{"id":29370,"date":"2026-04-20T08:01:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T13:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/20\/late-war-commercial-k98k-production-in-1944-but-not-for-the-wehrmacht\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T08:01:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T13:01:28","slug":"late-war-commercial-k98k-production-in-1944-but-not-for-the-wehrmacht","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/20\/late-war-commercial-k98k-production-in-1944-but-not-for-the-wehrmacht\/","title":{"rendered":"Late-War Commercial K98k &#8211; Production in 1944 But Not for the Wehrmacht"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mejs-video-container\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allow=\"autoplay\" width=\"580\" height=\"380\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hPnTro7WgKI?controls=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>Late in 1944, a number of small companies assembled a batch of K98k rifles and commercially proofed them. These are a known group of guns to the collecting community, although many of the details of their purpose remain unclear. They were assembled from a mixture of reclaimed reject parts, overruns, and other scrounged-up pieces. This example was made by F.R. Langenham in Zella-Mehlis and uses a Gustloff bcd4 receiver and Gustloff barrel, with mostly unmarked other parts. It has a commercial serial number and commercial Eagle\/N and diamond\/U proofs, and no military proofs or waffenamts (except on the rear sight and bayonet lug). <\/p>\n<p>The various theories about the purpose of these rifles, including SS procurement (which I find very unlikely) and Volkssturm use (which I find unpersuasive as well). I think the most likely explanation is use by private security guards at factories and other institutions. With the uncertainly and chaos late in the war I think armed security was a popular idea, but private security could not have sources arms form the military. Contracting with smaller shops for a relatively small number of rifles rings true to me, but there is no actually documentary evidence of this that I am aware of.<\/p>\n<p>The best firearms reference books: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.headstamppublishing.com\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/www.headstamppublishing.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.patreon.com\/ForgottenWeapons\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.patreon.com\/ForgottenWeapons<\/a><br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.floatplane.com\/channel\/ForgottenWeapons\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.floatplane.com\/channel\/ForgottenWeapons<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! <a href=\"http:\/\/shop.forgottenweapons.com\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/shop.forgottenweapons.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Late in 1944, a number of small companies assembled a batch of K98k rifles and commercially proofed them. These are a known group of guns to the collecting community, although many of the details of their purpose remain unclear. They were assembled from a mixture of reclaimed reject parts, overruns, and other scrounged-up pieces. This&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/20\/late-war-commercial-k98k-production-in-1944-but-not-for-the-wehrmacht\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Late-War Commercial K98k &#8211; Production in 1944 But Not for the Wehrmacht<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":29371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[89,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-content","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}