Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns walthers

i been watching babylon berlin in netfllix and pulled a couple of pistola's out of the collection.
a walther pp from serial number made 1937
a walther ppk from serial number made 1943

then i get to thinking what they have seen in their life?
both in good shape and God only knows when they were last shot.
And the germans were okay with that .32acp.

As disgusting as it is to say it, they are about the ideal pistol for point blank shots to the back of the head

I once traded into a Nazi marked FN 1922 7.65mm that had been obviously well used. Always gave me chills thinking of what deeds it had been used for & I eventually sold it to a local collector of WWII memorabilia.

I have a like new P1, PPK in 380, and a TPH in 22.
TPH is like a Swiss watch. Hard to find guns made with that care.

i bought one of the post war P1's when they first came in, still haven't shot it, was bought to add to the WWII versions, one of which is a russian capture, i would like to know it's story. Traded a walther 22, for a manurhin ppk, made in france, while the germans were still on the bad boy llist. it had a box, and test target.
the fn1910/22 and flap holster came with the capture papers. you always wonder about these things.
Watching babylon berlin in the prewar years, doing family research, one of the distant family members was married to a high ranking guy in the berlin police department. at that time. Which perks my interests in these walthers.
one of the greater values when they started coming in were the sig sauer P6's, in my opinion, they could be bought at the time for a little over 200dollars. friend of mine in bavaria said the police only fired on average mayabe 50rounds per year. since manufacturing date was on the gu n you had a pretty good idea of how many rounds through them. some i don't think were ever used, except for the test target in the box.
the p6 's i have seen were all marked north westphalia. i was semi interested through him in tracking the serial numbers to the individual police department, and maybe who issued to.

one of the more interesting ones, to me, is a walther no 9, in .25acp, made prewar. it was a bringback by a guy in the rainbow division, had a flap shoulder holster with it. He got it in germany in 1945. As i understand it, these were only issued to high ranking military/government officials, don't know who he got it from. when he got back to the states, his wife made him pull the firing pin and extractor. I couldn't find the extractor for this version, even got an email from a walther in germany saying he didn't know either. a guru ended up making them for me.
it's a perfect "behind the ear" type of pistol.

Usually small stuff like 7,65mm or 9x17 were carried by higher ranking officials, but not always. For example, Micheal Whitmann carried J.P. Sauer 7,65mm auto.

Suitcases of Walthers in 7,65mm were used "behind the head" by NKVD at Katyn in Belorussia. They originally came from occupation of Baltic State either Latvia or Estonia ie form spoils of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Agreement.

i didn't know that.
quite a few years ago, i had the pleasure of some conversations with a polish man, a former calvary officer in the 30's in poland.
he escaped the forest, interesting to talk to.
i have a unfired 38h sauer in the collection, interesting story behind it too.
one of my favorites is a cz 27, picked up by a tank driver in the 3rd army.
i am interested in the history of that area of the world, having ancestory in the old prussia, and eastern baltic. that is on the danish/german side. what i didn't realize until recently the slavic side/croat-slovakian was up there too.

one of the sauer's i was never able to aquire which was the right thing, belonged to a client. he was an artillery spotter pilot in pattons arms.
when they went through sauer germany he pulled a pistol off the assembley line, stuffed it in the bottom of his duffle bag. he was shot down the next day. year and a half after the end of the war, h is duffle bag shows up, and he finds the pistola.
i took it apart and cleaned oiled it. now it resides with his son as it should be.

legacy-collectibles.com has a interesting number of german pistols for sale, with some pretty up there prices on them.
they also have a book writtten in english by dieter marschall called walther pistols going through all of them, for 50bucks.
anyone interested in walthers, probably should have that book.