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The Deutche Waffen und Munitionfabriken was formed in 1896/7 when Ludwig Lowe, a Berlin firearm and machine tool manufacturer took over tha Deutsche Metallpatronenfabrik of Karlsruhe. From 1922 it was in the hands of a holding Company and the name changed to Berlin-Karlsruhe Industie-werk but in 1936 it reverted back to the name DWM. By early April 1915 DWM was said to be making 1400 Mauser rifles, 700 Parabellum pistols, 10 machineguns and 2000000 small arms cartridges daily. The Pistole Parabellum 1908 or Parabellum-Pistole (Pistol Parabellum), popularly known as the Luger, is a toggle-locked recoil-operated semi-automatic pistol. The design was patented by Georg J. Luger in 1898 and produced by German arms manufacturer Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken (DWM) starting in 1900; it was an evolution of the 1893 Hugo Borchardt designed C-93. Although the Luger pistol was first introduced in 7.65x22mm Parabellum, it is notable for being the pistol for which the 9x19mm Parabellum (also known as the 9mm Luger) cartridge was developed. This pistol was adopted by both Switzerland and Bulgaria, with Bulgarian guns being extremely rare, on the order of a 100 guns. Switzerland received 5100 Pistols, the US Army received 1002 pistols and British received 6. The Model 1906 was an outgrowth of the M1900, but the band mainspring was replaced with a coil-spring. The anti bounce toggles were used and the manual-safety on this model intercepted the sear instead of just locking the grip-safety. The Model 1908 was the logical development after the M1906 and was virtually identical with the except for the lack of the grip-safety. The P08 and M1908 also features an anti bounce lock on the right toggle to prevent the toggle from unlocking. The M1908 was made by DWM and Mauser commercially and for military use. Heinrich Kreighoff Waffenfabrik, Simson & Cie, and Konigliche Gewehrfabrik made only P08’s for the military. After 1913 the stock lug was added to the frame. All told about 2.5 million were made. It was soon replaced by the Walther P38. The Luger was made popular by its use by Germany during World War I and World War II. After World War II there were great stocks stocks of surplus and captured arms in Europe, many of them in communist hands. Being frutal and needing weapons, they undertook the job of refurbishing the old guns to their standards with reddish brown plastic grips. We have come to know these reworks as VOPOs, an acronym for People’s Police. Since they are not original and have been altered and refinished the VOPOs are not well received by collectors, but they represent a true category of Luger. The Luger uses a toggle-lock action, which uses a jointed arm to lock, as opposed to the slide actions of almost every other semi-automatic pistol. After a round is fired, the barrel and toggle assembly (both locked together at this point) travel rearward due to recoil. After moving roughly one-half inch (13 mm) rearward, the toggle strikes a cam built into the frame, causing the knee joint to hinge and the toggle and breech assembly to unlock. At this point the barrel stops its rearward movement (it impacts the frame), but the toggle and breech assembly continue moving (bending the knee joint) due to momentum, extracting the spent casing from the chamber and ejecting it. The toggle and breech assembly subsequently travel forward (under spring tension) and the next round from the magazine is loaded into the chamber. The entire sequence occurs in a fraction of a second. This mechanism worked well for higher pressure cartridges, but cartridges loaded to a lower pressure could cause the pistol to malfunction because they did not generate enough recoil to work the action fully. This resulted in either the breechblock not clearing the top cartridge of the magazine, or becoming jammed open on the cartridge’s base. It was manufactured by DWM until 1914, but there after it was made by Waffenfabrik Bern in Switzerland. Mauser made some when they acquired DWM in 1930 and Mauser issued commemoratives since the 1970s. There were 80000 to 100000 long-barrel, Model 1904’s made by DWM, which went to the German Navy. This is the most popular collectors-piece. It is classified as a relic in the USA. (Ref. ‘Pistols and revolvers’ by JE Smith, ‘Famous pistols and handguns’ by A J R Cormack, ‘Price guide for collector handguns’ by R H Balderson, ‘Pistols of the world’ by Hogg and Weeks p83/166)

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