East Germany - Forgotten Weapons

East Germany’s Nice .22 AK Trainer: KK-Mpi-69

August 6, 2025 Ian McCollum 4

Check out Headstamp Publishing’s extensive catalog of excellent books! The KK-Mpi-69 (Klein Kaliber Maschinenpistole 1969) was a .22 rimfire training model of the standard East German stamped AKM. It used a simple blowback replacement bolt […]

Wieger 942: East Germany Makes a 5.56mm AK

July 8, 2024 Ian McCollum 29

East Germany purchased a license for production of the AK-74 in 1981, but that license was for domestic use only. There was an apparent market for export production AKs in the western 5.56mm cartridge, and […]

East Germany’s Secret Walther Clone: The Pistole 1001-0

December 2, 2023 Ian McCollum 10

When the Allies occupied German at the end of World War Two, the Walther factory at Zella Mehlis was initially garrisoned by American soldiers (who did a pretty thorough job liberating all the guns they […]

Adventures in Surplus: From German Imperial Navy to Ethiopia

November 7, 2023 Ian McCollum 7

I really enjoy finding guns that can be positively traced through multiple different parts of history, and Lugers can be a great source for that sort of story. Today I have a Luger from Royal […]

Last of the Czech Mausers: the East German TGF1950 Goes to Ethiopia

February 26, 2020 Ian McCollum 12

The last batch of Mauser K98k rifles made by Brno after World War Two was a run in 1950 for East German border guards. These rifles have receivers marked “tgf 1950” in a style just […]

SSG-82: The Enigmatic East German Sniper Rifle

September 5, 2019 Ian McCollum 23

Lot 3533 in the September 2019 RIA auction. When East Germany received the technical data package for the 5.45x39mm cartridge, they began a program to make their own AK-74 model. Alongside, they also wanted a […]

Karabiner-S: The East German Unicorn SKS

November 8, 2018 Ian McCollum 15

This rifle will be sold at Rock Island in their Spring 2019 Premiere auction – it was moved after this video was filmed. Sorry! One of the rarest patterns of the SKS is the East […]

Book Review: The Makarov Pistol – Soviet Union & East Germany

October 25, 2016 Ian McCollum 16

Until recently, the only good reference book on the Makarov pistol has been Volume 16 of Fred Datig’s Soviet Arms series – which is hampered by the lack of public information available to the author […]

East German Mosins – or not…

September 23, 2014 Ian McCollum 19

One of the things that makes Mosin Nagant rifles particularly interesting to a lot of folks (myself included) is their tendentcy to appear in a vast number of conflicts all across the globe. Guns originally […]

SKS Manuals at Allegheny Arsenal

August 4, 2013 Ian McCollum 16

One rifle that isn’t really forgotten at all but still interesting and historically significant is the Samozaryadnyj Karabin Simonova – the SKS. Predating the AK by several years, the SKS was a staple weapon in […]