Volkssturmgewehr VG (Series)

History

In the final months of World War II (1939-1945), the Germans desperately made many hastily arranged plans to help avoid ruin. These include emergency combat aircraft, heavy tank programs and a variety of easy-to-manufacture small arms.

One such program later became the "Volkssturmwaffe", which included a list of potential rifle candidates aimed at arming Berlin's basic population - exactly what its name means "People's Assault Rifle".

The weapon was designed to arm the Volkswehr known as the Volkssturm, which was probably arranged by the NSDAP at the end of 1944 (it was officially recognized on 18 October 1944). It would be built with the least strategic means available to the German war machine at the time, and its design would allow production to come from the most humble workshops.

Finally, several well-known companies contributed their design expertise to advance the program including Gustloff, Mauser, Rheinmetall, Steyr, Spreewerk Berlin and Walther.

Some quotes are named in order from VG1 to VG5. Walther developed VG1 and Spreewerk developed VG2. Then VG3 from Rheinmetall and Mauser delivered its VG4. Finally, Steyr introduced their VG5 (VK98) in the lineup.

Both the VG1 and VG2 rely on a manual bolt-action system, while the VG5 is based on the Mauser 98 bolt-action rifle. Also, all use some sort of solid wood stock, and metal is used only for key internal components as well as the receiver and barrel.

All are loaded with 7.92x33mm Kurz ("short") cartridges, fed from a 10-round detachable magazine.

In the end, few were impressed (except perhaps for the famous semi-automatic Gustloff form). Of course, there was no organized mass production of the VG series of rifles, and all specimens captured by the invading Soviets were either discarded or tested before they were eventually scrapped.

Specification

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