PPK WWII

[Codye]

Some years back my dad gave me a Walther PPK Cal. 7.65, .32 Auto from WWII. It has two eagles on the left side with WaA 359 underneath. One located just above the safety lock the other a little below it. On the right side it has two eagles with N under each of them. One located on the slide the other on the barrel. The grips are brown. SS# 373210 k.

Along the barrel is written-Waffenfabrik Walther, Zella-Mehlis (Thur)

It also has a holster but I do not see any markings on it.

Would anyone know any historical information on this and what organization it may have been assigned?

I would post some pictures but I cannot get any one of them down to the size required to post.

 

[James K]

I can tell you that your pistol was made in 1942 at the Walther factory in Zella-Mehlis, Thüringia. The serial number range for the PPK for that year was 3585xxK through 3907xxK, so yours was made about the middle of 1942.

The WaA 359 number was assigned to the head of the Waffenamt (Weapons Office of the Army) inspection team at Walther. He, of course, did not actually inspect, accept and mark every gun made by Walther in that period, but he was responsible for both the quantity and quality of the weapons produced for the German military.* His personal name is unknown.

If that pistol is in good shape, there is no reason not to fire it. The ammunition is 7.65mm Browning or what we call .32 ACP, and is available (maybe) at most gun stores.

Added: With a few exceptions, there is no way to know to whom a German weapon was assigned or who surrendered it. It might have been surrendered in combat to an American, or just have been one of millions of German weapons imported after WWII and sold literally by the ton in the U.S.

*The modern U.S. equivalent would be the Contracting Officer's Representative (COR).

Jim

 

[44 AMP]

The Nazi government was big on uniforms. Military or party uniforms, service and dress uniforms. Civil government officials often wore uniforms, and for a huge percentage of them a pistol was part of the uniform. Daggers were also, for dress uniforms.

A PPK would not have been sent to front line ground troops (but possibly could have wound up there..), it would have gone to rear echelon troops, or any of the "civilian" services, or possibly aircrewmen.

Literally, anyone from the mayor of Hamburg to the chief sewer inspector of Obersalzburg might have had a PPK. Hitler is reported to have killed himself with a PPK (and poison), but I doubt your PPK is THAT PPK.

If the records of which pistol went where even still exist, their whereabouts are unknown, so there is no way the issue history can be traced. Sorry.

 

[carguychris]

If the records of which pistol went where even still exist, their whereabouts are unknown, so there is no way the issue history can be traced. Sorry.

Codye, just to give a little more detail, the Walther factory in Zella-Mehlis wound up on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain before being destroyed by the Soviets. The Walther company today was reconstituted postwar on the good side of the East German border, but it's not really the same entity that existed prior to V-E Day, and nobody in the West knows for certain what happened to the original factory records. It's possible that they are still squirreled away somewhere in the former Soviet Union, but at any rate, they are inaccessible.

On a slight tangent, this is also the reason that there's a good deal of uncertainty regarding pre-1945 Walther production numbers, and even what year certain prewar models were introduced.