Third Party Press

Late war 1935 Beretta pistols

Tiger 2 Tank

Senior Member
Since I couldn’t make it to Tulsa this weekend, thought I’d bring out my three 1935 late war Beretta pistols.

1935 Beretta #615969 was the last pistol sold and paid for by the Nazi regime.

From top to bottom:

616309 dark blued “black frame”. 340th left over pistol.

615164 blued “reddish frame”. 805th pistol before payment stopped.

613114 dark blued “black frame”. 2855th pistol before payment stopped. Oddly, I think this one is more crude than the later two.

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Thought I would grab one of my 1945 PP e/N ac matching PP’s and put it next to one of these late Beretta pistols

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Some of the crudeness I’d like to show. This came from the earlier of the three Beretta pistols (613114). Look how razor thin this side of the tang is. The other side is not quite as thin:

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I have no idea what this is called, but it looks like “slag” maybe, where there is an upper “crust” of metal or depth of metal? It’s only on the earlier one and not on the other later two pistols:

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Finish problems inside the trigger guard:

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Other nasty little areas in the metal:

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(below) 616309

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So, what is the attraction to these late war, crude pistols? I don’t know for sure. I guess it’s just the futility of it all at the end that makes them so attractive.
 
Love the late Beretta's

I wonder if they Germans were in the plant supervising the manufacture of these.

Nice variations you have with them.:thumbsup:
 
I'm saying this as a compliment, so please take it that way: man those guns look like hell, and I totally wish they were mine. It looks like they were barely scraping by as the war ended, and that these things were even built at all is a testament to someone along the way.
 
Thanks guys!

man those guns look like hell, and I totally wish they were mine. It looks like they were barely scraping by as the war ended, and that these things were even built at all is a testament to someone along the way.

:thumbsup: YES they sure do, I absolutely agree! Pretty and ugly all rolled up strangely together. Hard to explain to people what the attraction to these is. It seems that they absolutely didn’t care at all about the finish quality or even fit for that matter. I think it is the “left over” pistol, but the grips don’t fit real well, and on that one, you have to keep the grip screws in the correct screw holes or the fit just gets worse if you mix them around.

These are actually not as easy to locate as one would think. In Whittington’s book “German Pistols and Holsters 1934/1945, vol. II”, he shows that these are a 3 in a scale of 1 to 5. 1 being easy to locate and 5 being hard to locate.

I forgot to do one other photo with these. I wish I had taken my 1934 Beretta that is a P.S.F. stamped commercial 1941/1942 slick and smooth “plumb color” high polish finish with a late war 1935 Beretta. The quality differences in the two are just SO amazingly different.

jack944: If I understand correctly, yes I believe they were.
 
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The very late Beretta guns are cool in their crudeness.
Great photography, capturing the finish and color. Thank you for posting.
 
I'm saying this as a compliment, so please take it that way: man those guns look like hell, and I totally wish they were mine. It looks like they were barely scraping by as the war ended, and that these things were even built at all is a testament to someone along the way.

^
+1

Great late war guns and well photographed. Thanks for posting them.
 
^
+1

Great late war guns and well photographed. Thanks for posting them.

Absolutely. Thanks. Trying out the cloudy day trick with the photography, but I think it was a little too cloudy. Next time I’ll try a sunny morning and see how that turns out.
 
T2T, I would love to sticky this, if you could upload the pics to our server too. With them from a separate server, if they are removed the link becomes useless for reference purposes. Beautiful M.35s.
 

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