 173, John Walter states: "August Weiss, who was then supervising BKIW's pistol production in the Berlin-Wittenau factory, recollected it as 'large for its day'. He does not provide any reference to the source of this information but his use of quotes suggests he had access to Weiss or some of his writings. Of course, "large" and "a few thousand" are both rather non-specific terms.

[Mauser720]

Don -

More good information. I'll check out that reference too.

Thanks, Ron

[Don M]

Originally Posted by cirelaw

Do I sence another work on the horizon?

Not by me!

[sheepherder]

Walter's "The Luger Book" also has a short paragraph on pg 175 about the Morocco/Riff Contract.

[John D.]

Amazing thread... And I don't post much - but, I read a lot of threads....

Great thread...!!!!

John D.

[Jamka]

Don Maus drew my attention to this thread, asking if my translation of August Weiss' handwritten notes "a few thousands" cannot be misunderstood.

This is the text in German which was written by August Weiss at te end of 1972 (August Weiss Files Document 26):
"P. Riff. Vordergelenke ohne Firma von D.W.M. Berlin Wittenau nach den ersten Weltkrieg um 1927 - 28. durften aber nicht geliefert werden Baron von Gontard & der Regierung wurde es zu riskant & wurden von der Polizei übernommen"

(August Weiss Files Document 26a - same date)
"Es waren aber etwas mehr Vordergelenke in Berlin ohne Firmenzeichen gefertigt, welche später in Oberndorf für P.P. verwendet wurden und wohl für Polizei geliefert wurden, aber keine grosse Stückzahl."

(August Weiss Files Document 44 - Notes of an interview with August Weiss, handwritten by Dr. R. Gminder on 03/21/1972)
"...Riff Kabilen: paar tausend...".

The quantity of "a few", or "a couple" thousand has not been written down by August Weiss, but was noted by the director of Mauser Jagdwaffen G.M.B.H, Dr. R. Gminder during one of his interviews with August Weiss, the former head of Mauser's pistol production between 1930 and 1946. Mr. Gminder (now a retired Professor, living in Heilbron, Germany) recalls the many visits he paid to August Weiss. "The man had an amazing memory, but before he would answer one of my questions, he would look first in his dairies, in which he had noted practically everything. Mr. Weiss wanted to give me the facts. The quantity of the Riff pistols was not in his dairies. Therefore he could not give a exact number - but speaking from memory he mentioned "a couple of thousand".

In our book "The Mauser Parabellum 1930-1946" on page 340, left column the next text is printed:
About the Unmarked Toggles
Document 26 (1972):
"In DWM Berlin Wittenau after WWI (around 1927 - 1928), we made a few thousand Parabellum pistols having no DWM marking for the so called Riff tribe in Morocco. These could not be delivered; (DWM's CEO) BAron von Gontard and/or the government thought this was too risky. These pistols were later taken over by the police in Berlin".

In this text I have added the "few thousand" from Dr. Gminders notes to the text which was composed from the shorthand written by August Weiss.

I can't help correcting two things that were written by John Walter in his "The Luger Book" (see post above).
- The unmarked ex-Riff pistols did not go to the Reichwehr in 1931-32 but to the police in Berlin 1928-29.
- ... Apart from the DWM monogram on the toggle-link, they were otherwise indistinguishable. German crown/N proofmarks were standard. ...
The Oberndorf proof house did not use the Crown/N stamp, but instead used the Double Crown/U proof stamp.
This was a great help for our research; some 4,000 Luger pistols came from Berlin, most of these had been test proofed in Berlin, having the three C/N stamps. A few mixed stamps are reported.. In that case Mauser had changed the barrel (for many A.F. Stoeger pistols). Only the replaced barrel was stamped with Cc/U, the receiver and the breech block will have the C/N stamp from Berlin.

I hope this helps.

[Mauser720]

I have not been able to find any mention of the Riff Contract in "Pistole Parabellum" by Gortz/Sturgess. It could be hidden in there somewhere. If someone does find it somewhere within these 1,900+ pages, I think all of us would appreciate knowing exactly where it's at in their reference.

Special thanks to Joop for his additional information.

Regarding this statement: "The quantity of "a few", or "a couple" thousand has not been written down by August Weiss, but was noted by the director of Mauser Jagdwaffen G.M.B.H, Dr. R. Gminder during one of his interviews with August Weiss, the former head of Mauser's pistol production between 1930 and 1946. Mr. Gminder (now a retired Professor, living in Heilbron, Germany) recalls the many visits he paid to August Weiss. "The man had an amazing memory, but before he would answer one of my questions, he would look first in his dairies, in which he had noted practically everything. Mr. Weiss wanted to give me the facts. The quantity of the Riff pistols was not in his dairies. Therefore he could not give a exact number - but speaking from memory he mentioned "a couple of thousand"."

I can be wrong of course; however, in my opinion, "a couple of thousand" simply can not entirely account for the actual number in existence today.

Here is the observation by Gortz & Sturgess:

"Serial numbers of these undated blank-toggle P.08s of the Prussian Constabulary are in the late-s, -t and first half of the -u blocks, from which fact researchers have arrived at a total production estimated of about 25,000 guns. The majority of thse pistols are fitted with sear and magazine safeties, the latter invariably having been rendered inoperative in 1937. The small numbers without these safeties may have been acquired by the Army, but this has not been documented. With a small number of exceptions, the property markings struck on front grip straps are those of local or regional offices of the Prussian Rural Constabulary (Landjagerei) and Municipal Police." (page #537)

Who these "researchers" are is not mentioned.

If you take the numbers mentioned by Joop and extrapolated by Don from Dwight's data base, and add them together, you start to get a lot closer to the number cited by Gortz & Sturgess. And if you were to take into account normal attrition, this number of 25,000 might actually be correct.

This is only my opinion; however it is a way to account for the larger number cited by Gortz & Sturgess even though they apparently do not even mention the Riff Contract.

Just a thought.

[Don M]

Joop, thank you very much for clarifying this. It certainly does help although I am now less certain that I fully understand this issue than I was a few days ago.

Ron, I am coming around to your theory that additional blank-toggle Lugers were manufactured by BKIW for the police before they shut down their Luger production at the end of 1929. They clearly had very large orders from the Prussian and Hessian police to fulfill. The need to rearm the Prussian Landjägerei alone accounted for some 8,000 to 9,000 Lugers. It would have been in everyone's interest to use the Riff Contract Lugers to fulfill part of that requirement. It is pure speculation but there may have been a decision taken with regard the Prussian pistols to supply blank toggles for the sake of uniformity. Admittedly, this does not explain the 15% of DWM toggles observed but it's the best I can come up with at the moment. Whatever the explanation, I really don't believe there was any "sneakiness" involved!

[cirelaw]

Who came up with 'sneak'?

[Don M]

Ron, while it is not terribly important to this discussion, I do think that the estimate of 25,000 blank-toggle Lugers is too high. These are found in the late s through mid u serial blocks as noted by Görtz & Sturgess. At most, this is a range of less than 20,000 pistols. If you factor in the apparent 15% of police Lugers in this range with DWM toggles, you are down to less than 17,000. Then, if you subtract the Reichsmarine, Stoeger and other pistols in this range noted by Dwight, you can easily get down to a number below 15,000. I do agree, however, that either of these estimates is too large to fit the "few thousand" or "couple of thousand" notation by Dr. Gminder.

[Don M]

Originally Posted by cirelaw

Who came up with 'sneak'?

Not I!

[Jamka]

Ron,

So far I have worked through the first two volumes of Görtz - Sturgess masterwork. I believe that the Riff contract is not mentioned. It might be discussed in Volume III, but this last part of the book merely describes the accessories of the Parabellum pistol.

The "August Weiss Files" I refer to in our book were given to me by Prof. Dr. Rolf Gminder. He received them from August Weiss, a few months before Mr. Weiss passed away in 1980. As Mr. Weiss had no notes about the Riff contract in his dairies, it might well be that Görtz - Sturgess did not have this information.

Best regards,
Joop van de Kant
Co- author of "The Mauser Parabellum 1930-1946"

[Don M]

To maximize the potential input, I started a parallel thread about this on Jan Still's site. One of the drawbacks to this approach is that the input is scattered between the two sites. On the other site, I have discussed with Jan the potential implications of this information to the production timeline of the "29 DWM" Lugers. For anyone interested, it can be found at http://luger.gunboards.com/showthrea...652#post163652.

[FAST46BIRD]

hey guys. I got my first luger a few weeks ago as a gift from my father. I have been trying to date this thing since. This site is a great tool and has taught me a lot since. here is my question and what I think i have. It is serial number 5199, it has a U stamp on the barrel and on the front receiver, it has a blank toggle and no date stamp. All the internal numbers match (99). I believe it is original blueing. the magazine is not matching however period correct (4423). The second proof mark along top has WaA66 under the eagle. it also has a period correct holster with no numbers or stamps. I think this is a "sneak" (based on lots of reading posts around this site). now to the questions. It also has L.D.134 stamped on the front of the grip strap. Does anyone know what unit this was? As far as age when do think this was manufactured? I also figured it was a Mauser based on reading other posts on this topic. I will try to post some pics and see what you guys think. Also around what do you guys think its worth? I plan on shooting and enjoying this piece of history just wondering what I have.

[Don M]

Welcome to the forum, William. You have a very nice example of what is currently called a 29 DWM. It was manufactured in 1929 by BKIW and was among the last Lugers manufactured by them in Berlin before shipping all the production equipment to Mauser in early 1930. Yours is one of the approximately 9,000 issued to the Prussian Landjägerei (rural constabulary) - in this case the Landjägerei of the administrative district of Düsseldorf.

Yours is a very collectable, apparently matching Luger. You may want to think twice about shooting it. If you break a numbered part, you will seriously hurt its value.

[FAST46BIRD]

Thanks for the info. I do know the grips have been replaced with aftermarket wood replacements. When my dad got it he said it had white plastic (possibly bake lite) grips. Did any lugers have white grips originally? What price range would you estimate this example at. Also looking at some of the other examples on the site some police units have a dimple above the magazine release and the left grip. What was the safety modification and should mine have had that as well since it was a police/commercial? Was that only on the reworks?