East Germany's Secret Walther Clone: The Pistole 1001-0
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- čas přidán 1. 12. 2023
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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 could find there) but eventually ended up in the Soviet occupation zone (and later East Germany). This was in Suhl, a major area of weapons production, and the DDR set up a large factory complex of its own there called the Ernst Thalmann Werke (named after a German communist martyr).
In 1947 a team of engineers started to rebuild the production line for the Walther PP from the tooling and drawings that remained at the Walther plant. The government wants to use pistol for both military, police, and security service. The factory code was 1001, and the pistol was given the designation 1001-0. It took several years to fully reconstruct the production facilities, and once it did production ran from 1953 until 1957 (when the Makarov took over), with about 20,000 produced overall.
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I can't stop admiring the background. Coffee machine, water cooler, toaster, paper towel, a random globe, and _a big pile of pistols._
I guess they have their priorities straight.
The P9 shaped object caught my eye, along with the lugers and mausers(?)
A friend from east germany told me that some of these safeties were made from really crappy and brittle metal and actually broke from the hammer impacting them on decocking after a while,.
Arguably it might be that they overdid on the metal part and hardened it too much or used too hard of alloy. Which actually would make it harder to manufacture.
@@CzornyLisekMy guess would be piss poor heat treating after machining. Possibly combined with cheating out on the alloy (so that you have an alloy more susceptible to poor heat treating because it's picky).
If you take the easy route, and just use the same alloy for as many of the parts as you can (excepting only those things that undoubtedly need different physical qualities), you mightbthink you can quench and heat treating in batches, following the same process for all the parts. This is cheaper and faster thsn setting up different lines or changing process between batches.
However, this doesn't necessarily work. You can get a form.of "tolerance stacking" where the part shape *and mechanical requirements* of Part A and Parts B-Z differ enough that the heat treat that works adequately for 25 parts results in a glass brittle part in service for the 26th part.
I am imagining seeing an officer with this pistol with an attached vice grip to actuate an otherwise broken safety lever.
I call that the "Walther Syndrome". Because I had seen that Symptome on many Walther PP/PPK- style copies in form of blank fireing alarm and signal pistols. (Here in Germany, were it was much easier to buy a blank only gun, than a true firearm.) They are commenly made out of a Zinc-alloy ("ZaMak"), which can be casted quite well and does a sufficent job in blank only guns, due to the low gas pressure. (cheap to make and you could not repurpose them into true projectile fireing guns.)]
They were ok for that purpose, but they sooner or later suffer the same issue of breaking safety levers. The cylinders crack under the decocking or dry fireing stress or just simple use, because the impact of the hammer strikes also on the cylinder of the safety lever. In theory the gun would just fire, because the fireing pin is still moveing. (In the cases of the "Walther"copies I had seen.) However, I never pushed my luck, because I don't want to experience a theoricaly flying back fireing pin. But maybe the ethopian Walthers would work even without the safety, just without safety.
So the design of the Walther Safety lever is part of the issue, if you don't use the right material.
I've had the original safety break on a Manhurin-produced PP, as well as the replacement I got used. It seems to be more of an inevitability, but dry firing definitely speeds up the process
"Of course the safety is gone! It's a lever that makes the gun not work. Why even bother building that thing?"
- an Elbonian arms officer
Germany's Secret PP, there someone said it
Maybe they had PP envy? 🤔 🤷♂️
I love it when Ian researches serial numbers like that
THhs is one of my favourite type of video.... firearms that aren't "forgotten" exactly, they're just rare because we don't see them in the West.
I have honestly never seen a forgotten weapon here… either I never forgot about it, or (most often :D) I never knew of it :D
@ Fair point.
@ it's just the name of the channel
This reminds me of what happened with the BMW factory in Eisenach, which also fell into the Soviet zone of occupation. This was originally its own independent manufacturer that BMW bought in 1928. They were known for their Dixi brand, which, among other things, produced a successful license-built version of the Austin 7 - one of the first true mass market cars sold in Germany.
BMW took over, continued production of the Dixi 3/15 for a while, renamed to BMW, then they used this factory to produce their own models, including the mid-sized 326, a, for the time, fast and sophisticated family car with a 2-liter 4-cylinder producing 45hp. Doesn't sound like much, but this was a decent amount of power for a European car from the 1930s, easily enough for the Autobahn that was started being constructed from 1932 (before the Nazis came to power, contrary to popular belief).
It was this car that the newly state-owned factory started to build again in 1949 in Eisenach, with updated styling and slightly modernized underpinnings - and they sold it as a BMW, not just in East Germany (where it became a favorite of party cadres, film stars and the likes - there were also utilitarian transporter and military variants), but also in West Germany, where it was cheaper and more readily available than the BMWs coming out of the struggling factory in Munich. Quality was subpar though, reliability poor. When customers began to complain to BMW in Munich, the Bavarian firm sued its former subsidiary, forcing them to change its name to EMW (Eisanacher Motorenwerke instead of Bayerische Motorenwerke) and include a disclaimer in the owner's manual to only contact the factory in Eisenach for support and parts. Sneakily, the factory only complied with vehicles sold to the West and continued using BMW badges for exports to Eastern Europe. The BMW/EMW 340 remained in production until 1955.
EMW had big plans for new models, including with six-cylinder engines based on never built pre-war designs, but they all fell flat. The sad end of the story is that newly developed cars were ignored in favor of a much more simple design, sold as the Wartburg 312, which used a noisy, unsophisticated and dirty 2-strike 3-cylinder engine. The styling was at least fairly ostentatious and equipment quite elaborate, a last gasp of East German luxury (there was even a gorgeous estate version), before it was replaced with the far more utilitarian 353 in 1967, which retained the anemic two-stroke engine until 1989, when it received a 1.3l motor from the VW Polo. Despite a 60% higher price and an otherwise largely unchanged car, sales were excellent, but reunification killed the car and the factory with it, as East Germany was suddenly flooded with cheaper and superior Western cars. Opel however used the opportunity to build their own factory in Eisenach, acquiring experienced engineers and workers in the process. The factory is still going strong and was just recently expensively modernized for the production of EVs.
Interesting
Link?
Thank you for sharing, very interesting.
Yeah, for some time they make BMW cars, later they change name for EMW. But you know... ask guys from british Bristol about their cars ;) and look at them and at some BMWs ;)
In fact BMW only became a car company with the Eisenach factory. Before this aquesition and until 1952 BMW produced only motorcycles and aircraft engines in Munich.
After WWII Eisenach was gone and so was the demand for aircraft engines. BMW was successful with its bikes, but mid of the 50ies the customers bought cars instead of motorcycles. BMW purchased the blueprint for the Isetta from Italy - like they did once with Austin. Still their cars were no big success and the company almost went bancrupt in 1959 and Mercedes was ready to take over BMW. In the last minute the company could be saved, purchased the Glas car company in eastern Bavaria and over the next 50 years made its way to the top.
Great Ceasars ghost!! The craftsmanship looks like they were made in an Ethiopian garage
Polished with a clay brick. 😂
Thank you for making this video. You need to visit the weapon town Suhl in germany. They have a really good museum with a lot of rare guns and prototypes. Greetings from germany.
Looks like they got you in the break room next to the coffee machine lol
I had one of these 1001-01 PPs for a while. Mine had been refinished. It was stamped "Hammerli Tiengen" on the barrel mount. The grips were plain smooth wooden slabs. It had a good single action trigger pull and was very accurate. Unfortunately, it also had a tendency to jam in a strange way that involved the chamber-loaded indicator pin. The safety catch on it broke while dropping the hammer. A gunsmith was able to fit a replacement catch I bought off Ebay; I have no idea where that was made. After that, it was fussy about magazines. Some types would foul the new safety catch. I finally got a couple that would work, but I later sold the gun. Later still, I got a better looking Manurhin-made PP.
Ian, you make a very good job in not only presenting guns but also describing the historical context and I love your pronounciation of German. Greetings from Ulm!
It would be interesting to see the East German Lugers and P38's.
The East Germans some how upped their game with the Makarov's they built. Those look like pre-war quality.
East German weapons absolutely fascinate me, great to see them and Ian telling the history
My father bought Merkel (Suhl) 303E variant in 70's Yugoslavia in for acceptable price. It was of beatiful fit and finish and it was a very light and compact shotgun. I cannot believe what an astronomical prices of those guns are today, and they are still in production.
I wonder if he manages to cover the Wieger 940 series at some point.
Ian is living the dream.
These pistol looks like guns that are from jungle workshops.
There are weapons forgotten because they didn’t sell well or just didn’t work well or were passed over due to shenanigans, then there are weapons whose makers wish we didn’t know ever existed.
The time you spend on research plus your acquired knowledge plus your delivery ? Kudos !
My guess at the missing safeties are that the metal or it´s hardening was bad and to much dry firing have wrecked them. The safety on the PP family is a weak part, especially the older 90 degree variant that was use until 1935-ish.
EDIT: At 9:23 you can see the broken safety above the firing pin in the hole on the pistol on the right.
Ha, may or may not be true. As said, the pistoles were imported from Ethiopia. Maybe this kind of safety was considered to be to confusing in its handling. Maybe the soldiers mostly did not recognize that the safety is on and tried to search for an error in the gun. Each second counts when in combat.
@@rp8133 The pistol doesn´t work without the safety in place. The safety holds the firing pin in place. The safety is also of the decocker type which means that you don´t engage it to be safe since you fire the gun in double action for the first shot. So your reasoning is not relevant.
@@RiderOftheNorth1968 Thanks for the information. Did not know that, But hey, each day a new lesson...
@@rp8133 I have been working on Walther PPs on and off in the last 15 years so i have seen this problem before. My own from 1934 have a new safety due to breakage.
Seems unlikely that they effectively all have a missing or broken safety.
I suspect that they were removed on purpose... probably to "deactivate" the guns.
It would not surprise me if the reason the shipment are all missing their safeties is because they are a wearing part, and some armorer collected these pistols together to await new switches, but for reasons likely never to be known, they never did get new switches before the importer came along and took them away. Also explains why no magazines, because that is an easy way to reduce the security risks while the guns waited for their switches.
This is not an uncommon thing in the second-hand market in general, to find collections of equipment missing just one or two parts that clearly were stored with the intention of replacing those parts, but no one ever got around to it.
Mine has a serial number 263XX. It's one with the spurious import markings. It's a very accurate pistol.
The production of the 7.65 mm PP pistol at Ernst Thalmann Werke started in July 1954 and ended in mid-February 1955 with a total
production of 30.156 pistols
The cal.22 PP pistol started in July 1954 and ended in June 1955 with a total production of 5.751 pistols
Se my book The P38 Pistol in East Germany and Czechoslovakia 2023
Regards
Per
This is correct! Mine is in the 26k serial range and was one of the import into the US from GP Trading after they went through Hammerli.
love the tactical paper towels in the background
I wish someone would redesign the PPK ….. what a complex mess of tiny parts and springs. But I like the form factor.
a great very interesting video and pistol Mr.GJ.Have a good one.
Great video as always 🎉
Such a cool video, thanks for this one Ian. East Germany is so fascinating to me
I just picked up two books about the Stasi. I've read much about the larger picture, but I'm about to dig into East Germany more.
Very cool. I like the PP much more than PPK
The PP is a better gun. For just a slightly bigger size you get better capacity and higher velocity, with the bonus of being easier to shoot accurately.
The PP always reminds me of it's arguably worse cousin, the Makarov PM. Having shot all, I prefer the PP too, but the PPK is really slick and looks the best out of them IMHO, unfortunately it's quite uncomfortable to shoot well even for me, I have relatively small hands for a 1,88m man. The build quality however just oozes from these vintage Walther pistols.
So did the makers of the 007 movies. They _said_it was a PPK on screen, but the prop was a PP, because the PPK is too small to be recognizable in any shot that isn't a close-up. :)
Damn, even wartime production Walther PP’s PPK’s and contract P-38’s by spreewerk have better machine work.
Communism robs everyone of their incentive to excel because putting out crap gets you the same benefits as striving for excellence....so why bother? You see this in most Commie products except maybe for AK's where the tooling and design are good enough that the workers don't matter much in their production.
Communism at its finest.
TY Ian !
Nice to be able to see a cache and compare and contrast!
You should message the firearms museum in Suhl, they have a lot of interesting east german guns on display, who knows, maybe you can get a closer look at them
With the safety gone, I'm surprised if the extractor has any tension at all. At least on the PPK and PPK/s pistols I've fooled with, the spring for one is the spring for both. I once was issued a PPK/s made by Interarms. It was one of their more infamous ones. Apparenlty they never hardened the slide as every pin hole was oval and after the third extractor blew off the gun I decided to put in the department's bin of misfit "toys" and buy my own vintage PPK.
Still, I LOVE cold war era stuff, especially early cold war ComBloc stuff. Thanks!
When Ian takes the slide off, you can see that the ‘barrel’ that the firing pin passes through and the far side with the detent is still intact so that the standard spring and two detents are there to tension the extractor.
don't head to RT's website thinking the pistol will be cheap 😵💫
I hope royal tiger got this whole cache for less than $20, otherwise I can’t see how they would make any money selling all this super low quality stuff.
Here we go!
Cool history. Worth the price of admission.
Ian I know the reason the safety levers on many of these Pistols are broken. IF You drop the hammer on a Walther pp/ppk WITHOUT arresting the hammer fall the impact eventually shears the safety lever off. whether this is due to metallurgy or design I cannot say. I have seen this phenomenon with p38,s too.
So dope. Love anything in 32 Caliber!
They are asking a pretty penny for some pretty rough looking pistols.
How much?
On the same note of Walther PP copies, it would be amazing if you could present an Romanian (still in use by the army and police) Pistol Carpați Md. 1974
Oh neat, Ian covered a type I've actually got one of. I have one of the Hämmerli ones. In addition to the fake Zella-Mehlis and "ac" marks on the outside, it has"HÄMMERLI TIENGEN" stamped on the outside of the chamber, where it can only be seen if you take the slide off the gun. Also, a bit oddly, it has wooden grips. I don't know if those were added by Hämmerli, or some previous owner, or what.
cool video
Guns, a toaster and a fancy espresso machine? What an interesting background.
Small pile of lugers and a c96 in the background is kinda crazy.
Fastest animal in the world... Ethiopian chicken 😂😂😂
Estimating the production numbers is, of course, the "German Tank Problem" and Wikipedia has the maths under that title.
Is the coffee machine a secret gun?
Shhh! 🤫
🤣😂🤣
Something about the setup - everything looks so clean - makes me wonder if the coffee machine, toaster, globe(!) etc are there for tax reasons, so that the owner can pretend it's an actual business office and not e.g. his garage.
Irwin Rommel's espresso machine up for auction next month!
😆🤣😂@@henryturnerjr3857
VEry interesting piece of history
A video on Walther at the end of the war and the following move would be very interesting. Please make that video.
My friend picked up a Manurhin made PP. We've done some research on it, but it would be great if you could make a video about Manurhin making guns for Walter
I think it's important to mention that Zella-Mehlis and Suhl are directly next to each other. Nowadays if you leave Zella-Mehlis in the right direction you instantly enter Suhl proper ^^'
They also have a great aquarium in Zella-Mehlis to visit xD
I think I'd actually prefer to have one with fake markings. Adds an extra layer of story.
Can’t wait for the Radom p64, owned one for a few years it’s my go to carry gun
if one day I decide to start a gun business, please remind me to never hire a former Ethiopian Army gunsmith
We need a new NRA condition rating. "Ethiopian grade"
Ian is on an upload streak, here we go!
?
@@wierdalien1Ian has consecutively been uploading a lot videos as of late.
@@paleoph6168 oh
double action trigger is very heavy. single action is very light. both are very smooth.
For the man whom "Safety off, always!" is a requisite.
This is a video that taught me something, again, not about guns. I was born in ‘67 and growing up always on tv were ads begging money to help starving Ethiopians. Its a good cause and all that. While I was very politically aware for my age I never once knew that Ethiopia was a communist puppet state. No wonder the people there were starving. Thank you again Ian for the education.
No! That's a bad starvin' Marvin!
Most of the starvation was happening in the border region between Ethiopia and what is now Eritrea due to the almost nonstop civil wars. Ethiopia has been itching to invade Eritrea ever since they won independence in order to regain access to the sea. Watch out for a new horrific war with no end in the region. Ethiopia really doesn't like being landlocked and they're betting on the international community not giving a damn because Eritrea is one of the worst dictatorships in the world and has forced 1/5th of their population into permanent military conscription. Any deserters from the Eritrean military get their families arrested and their property seized. This is why Eritrea is known as "the North Korea of Africa."
Maybe they thought the double action was safe enough and decided to remove the safeties to avoid it snagging.
I don't understand that either?
then youd have to pull the trigger and thumb the hammer down to get it into double action. Thats not really a safe practice.
@@123mbo why? the safety does not connect any moving parts it only blocks the trigger or firing pin from moving
No it’s a safety/decocker. Putting it on safe also safely lowers the hammer. So without it after chambering a round the hammer will be back and you’d have to either carry it in single action without a safety (very not safe) or manually lower the hammer by pulling the trigger and easing it down on a live round - also not safe.
Since the safety is also a decocker, that wouldn't make any sense
Awesome
Should do a video about the Makarov PM series of pistols from Russia. I'm also wondering what happened to Tanfoglio firearms. They seem to be hard to find all of a sudden. I've had two and loved both, and still own one of them. The Makarov PM video would be interesting, as I used to have a extremely nive condition one at one point. Had some very odd markings and made me have more questions than answers. I have good detailed photos of the Makarov I owned. Maybe I will find a way to get them to you, and hopefully, you will know more about it than me.
The profile looks like a CZ-52, just smaller.
Thank s
Ian,
I am always pleasantly surprised by your comprehensive knowledge of history and the correct way of presenting it here. That's much more than just shooting a few watermelons ;)!
greetings from Germany
Michel Schauch
I just checked mine, it is one of the ones that was imported by GP Trading in Vermont through Hammerli. Ian's a little off on the production number, as mine has a serial that is in the 26k number range.
Can you show us a PPK in detail next to one of those copies, and show us evidence of the typical manufacturing differences (& shortcuts)?
Ian said "PP" 😂😂😂
.... I'll see myself out...
My friend had east germqn musima guitar strat copy ...that was actually very nice
Guns, Coffemachine, Toaster and some paperwipes... thats a combination i can get behind xD
Ian are you going to do an episode on the Manurhin PPs? I’ve got one and would like to know more about its history.
I think this is my first time realizing IO and royal tiger imports are the same company, which makes perfect sense given both their reputations.
While I think it's neat Ian can bring this content to us, let's not forget royal tiger has been selling rusted out, rotted, barely "relics" to those who are worried about "missing out" I know its the free market but I have seen some of the stuff RTI peddles and it's baaaad...
@@danschneider9921Yeah some of their firearms looks like it was found metal detecting
@05:48 - "Triple-K" magazine...They make their own magazines?
I swear to god if that coffee machine appears in an upcoming video as some kind of whacky NFA good I think I’ll have an aneurysm
This pistols had been also noted by german weapons magazine Deutsches Waffenjournal or Visier. May be you can get information from those german magazines. In the article was noted , that this pistols had been often given to high officers of russian forces as official present/ gift.
Any chance to get a video on the Walther P88 ?
Reminds me a lot of the FEG PA-63
I look forward to seeing those videos about the french walthers
I am far more interested in that office grade espresso machine. RTI must really treat their workers good.
Nice coffee machine !
Where is a link to a store with the pistols?
Are they better or worse than the FEG PA-63 machining?
Let's get a disassembly of that sweet DeLonghi.
those all need a good conservation... rough rough rough
Ah yes a pistole 1001-0 only one agent we know of carries this pistol... Yertzi Bindionov
As I was watching the video, not in full screen, I could see the viewed counter raising. 😊
WTF i have a severe case of Frequency illusion (Baader-Meinhof phenomenon) right now, as i was just researching the 1001-0 for the last couple of hours and the way i became aware to this video was totally unrelated to that.
Would this be shootable without the safety installed? On a range, controlled conditions, etc. Not trying to make it a carry piece, but a gun this rough I would have no other reservation shooting.
No. The safety functions partly as a guide and a end stop for the firing pin.
@@RiderOftheNorth1968maybe somebody knew that and this was their way of disabling them? Seems odd all of them are missing unless it was deliberate.
@@jonnoMoto I don´t think so. It would be easier to just remove the firing pin if that is the goal. The firing pin is in place in the gun and since it falls out very easy if you cock the hammer if the safety is removed it feels like your theory is wrong. I think the safeties is broken.
If you could then for your next shot you'd need to extract the firing pin from your eye and reinstall it. Only the safety holds the firing pin as the slide flies backwards.
I would suspect that RTI is going to have to replace the safeties in order to sell these. Usually imported milsurp pistols have to have a safety of some kind to get a high enough "points" score on the ATF's import criteria. Unless they have a mag disconnect safety?
I have one of the ac Zella-Mehlis marked examples with SN: 25374, so it was at least that high. 9:25
Are guns in the more worn state usable or just for non-firing collector's pieces?
Worn finishes would affect the collector value, but it wouldn't affect the shootability of it.
The missing safe/Decker would be a bigger concern if you wanted a shooting piece.
10:09 “More typical Ethiopian shape…” 😅
Ian --
I´ve always admired you for making your due diligence to correctly pronounce the words of foreign origin, of course involving the manufacturers´ names. Indeed, I point out the matter of you learning French to study French weapons and write your books.
It´s _/valter/,_ not /walther/ or /walter/.
The gun that should have been added to Black Ops Cold War's mission in East Germany 😂😂😂
My name is Bohn. Jakob Bohn......
Have you read Man Without a Face by Markus Wolf? He was East Germany's greatest spymaster of the post-WW2/Cold War years, and he details E. Germany activity in Africa, Central America and Cuba, which of course includes both training and the supply of weapons to post-Communist regimes.
This gun is like hybrid of pm and walther ppk
No, it is a PP, the original, older version before the PPK.
Subtle Delonghi advertisement!:D
Great video Ian! As always.
I'm always impressed by your good german..... but the 'h' in Walther is silent, no english 'th'
Greetings from Germany