Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire WWII firearm capture papers?

Ten years ago I inherited a German Luger that one of my uncles brought home from WWII. He was in the army-air force; was of German descent and spoke both English and German. At the end of the war Uncle Sam suddenly needed bilingual people to assist in packing up all the V-2 Rocket program and shipping it to the USA. That's how my uncle wound up at the "Mittlewerks at Nordhausen", which was the main V-2 assembly plant in a hollowed out mountain to protect it from allied bombers. He personally removed that Luger from a glass display case in an office area of the plant. I've always thought that it's too bad he didn't get capture papers for that gun to verify where it came from. But lately I realized that maybe they stopped giving capture papers as soon as Germany surrendered. Would that be the case here?

I have a Luger that was brought back and have no capture papers. If it's numbers matching and has no import, isn't it pretty much ascertained that's how it got here? Asking as I don't know.

Lots of WWII bringback guns have no capture papers. But capture papers had to be signed and dated by an officer and are considered as proof of where and when it was acquired by the G.I.. IIRC. The when and where part connects the gun to a specific battle zone area at a specific time in history. Wish I had papers on this one just to provide some of its very interesting background. Sometimes that can increase the value but I don't care about that factor cause it's not for sale, it's more of a family heirloom type thing.

Yeah, would make sense that if there are capture papers with it, the value can only be higher. I know mine was brought back by a 1 star General, but where it was captured, I have no clue. Same with the Wehrmacht uniform I have that my Grandfather brought back. No clue where, when, how etc.

I had a P38 that had the capture papers tucked in the spare magazine pouch of the holster - it was probbly there for 50+ years! Years back the person who "captured it" gave it to my buddys grandpa in payment for some car repair his granpda did. When his grandpa pased away he asked me to look over the guns he had left and this was one of them. I sold the gun for him but I don't remember any mention of the area that it was captured from. Only the name of the soldier, name of the commanding officer, and make model and serial number of the guns that were captured. I wish he would have had the Luger and Drilling that were also listed on the papers!

Most firearm bringbacks from the world wars were picked out
of a pile of weapons. Capture papers do seem to add to the
mystery of the weapon, be it a Mauser, Luger, Arisaka, etc.

I think that most of the handguns that came back here did so in a duffle bag with no papers cause the papers are pretty rare. But if you do have them they are a nice piece of history.
The ink on Germany's surrender papers probably wasn't even dry yet when we started cleaning out the V-2 plant. But the war was officially over when they signed it, so maybe that was the end of the capture paper thing also. Maybe that's why my uncle didn't get papers on this one; but I don't know for sure. Just wondering. P.S. I also have a nazi marked P-38 holster from my uncle. It's what the Luger came to the U.S. in. I think he traded something to another G.I. for the holster.