post war use of Beutewaffen

Together with some other police related documents I got two documents that lists 3 italian carbines still in use with our local police station in 1947/48.
I did not know that the Germans were allowed to keep any wartime weapons.
They mostly had US30M1 carbines and some Smith & Wesson revolvers.

PS: found another document with two more italian carbines. makes 5 carcanos still in use in 1948.

Amberg said:

Together with some other police related documents I got two documents that lists 3 italian carbines still in use with our local police station in 1947/48.
I did not know that the Germans were allowed to keep any wartime weapons.
They mostly had US30M1 carbines and some Smith & Wesson revolvers.

PS: found another document with two more italian carbines. makes 5 carcanos still in use in 1948.

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I have a Italian Carcano carbine marked "Bavarian Provincial Police" on its magazine, just like they marked their M1 carbines.
Regards,
John

John Wall said:

I have a Italian Carcano carbine marked "Bavarian Provincial Police" on its magazine, just like they marked their M1 carbines.
Regards,
John

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Schortly after the war was ended the German police where equipped with many different rifles to help the allied western troops for order in the occupied German towns and to guard and border off the boundaries of the now building up iron curtain with the Russians, it was a time of chaos and reorganisation in Germany.
Many of those guns are marked on the butt plate with a carved out GS("Grenz schutzen ")and cut outs for canvas slings ,many have not bayonet lugs too.The not thrusting of the Russian troops where already so far on that time that there where rumours that the Western allied high command where already secretely thinking to re-equiping non-German-Nazi-soldier-prisoners from the Wehrmacht in case off urgency to help them by an attack by the Russians .There is even a written story at the end of the war that the US troops where clapping the hands and cheering "bravo" to some German elite troops when they where fighting themself out of the eastern front to surrender to the Western allied forces )
George Patton was not the only one who got that idea before his deadly accident and it was not that crazy on those days.
regards,

This thinking went both ways, at Potsdam much was made of the German soldiers still in Norway too..

Here is a news report from the Infantry Journal during 1947, well into the reality period when the Americans finally began to see the soviets as the enemies they surely were.. and had always been.

They actually thought 100,000 soldiers from Stalingrad were still alive by 1947, or even more preposterous that they were fit soldiers capable of entering combat...

BATANGUENO said:

...The not thrusting of the Russian troops where already so far on that time that there where rumours that the Western allied high command where already secretely thinking to re-equiping non-German-Nazi-soldier-prisoners from the Wehrmacht in case off urgency to help them by an attack by the Russians .There is even a written story at the end of the war that the US troops where clapping the hands and cheering "bravo" to some German elite troops when they where fighting themself out of the eastern front to surrender to the Western allied forces )
George Patton was not the only one who got that idea before his deadly accident and it was not that crazy on those days.
regards,

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SimsonSuhl said:

This thinking went both ways, at Potsdam much was made of the German soldiers still in Norway too..

Here is a news report from the Infantry Journal during 1947, well into the reality period when the Americans finally began to see the soviets as the enemies they surely were.. and had always been.

They actually thought 100,000 soldiers from Stalingrad were still alive by 1947, or even more preposterous that they were fit soldiers capable of entering combat...

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this is the story in German ,about even SS soldiers who are telling this ,its written in The German book "soldaten im einzats" in 1977, i think they have never thrust eachother, even just after the war .