Nazi Germany

OK, UpAndAtIt, if you can make cartridge cases out of those thin lipstick tubes, please do so, and post pictures. Then fire them and post pics. You are so unknowledgeable about what is required of a cartridge case in regard to containing pressure, that I tend to doubt your claimed expertise in reloading and case forming. (A bullet jacket is NOT the same thing as a cartridge case in terms of standing up to pressure.)

Making one cartridge case out of another is one thing. Making a center fire cartridge case out of a thin piece of brass or aluminum is quite another. Why do you think cartridges have that thick part at the rear? Would they bother with that if they could just use thin brass all the way around?

So, hurry up and make those cartridges out of your mom's discarded lipstick tubes and let us know how you get on. I am willing to eat crow if you do it, but I suspect you would be eating a lot of hot gas and burning powder first.

Jim
 
As I recall from the book "Oh Jerusalem", the Jews purchased a large quantity of cartridge casings which had been put through the first few steps of manufacture, yet were still unfinished. The unfinished casings were then labeled as "Lipstick cases" in order to smuggle them past the British who controlled the region, and had banned the importation of arms.

Edit: I believe the partially produced casings were around step 5 as shown in the attached link about how cartridge brass is made http://accurateshooter.wordpress.com/2007/06/15/how-cartridge-brass-is-made/
 
It is possible that the guy was sent to the prison camps for something other than the assassination of the Nazi officers. I do agree that if the Germans knew about the assassination, they would have killed him outright.

The serial numbers could be easily traced with the holocaust museum by checking that number against their records and seeing if the names match up with the original owner/maker of the firearm.

Speculation on all our parts.

My grandfather worked in a factory that made lipstick tubes and they had an agreement with the defense department (maybe it was the war department when he worked there :)) that if the defense department needed more ammunition, the machinery would be used to make cartridges. I do not remember the name of the factory or the name of the program the DOD used to make these requirements, but at one time a lot of factories did have this agreement. I do not remember if there was a tax benefit from these agreements or some kind of monetary advantage to the company by signing these types of agreements.
 
Any company with experience in drawing metal can probably make cartridge cases, but the tooling and equipment needed for drawing cases is considerably different and requires a lot more force. Further, equipment is needed for head forming, primer pocket forming, flash hole punching, extractor groove cutting, shoulder and neck forming and annealing at various stages, none of which would be needed with a simple product like a lipstick case.

The "smuggling" theory sounds more plausible, but why (or how) could they get partially formed cases through? It is hard to believe a customs agent would not recognize cartridge cases even if only partly formed.

Jim
 
Speculation on all our parts.
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Naturally. But the bell of plausibility is not tolling hard:

Let's say he killed those officers with the gun, and nobody knew. Then he was imprisoned for another reason. Where'd the gun come from later on? Did he hide it in his sock and conceal it while in a concentration camp? Preposterous. Did he stash it at his home and then come back to find it? Extremely unlikely

Anything that could have happened is possible and I will not say its impossible for somebody to hide a gun and then find it later because of course it's very possible- improbable in this case but not impossible. But barring any solid info, all we can do is postulate and add the pluses and minuses and make educated guesses based on what we see
 
Quite a show you guys are putting on. I just read it today. The part about the sheet metal barrel made from wrapping sheet metal around a mandrel is true. I own a .22 Hamilton rifle made in this way. Just an observation, I am not leaning one way or another.
 
The "smuggling" theory sounds more plausible, but why (or how) could they get partially formed cases through? It is hard to believe a customs agent would not recognize cartridge cases even if only partly formed
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Some British personnel were sympathetic to the plight of the Jews with the memory of German death camps still fresh in their minds. Also, there is something called a "bribe."
 
I am also doubtful of this story, but i would not say it is impossible.

You have to remember Jews of every profession were interned. They also had a considerable amount of time to work on any such projects, although not like POWs. Could John Browning make a zip gun that killed 20 officers and fired rounds out of lipstick brass? I would bet he could have. In fact, I am going to make the claim that given two years where this was my only escape from dismal reality I could figure something out or at least have something blow up in my hand.

This guy could have very easily been a very skilled artisan used to filing out intricate and precise clock works by hand.

I like how people cited the history channel and Wikipedia to refute others claims. History channel is all about entertainment. I can find a historian that claims Daid Karesh was the second coming and if history channel thought it would get ratings they would distribute it as fact. Wikipedia is little better than a bathroom stall. If you are looking for a good time, call that number you might get lucky, but don't be surprised if you get an angry father of a 14 year old girl that picks up.

Would love to see those pictures to see if this is a zip gun made after the war, something mass produced with a made up story, or maybe just as described accepting a little exaggeration(so maybe he only killed 20 soldiers or 1 soldier, who cares).
Did the serial number match those tattooed on his wrist?

Smuggling the cases through incomplete would not surprise me at all and seems VERY plausible. That customs agent is a bureaucrat. This is just like a flat. It isn't a "gun" so you can make/sell as you please.
 
Weird - I overheard almost a WWII weapon story at a gunshow in TN a few weeks ago. I was standing within earshot of a guy who said his family had a rifle (I think he said an authentic bringback Nazi Mauser or Russian Mosin Nagant) that his grandfather got in trade from said Soldier after the war in the ruins of a city; the owner of the rifle was starving and the guy's grandfather gave him some rations for the rifle. Now the rifle is worth more than a house!

As for the OP story, it may be plausible, but much of the story is too embellished or fictional to believe.
 
I have written to the holocaust museum about the lipstick story and any info on weapons made by prisoners or in the ghettos. No reply yet.

Further checking with family members who still live in the area my grandfather worked in said that (Jim was right) the agreement was the factory would be retooled to support the war effort if needed. It was probably the fact the workers were used to working with that type of machinery that they had the agreement.
 
History Channel had a program filmed by the Danish underground .They were making SMGs in a toy factory right under the noses of the Nazis !! :p
When I was a kid in Brooklynn some BGs made zip guns ,a very simple single shot 22LR, automobile antenna barrel ,wooden handle ,nail for firing pin and rubber band to drive the firing pin !
 
officer gun

Fact is stranger than fiction,and the resistance against the nazis was fierce ,that was part of the reason for the camps to destroy the oppisition,by inprisonment ,forced labor slow starvation,escaped polish jews took a big chunk out of hitlers war machine,as did french underground,i could go on and on,not only plausible but probobul:cool:
 
Fact is stranger than fiction,and the resistance against the nazis was fierce ,that was part of the reason for the camps to destroy the oppisition,by inprisonment ,forced labor slow starvation,escaped polish jews took a big chunk out of hitlers war machine,as did french underground,i could go on and on,not only plausible but probobu
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That a man of unknown military experience killed over 20 heavily armed and well trained german officers with a homegrown 22 is possible (but so is getting hit by a falling soviet satellite) but not probable.

A man sneaking the gun into the camps is possible as well, so is him and his wife surviving the war........all possible.

But having all those things happen in sequence.............ya its possible.

Sure as hell not probable

Getting sent to a detention camp for killing officers in wartime?

Impossible
 
There was certainly some effective resistance to German occupation during WWII, but too much fiction has blown it out of proportion. The French resistance was well armed, thanks to British arms drops, but they had little effect on the war effort, being a nuisance to the Germans, but without significant effect. (Also, the most effective fighters in the FFI were Communists who really didn't care as much about getting rid of the Germans as making sure they took over France after the Germans left.)

I knew some Poles who were in the underground, and they killed some Germans, but they were under no illusion that they could win the war alone. The tragedy was that the Russians, on Stalin's orders, deliberately held off entering Warsaw until the Germans and the Poles killed each other off. The Russians hoped all the patriotic Poles would be killed so they would not resist the Communist dictatorship the Russians planned to impose. Of course, the Russians, just as anti-Semitic as the Germans, also hoped all the Jews would be killed, and most were.

Another romantic myth, also supported mostly by fiction, is that of a vast anti-Nazi underground in Germany. The entire "underground" probably consisted of a hundred people or less; not until some Army officers became disillusioned with Hitler was there any real opposition ("Unternehmung Walküre"), and it turned out in the end to be ineffective and probably increased support for Hitler. The fact is that, no matter what Germans said after the war, popular support for Hitler was real, and the vast majority of the German people supported both the country and its Nazi leadership throughout the war. After the war, Germans kept calling WWII "Hitlerskrieg" or "Hitler's war", as if Der Führer flew all those planes and drove all those tanks by himself. Or at least that is what they wanted to believe.

Jim
 
escaped polish jews took a big chunk out of hitlers war machine,as did french underground
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It really depends who does the analysis. IMO the good objective analysis I have encountered indicates almost no effect beyond a moral boost for the populace that did not really support the Germans. The Germans were very effective in attacking resistance groups.

,i could go on and on
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Last I checked this was an internet forum, so go for it.
 
Escaped Polish Jews? Big Chunk of Nazi Germany? I would guess from all the sources I have read, there were precious few that escaped from the ghettoes to fight, and those that did, many were turned over to the Germans by the local Poles and even the Polish resistance. To think someone shot 20 German officers with a zip gun, got sent to a concentration camp for it instead of being hung immediately, and then survived the camp with his wife is I think insulting to the true horrors Jews and the millions of other s suffered in those years. Someone turn this into a "My AR (AK) is better than your AK (AR) thread, this one is science fiction.
 
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