The chronology in these posts is a bit confused. During WWII, Walther made arms for Germany. After the war, the Walther plant at Zella-Mehlis, Thuringia, was in the Soviet zone of occupation (which became the German Democratic Republic, or DDR in the German abbreviation) and the DDR authorities did not resume production of arms. The plant was used to make machinery, and was not destroyed by angry slave laborers or anyone else.
Walther could not manufacture arms in Germany and licensed the French company Manufacture d'Armes de Haut Rhin (MANURHIN) to make the Walther PP (Polizei Pistole) and PPK (Polizel Pistole Kriminal) pistols. These pistols were marked with the MANURHIN trade mark and those imported here were marked "Made in France". The first imports came in around 1960. At some point, Walther took over the assembly of those pistols and from that point they were marked with the Ulm-Donau address and "Made in Germany". In fact, they were still made in France. When Walther actually resumed manufacture in Germany, I don't know, but they did.
The U.S. operation was set up under by Interarms under Walther license after the Gun Control Act of 1968 banned import of the PPK and the exchange rate made importing European made pistols a losing proposition. The PPK/S is essentially a marriage of the PPK slide and the PP frame, designed to garner enough "points" for importation. Nonetheless almost all were made here and it was the only U.S. made product for many years.
Recently, Interarms fell on hard times and the U.S. Walther import and manufacturing operations have been taken over by Smith & Wesson as a supposedly independent operation.
I apologize for the "holes" in this narrative, but if needed, I will do more research.
Jim
