Mauser Pistolen: Development and Production, 1877-1946

Mauser manufactured a number of pistols of the firm's own design. These included roughly a million examples of the famous C96 (plus 100,000 selective-fire versions and 1,200 hunting carbines); 500,000 blowback pocket pistols; 80,000 examples of two versions of the tiny 6.35mm WTP "vest pocket" pistol; and 261,000 HSc pistols. Over the years Mauser also manufactured several handguns which had been designed elsewhere, including at least 7,800 Reichsrevolvers; 1,000,000 Parabellum (Luger) pistols, including lange Pistolen 08 ("artillery" Lugers) for Persia and Siam; plus 340,000 P38s. In addition, many other pistol models were produced as prototypes only. Many of these photos are from rare glass plate negatives which have never been published before. These include the Mauser C77; the Mauser "Zig-Zag" revolvers; the Mauser C87 ring-trigger repeater; the C02, the C06, the C06/08 and the C06 + C06/08 hybrid; the large-calibre blowback Model 1909 self-loader; and the Models 1912 and 1912/14 Armeepistole. During WWI Josef Nickl designed several locked-breech pistols with rotating barrels. After the war Nickl assisted in establishing the Brno arsenal in Czechoslovakia, where his rotating-barrel CZ22 was later produced as the blowback CZ27. Back at Mauser, Nickl then produced a further series of little-known but interesting pistols. A small series of double-action 9mm pistols appeared in the 1930s, in parallel with the popular HSc designed by Alex Seidel. These included the rotating-barrel "HSV36" and the streamlined Hsv. Late in World War II two ingenious stamped-frame revolvers and at least two models of stamped-steel Volkspistolen were developed. The occupying French looted some very interesting pistols before they put the Mauser factory back to work in May, 1945, after which thousands of postwar HSc, P08 and P38 pistols and other arms were assembled, largely from leftover components.