SS-Contract Walther PP and PPK Pistols

Today, courtesy of Tom from Legacy Collectibles, we are taking a look at Walther PP and PPK pistols made specifically for the SS and RSHA. These guns comprised several special contracts, distinct from general military and commercial production. They were not the only such special contracts, as such arrangements were also made for organizations like railway security and bank guards. Tracing back these specific guns has been done by a group of researchers using the archives preserved by the American and German armed forces.

If you would like more information or authentication of a Walther PP or PPK, Tom is happy to help (free of charge), and can be reached at info@legacy-collectibles.com.

The specific variations are:

  • PP Var 1
    • Externally numbered slide
    • No P suffix
    • Magazines serialized on rear spine
    • 997985 – 981212
  • PP Var 2
    • Externally numbered slide
    • P under serial
    • Magazines serialized on rear spine
    • 124774P – 125168P
  • PP Var 3
    • Externally numbered slide
    • High polish finish
    • Magazines serialized on rear spine
    • Crown-N proofs: 114343P – 157923P
    • Eagle-N proofs: 161757P – 162691P, 193484P – 194201P, 202786P – 204905P
  • PP Var 4
    • Externally numbered slide
    • Military finish
    • Magazines serialized on baseplate
    • 331xxxP – 333xxxP

 

  • PPK Var 1
    • Externally numbered slide – under muzzle
    • Magazines serialized on rear spine
    • Muzzle numbered.
    • RZM-marked: 838769 – 841397
    • Non-RZM: 844936 – 990787, 1001262 – 1002477, 192083K – 192925K
  • PPK Var 2
    • Externally numbered slide
    • K under serial number
    • Magazines serialized on rear spine
    • 206019K – 234852K
  • PPK Var 3
    • Externally numbered slide
    • High polish finish
    • Magazines serialized on rear spine
    • Crown/N proofs: 242844K – 330358K
    • Eagle/N proofs: 266007K – 330358K
  • PPK Var 4: External numbered slide, military finish
    • Externally numbered slide
    • Military finish
    • Magazines serialized on baseplate
    • 382985K – 426712K

35 Comments

  1. Au contraire, the Theuermann holster was designed to drop the gun for an easier grab position when unbuttoned. The Luftwaffe used them too, in brown.

    • These kind of holsters have been used for a long time after the war by german polices, too. IMHO an interesting concept to have a flap holster to protect the pistol that can be changed to a kind of dropleg holster for easier drawing of the pistol.

  2. At least we don’t have to show a gun-barrel opening from a movie. But I digress. Pocket guns in .32 ACP and .380 ACP are still good enough to stop stowaways, bank robbers, and escaping prisoners. I am not tying insane old world politics into this, it’s just the issue of idiots who insist that a proper pistol must have enough Magnum Force to blow off a car door and kill anyone hiding inside or behind the car with one shot. Maybe I saw too many cop movies…

    • Did they sell many .44 Magnums in the period of “Magnum force” in Japan out of interest, with your army using reduced load 7.62 Nato on account of your soldiers tending to be of a diminutive size, at least in regards their physical scale as oppose their fanatical loyalty to the emperor.

    • The popularity of .380 pocket pistols like the Ruger LCP and small 9mm pistols like the S&W Shield and SIG P365 indicates that real world preference in the US differs significantly from keyboard commandos insisting on “only a caliber that starts with 4”.

      • It’s not so much what you have as what you do with it. I’d far rather face some untrained, drug-addled gang-banger with a .500 S&W Magnum than somebody like…myself…with a .32 S&W vintage 1899.

        The gangbanger will probably miss. The person with the .32 probably won’t.

        And a loud miss with a gun suitable for elk hunting is not going to be as immediately effective as two or three “weak, ineffectual” .32 bullets in the heart or the head.

        cheers

        eon

      • .38 special for me squire, non +p, ruger Lcrx if I was an American, with a snap cap for four rounds as a safety; draw, pull trigger, then pull hammer aim and fire.

        • @Slow Joe Crow.

          And do you why, because I am sick of reading about accidents; with Glock “safe action” type pistols, so i’d make an effort.

          Bad accidents; mothers being shot in the face by kids, when it falls out their purse, and such. Yes it happens all to often. Accidentally.

          • Pdb, there is no such thing as an “accidental discharge”. Period. There are negligent discharges, and there are unintentional discharges, but there are no “accidental” ones.

            You leave a pistol out where a kid can get at it, you’re negligent. It isn’t the fault of the pistol, it’s the fault of the idiot who placed it where the kid could get at it, without first making it safe. If the gun is not under your control, it should be made safe before you allow it out of your control.

            The Glock paradigm is this: The gun is ALWAYS dangerous, always ready to fire. It was not designed for these use cases where people carry them around like magic talismans that are going to make the bad guy go away. The intent of the design was for it to be perfectly safe so long as it was holstered, and instantly ready to do its job once unholstered. That’s the paradigm it is designed around, not for some numbnut idiot who is going to carry it loose in a purse.

            There are specific design characteristics about the Glock system you have to keep in mind: One, the holster is an integral part of the “safety system”, and two, that the gun was designed to kill as easily and effectively as possible once drawn. Keep that in mind, and the pistols are perfectly safe. I’ve kept one on my person at all times (when legally able) for the last twenty years, and oddly enough, nobody has died unintentionally in all that time.

            The Glock requires a certain mindset, and a grown-up. If you lack the mindset, inculcated by either training or personal effort, and if you are a person of child-like mien, then it’s not the gun for you. The rest of us find them quite effective tools, because there is the least possible between you and using it effectively when necessary. Failure to understand the nature of the device does not make it a poor tool; it makes you a poor user of that tool.

          • Or a marketing… Fail, not that they’d care; anyway its relevant for Glock “type” guns, of which there are many.

            I am not saying it isn’t great for the range or as an Austro-Hungarian cavalry pistol; note the drop safety. But as a family defense pistol, the “safey” which is doesn’t have fails.

            No holsters

            To easy to use, yes it won’t shoot you if you drop it from a horse.

          • We’ve had this discussion before, and I said Glock originally did a military version with a safety… Anyway I respect your opinion, a popular U.S opinion no doubt. But I disagree. And its “drop safety” is for a horse, via Austria Hungary as discovered from here.

            Sure quick firing “safe guns” have a use, with Navy seals. In my opinion.

          • So as much as I respect your opinion, as you know what your talking about. I can’t agree on this issue as on previous occasions, I think they are unsafe; said action, in general use.

            Nothing wrong with a real safety.

          • Pdb, if the user selects an improper weapon for their intended carry, who is wrong? The user, or the designer of the weapon?

            The Glock is not an appropriate weapon to carry like that. If the user selects that carry option, who is at fault? I’d class that as purely a matter of negligence, failing to understand the weapon.

            I’d also say that the Glock is a better pistol for pure defense than many others. Having worked around supposedly “trained” military personnel who needed to manage an M9, I’m here to tell you that there are an awful lot of people who can’t manage that system of safety and two different trigger pulls very well at all, and who screw it up by the numbers. Put those same people on a Glock, where everything is consistent and the pistol is always ready-to-fire out of the holster, when carried properly? They do a lot better.

            The Glock is actually a perfect pistol for military tyros and civilian self-defense, the people who are not pistol experts. Draw only when needed, fire to eliminate the threat, and re-holster. Simplicity itself, and is simplicity that that use case calls for.

            If you’re the sort of idiot that leaves a pistol loose in a drawer, then by all means, get one with a manual safety. If not, you’re better served by something like a Glock, where there is nothing between “holstered” and killing the threat.

            Horses for courses. The key thing is, you need to understand your use case, and how the pistol fits into it.

          • Well folk not being able to use a safety… Is a new one.
            Anyway I don’t advise them for carry outside of a holster, of all types S&W etc, so maybe they should put it on the label.

            I am not backing down by the way, I think they are awful, and have killed folk without cause for ages; via having no pause before you fire.

          • Pdb,

            Yours is an immature and unrealistic mindset. The blame for any negligent discharge goes to the person responsible for the weapon, and none other.

            The design of the Glock and other handguns of its ilk takes into account several factors relevant to the purpose of a handgun, namely effective self-defense of the person carrying it. The majority of these guns are exactly like the old-school revolvers, minus the heavy trigger pull of the double action. As such, they are no more dangerous than those revolvers in concept–Draw, aim, pull trigger, repeat as necessary until threat is eliminated.

            Where you run into problems with the standard manual safety sort of pistol is that the casual shooter becomes confused by all the options: Safety on? Safety off? Double-action trigger? Single-action trigger…?

            I have literally watched panicked shooters trying to make an M9 function for them, fumbling along like ninepins. One I remember stood there pulling the trigger a dozen times with the safety on before they realized that the safety was set, then they flipped it off, got off one round more-or-less in the general direction of the target, and then proceeded to scatter several subsequent shots all over hell and gone because the single-action trigger was so different, and so much easier to pull.

            With a traditional manual safety DA-SA pistol, there’s way too much going on for a lot of these people to safely navigate. The Glock idea is simplicity itself: Is the gun out of the holster? Then, it’s ready to go, and every time you pull the trigger, it’s the same trigger pull. Period.

            You also don’t have that bete noir of the manual safety, which inculcates the idea that there such a thing as a “safe pistol”, and entirely false premise. The number of negligent discharge reports you find in Army and Marine records where the idiot with the pistol protests “But… But… The safety was on! I could swear it was on!” are innumerable. There’s documentation out there with the Austrian and Norwegian military describing the lower rate of negligent discharges they have experienced with the Glock, compared to what they had before. The Austrians had experience with their version of the P1, a Walther P-38 clone that they had in service for years before the Glock. Austrian military personnel specifically describe the same problem I am with the manual of arms for that weapon, which matches the M9.

            None of this just “happened”. It’s all carefully designed, taking into account ergonomics and human behavior. When you’re faced with a threat to your life, a fiddly little bit like a manual safety leads to nothing but trouble. The safety has to be designed into other aspects of the system, like always carrying the gun in a proper holster that covers the trigger guard.

    • “(…) idiots who insist that a proper pistol must have enough Magnum Force to blow off a car door and kill anyone hiding inside or behind the car with one shot. (…)”
      Well, 7,65 mm Browning and 9×17 Kurz cartridge were designed for J.M.Browning, so anybody calling them useless is thus questioning competence of before mentioned gun designer, which is – if I am not mistaken – appreciated by most U.S. citizens having at least basic knowledge of fire-arms.
      Also these cartridge have long service record and if they would actually be of no use, then how they could survive in popular usage in Europe through Great War and Second World War?

  3. I don’t think your supposed to shoot stowaways… Lots would probably like to, but I don’t think its legal; at least in most of the old world. Japan doesn’t have an illegal immigrant problem then. Jap border force open a car boot “Freedom! says the refugee” tawagoto! (google translate; probably means fish or something accordingly, rather than shit as intended) says border force officer, whips out his .32acp and returns the item to the sender presumably.

  4. You want to get some tall people in, enlarge the gene pool. Folk in the west have shot up, even in Britain; everyone is way taller than they were even in the 80’s, same in the U.S only fatter as well… Which is happening here also, but to a lesser extent.

    The Dutch are famously lanky. So before shooting, you say, are you Dutch in a Dutch voice prior? “Its sort of a mix between Welsh and Kraut, practice in front of a mirror with an internet guide, doesn’t have to be in Dutch, just in a Dutch accent” If so, let them in. Radioactive fish are not going to give you the spurt in growth you need.

    How do you like those apples.

  5. One of the really amazing things about weapons is the way the mind seems to imbue them with the characteristics and intent of the users. There’s nothing inherently evil about the weapon; there’s nothing inherently good about them, either. It’s all in the mind of the human looking at it all.

    Walther PPK pistols were reportedly the preferred tool used by Vasily Blokhin, the KGB executioner at Katyn. They were also favored by various German Nazi organizations for similar uses, but I doubt that the Nazis were quite so prolific as their Soviet competitors–The Germans preferred rifles and machineguns for their mass-murders with firearms.

    End of the day, they’re just tools. Period. Blokhin’s PPK collection (reportedly at least three, in some sources) no doubt have the most “deaths” on them of all PPK pistols out there, but they’re just inert lumps of metal absent the human driving force of Blokhin’s will. That’s the main thing: What kills isn’t the weapon, it’s the mind behind it, so to assign a particular set of beliefs about some supposed imbued characteristic is entirely insane. The weapon does not take up the nature of the user, nor does the user take up the nature of the weapon. To think otherwise is simply magical thinking at its worst.

    • These days it appears that all you need to do to scare the paranoid ones in the gun-control camp is to yank the lower-receiver unit of an AR-15 (with NO BARREL, STOCK, BOLT, MAGAZINE, OR TRIGGER GROUP) out from under a table and those people will believe that the incomplete gun has “magically hypnotized” you into becoming a serial killer. I laugh at that logic. Just kidding.

  6. Cherndog are you Japanese? “Someone above wants to know” if not, you might have said you cuntp, I’ve been thinking of you as a Jap for years.

Leave a Reply to Sommerbiwak Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.


*