The VG1-5 Volkssturmgewehr

The military firearms produced for the government of the Third Reich are generally recognized as being some of the finest of the Second World War. On the one hand that is certainly true when you consider German innovations like the general purpose machine gun, the intermediate cartridge, and the roller delayed blowback operating system. But when the demand for resources began to outpace the available supply, Germany eventually had to cut corners like everybody else. The ongoing development of small arms over the course of the conflict therefore became a process of not just building better guns, but also building them as economically as possible.
By late 1944, the Third Reich had to confront certain emerging realities about manpower as well. After staggering battlefield setbacks in North Africa and the Soviet Union in 1943, and the retreat on all fronts that began during the summer of 1944, the time had come to mobilize the element of Germany’s male population that was not already in uniform. Accordingly, in September 1944 Adolf Hitler authorized the establishment of a national militia called the Volkssturm, and he did it just as the U.S. Twelfth Army Group began its attack on the Siegfried Line. German boys and men between the ages of 16 and 60 years were conscripted into the Volkssturm - some of them having been previously rejected for military service and many of them being convalescent veterans. They were organized into battalions and lightly armed with the infamous Panzerfaust to fight Allied armor, and an assortment of substitute standard small arms to fight Allied infantry. Although Germany maintained a significant stockpile of older service rifles like the Gew98 as well as battlefield capture foreign rifles, a need still existed to arm Volkssturm troops, so the Primitiv-Waffen-Programm was created. This program developed the kind of simplified firearms needed at this late stage of the war, including a German copy of the STEN submachine gun designated MP3008 Volksmaschinenpistole. In addition to conventional “last ditch” type bolt action rifles, the Primitiv-Waffen-Programm also introduced a decidedly unconventional self-loading rifle designated VG1-5.

Видео The VG1-5 Volkssturmgewehr канала midway512