G-g-germans

[Chimpfoot]

Posted this question on another thread but realised it might get better and more appropriate coverage here.

Were the German troops ever issued with a combat shotgun?
As I mentioned elsewhere I've not come across one or heard of one would think the 'experts' here would know.

Cheers all

[Keith]

Only thing remotely like that I can think of was the 'survival drillig' designed to be issued to Luftwaffe bomber crews. Even that was a hybrid with a rifle barrel and two shotgun barrels that was originally intended as a (rather brutal) hunting weapon in the '30s.

Wouldn't suprise me if the occaisional Volsturm used a personal shotgun but I'm almost certain they were never issued to ground units.

Funnily enough the drillig cropped up all over the place in the Call of Duty WW2 game which made me smile.

Related thought - didn't the Germans try to get the use of shotguns in war banned during WW1 on grounds that it was cruel?

[Plynkes]

Shotguns were relatively popular in WW1 as a trench-clearing weapon. Not quite so much in the way of trenches in WW2, and submachine-guns were much more of a thing by then for close-quarter combat.

Not an expert by any means, just some bloke with an opinion. 



Edit: Keith, I always find some black comedy in such things. Flamethrowers and heavy-calibre machine-guns are inhumane when used against infantry, but it's perfectly fine to blow someone's limbs off with high explosives. What a mad world we live in. 

[Keith]

Shotguns were relatively popular in WW1 as a trench-clearing weapon. Not quite so much in the way of trenches in WW2, and submachine-guns were much more of a thing by then for close-quarter combat.

Being able to throw down a volume of fire at short to mid range became the priority. Shotguns give you, at best, two chances at short range. Low calibre rounds easily did the job so being able to put a lot of them out there quickly was the best strategy. Mp38/40, Ppsh etc. were all developed with that in mind.

I tend to associate the US use of shotguns with the Pacific mostly but I wonder how useful they actually were?

Yeah, it seems like a strange complaint in hindsight when you think about the typically 'no holds barred' nature of trench fighting.

[Chimpfoot]

You see...interesting and informative as always.
Thanks for the replies fellas.
Was actually converting some warlord Germans for post apoch setting.
Found a pump action on an American weapon sprue but had never seen one associated with other troops.

A rifle barrel AND two shotgun barrels? Seems a little heavy handed for pheasant
Cheers again

[Westfalia Chris]

A rifle barrel AND two shotgun barrels? Seems a little heavy handed for pheasant
Cheers again

Probably for shooting Aurochs if Goering's pet breeding programme had gotten off the ground. Btw, it should probably be "Drilling", i.e. "a triplet", not that unusual in hunting weapons I gather, but the Zwilling double-barrel would probably have been more common.

But as outlined above, though, WW2 German doctrine had the NCOs and officers with either pistols, SMGs or rifles, so it wouldn't be much use in the firefight concept of the Schützenkette.

[dadlamassu]

During WW2 the various auxiliary forces of the German home guard/security started out being largely armed with their personal firearms since they were mainly involved in hunting down escaped PoWs, runaway slave labourers and downed Allied aircrew.  However, as the Allies closed in and especially when the Volkssturm soldiers were being armed the use of private weapons and shotguns in particular was discouraged if not banned. 

The reason?

The Volkssturm had few uniforms and the use of shotguns and the hierarchy feared that by using private weapons they would be seen as partisans or terrorists and treated the same way that the Germans had treated captured Maquis and Italian, Soviet and other partisan members - torture and summary execution.

To answer your question about regular forces - I have not found any evidence of the general issue of specific combat shotguns. 

[Baron von Wreckedoften]

Related thought - didn't the Germans try to get the use of shotguns in war banned during WW1 on grounds that it was cruel?

Yes, they did - the people who gave us flamethrowers and poison gas thought shotguns were unnecessarily cruel.  They made an official complaint in mid-1918, after the arrival of American troops had led to widespread use of "automatic" pump-action shotguns which if you kept the trigger depressed and just kept pumping, would keep firing until the ammo ran out.  The Americans opposed the complaint, and we ran out of war before it could be legally assessed.  The British had used shotguns more or less from the beginning of the war, but these were the older-style, manually reloaded versions that you would carry with you on a country walk (we have wild boar in our part of the world).

[FreakyFenton]

I do have a big volume of WW2 era weapons. I can pop back to this thread if I find a shotgun in it that was used by german forces. I do however agree with the rest that I've never much heard of any used by the Wehrmacht or SS. The bit about Volkssturm using their private rifles or weapons seems apt.

Anyway! Browsing said book! 

[Andrew_McGuire]

I wasn't aware of the German legal action against shotguns, but was reminded of something I once read about the saw-edged bayonet they introduced. The following paragraph is taken from the relevant entry at www.armourgeddon.co.uk:

"The sawback version of the bayonet soon became very unpopular on both sides of the frontline. When plunged into the enemy, this style of blade pulled out the victim’s insides when removed causing exceptional pain, suffering and inevitably death. It was communicated to the German army that French and British soldiers would torture and then kill their troops if found with a sawback blade on their bayonet. Therefore an order was issued in 1917 that all sawbacks be removed from service."

[FramFramson]

The shotgun protest wasn't so much about anyone actually thinking they were cruel. It was simply an attempt - a desperate one, unlikely to have succeeded - to get them banned or restricted via legal means.

It was entirely too late in the war for Germany to have simply responded in kind with the manufacture or issue of a competing domestic design. So instead we got this sort of absurdist farce.

That's an interesting thing about the World Wars. During WWI the Geneva conventions were receiving their first major test for a conflict between major world powers. WWI saw the belligerents constantly toeing the line in a macabre dance, seeing what they could do while staying within The Rules, so as to superficially maintain some form of moral high ground. Loopholes were rife and The Rules subject to all sorts of competing interpretation, but there was still some notion that there would be relevant consequences for failing to conform to some form of moral authority larger than the war.

By the time WWII had rolled around, that had gone out the window - gone were any Victorian notions of "below the belt".

As we all know many parties simply ignored the "rules" entirely (in particular, Fascism as a philosophy directly clashes with any notion that war should be governed by even the most basic of rules), while others parties stuck to only the bits which were practical (e.g. not killing your prisoners carries the advantage of encouraging rather than discouraging surrender), while IMO still doing whatever they felt they could justify somehow. Either way, there were far fewer attempts to govern the conduct of the war via mid-war appeals to some sort of umpire.

The failure of the League of Nations to successfully enforce, well, much of anything, was probably responsible for that transition in large part, but I'm sure there are authors and researchers who can talk about that with far more expertise than I might, and I'm getting way outside the scope of this thread anyway.

[tin shed gamer]

Sort answer. Nope.

Germany saw Shot Guns as a dead end in terms of a combat weapon.(Which it is. Simply because you've got to get too close and personal for it to have any value. Such as in the trenches.) Seeing greater value in adopting and developing sub machine guns.
Plus pump action shot guns Were few and far between in Europe very few companies were tooled for their production. As most hunting in The UK and Europe was done with a double barrel. So it was really a relevant or necessary transfer of manufacturing when put on a war footing.
But there's bound to be a Sod's law obscure incident where they end up being used in anger.
Such as these Luftwaffe chaps taking it out on the local wildlife.
Even this isn't technically a combat role more an in theatre expediency.( clearing flocks of birds from airfields.)
(Do have a four figure set of downed Luftwaffe crew with one figure carring a Drilling ,off for casting . I'll pop a picture on my ww2 thread once they're back.)

[FramFramson]

Mark, is there anything you're NOT currently making? 

[tin shed gamer]

Yep Ancients.

(Unless you count Ewoks, and a Junk.)

[FreakyFenton]

So I've checked the encyclopedia of infantry weapons by Reiner Lidschun and Günter Wollert, however, came up with nothing that points at any shotguns manufactured or made by the german army.

Either stick with it, seeing as the setting and choice is yours.

Or check out things like the Erma MP or the Gerät Potsdam or Gerät Neumünster ( both of which are german sten copies) or self loading rifles a la the Selbstladegewehr Modell G41 M, all of which look unique I suppose.

Though, over all I'd say, if you like the american shotgun on a model, use it.