WW2 German captured 1938 Izhevsk 91/30

[Marcus]

A rare little look at a Mosin rifle from the other side of WW2. This is a war trophy my grandfather picked up in Russia when he was a Gebirgsjaeger officer in the German Army. I don't know exactly where or when he acquired it, but it would probably have been some time in mid 1943, as he was captured by the Soviets on May 12, 1944 when Sevastopol fell to the Red Army and after narrowly escaping execution by a Red Army firing squad, spent the rest of the war as Red Army Officer in the Soviet "Czech Red Army" cavalry.

It's all correct, original, and matching except the front handguard endcap, which is a steel replacement from the 1942-43 period. The sling is also WW2 original to the rifle.

I will try to get some more and better photos posted when I get new batteries for the camera (which died while I was playing with it) and learn how to use it a little better.

[BuckeyeSgt]

Wow Those mountain troops didn't mess around. Love the history behind it.

[husker51]

We don't see those everyday! That is cool! Like to see more pics!

[Longcolt44]

Excellent history to go with it.

[Sonny]

Great rifle and a great story.....Bravo

[Jbob]

More pictures please... Never heard anyone share German history before during WWII.
All my family are German but came here way way back 1700's.

[desdem12]

[Marcus]

Germans, and other Central and Eastern Europeans who were on the German side in WW2, don't talk about it a lot. At one time saying anything (or even speaking a word of German at home if you were in places like Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, or Romania after the war) could be a death sentence. And even today when 90 year old men are arrested and tried for "mass murder" by Marxist kangaroo-courts for merely having served in the German Armed forces, people are hesitant to talk about their wartime experiences. German accounts of WW2, unless they grovel, whine, and lick ass, are generally not published. There are no parades of WW2 German vets wearing their old uniforms and medals, and the traitors like Merkel in the German government celebrate Germany's defeat with Germany's former enemies. And there is no Steven Spielberg or Yad Vashem to record the accounts of Germans and Central Europeans who lived though the war before the last of them die of old age. WW2 German vets are kind of like Outlaw Bikers or Gypsies - unless you are "one of them" in some way, they will not talk to you, or at least will not say much and will remain vague or tell you what you want to hear.

[Marcus]

Something else I might point out is that a lot of family history or other information of Germans or people of German ethnic descent that was written before 1945 is now lost and unreadable even if it still exists. This is because it is written in the old German script that has not been taught since the 1930's and has not been used at all since the end of the war. My mother, who was born in Znaim, Moravia, in 1938 never learned it. Her mother who was born in Dresden in 1920 could barely read it. My great grandmother knew it though. I have tried to learn it, but it is very hard under even the best of circumstances, and then when you take into consideration peoples individual handwriting (with even the best and most beautiful writing) it is exceedingly difficult. I have a thick sheaf of war correspondence letters written by an Austrian soldier in WW1 and I can tell by the dates and locations that these relate to some very significant battles, but I simply can not decipher them. I can read the old German block letters (like the ones you see as proofs on WW1 era German Mauser rifles) but it is slow and tiresome work.

So I think a lot of important, interesting, and significant books, letters, journals, documents, etc. from the pre 1945 period go un-noticed, or even more sadly, get tossed in the trash.

Even here in the U.S., in the German-American community, our beautiful German language and culture was lost and destroyed - "Holocausted", if you will - in the insanely violent, vicious, hateful, and lying propaganda efforts that were used to bring the U.S. into WW1 on France and England's side. Old people were beaten up for speaking German on the street. The works of Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven, and Mozart were dragged from homes, school, and libraries, and heaped up and burned. Then the hysterical mobs ran out of German books and music to burn, they then threw the German dogs - dachshunds, German shepherds, etc. - in the fire. You had to call sauerkraut "liberty cabbage" and hamburgers "liberty steaks". The dachshunds and German shepherds who narrowly escaped the flames had to change their names to "dashhounds" and "Alsatians" to survive.

I had an interesting experience in New Knoxville, Ohio (where my father's side of the family emigrated to from Germany in the 1840's) several years ago....Neil Armstrong (also a German-American from Ohio) is actually a distant cousin of mine. In the little museum there they have a beautiful door lintel beam with a German inscription that is dated in the late 1840's. In a town full of the descendants of German immigrants, every one of whom has a German last name (and is related to me) and whose grand parents and great grandparents spoke German at home and church, NO ONE spoke a word of German or could translate this inscription. Someone passing through with a little knowledge of German had tried to translate it, but done so incorrectly. Fortunately I was able to provide a correct translation. It's lucky that it even escaped ending up in one of the 1917 bonfires with the German music, literature, poetry, and puppies.

[Sonny]

My grandpa took a 8mm in the belly and layed in a potato field for three days before he was found.

story has it that he begged to be shot beacuase it hurt so much..

Grandpa survived..but was never the same after that.

Lots of horror stories from the war..

I salute vets from all sides..they went through hell.

[Themosinkid95]

I vote for showcase

[Ironnewt]

Serious WOW factor.

[Marcus]

My grandpa took a 8mm in the belly and layed in a potato field for three days before he was found.

story has it that he begged to be shot beacuase it hurt so much..

Grandpa survived..but was never the same after that.

Lots of horror stories from the war..

I salute vets from all sides..they went through hell.

It's amazing the things some of the guys who fought in WW1 and WW2 went through and lived to tell about.... kind of sad really that more of this history their stories would tell hasn't been preserved, and we are losing more of it every day. The world's last WW1 vets have passed on recently, and we are losing our remaining WW2 vets everywhere...here in the U.S. alone, about 1,000 per day. For many of us (I'm 57 years old) we will see the day when the last surviving WW2 vet in our country - and in the world - is laid to rest....sadly with less official notice and respect than a mediocre sports figure gets from the so-called "President" for announcing he is homosexual.

Where the anti-gunners only see an evil instrument of death that kills children and puppies and unicorns and should be banned and destroyed, I see a piece of history that tells stories of incredible bravery, terrible sadness, and the histories of people, families, and nations. That's one of the things that I find so interesting about vintage military rifles with a combat history, especially one I - and I'm sure most of us here in one way or another - can personally relate to.

And it's so sad that to many people today, the letters, the uniforms, the medals, and even the weapons that their relatives/ancestors leave behind mean nothing - either something to be thrown in the trash or exchanged for a $100 Walmat gift card at some miserable "gun buy-back"..... as if sending something like this rifle to be crushed, melted, or dumped in the ocean is going to "take guns off the streets" and reduce crime and gang violence in L.A.

[TheSovietSamurai]

Amazing rifle and an even more amazing story to go with it. I only wish my Great-Grandfather had been able to retain his issued rifle, what I would give to hold it. He was Polish, fought at Kutno in 1939 right at the start of it, was shot three times in the left leg and twice in the groin. He spent the rest of the war in Stalag XA. In 1950, he emigrated to Australia and sadly passed away many years ago, he never spoke in detail of his experiences and unfortunately they'll forever be a mystery.

[Junk Yard Dog]

Interesting rifle with a fascinating history, he must have sent it home before being captured by the Soviets, and somehow my relatives failed to find and confiscate it as they marched over Germany and Austria in 1944-45. The anti German sentiment encountered in eastern Europe isn't exactly unexpected considering the brutality of the German occupation of these countries during the war. The things done by the SS, the Gestapo, and even the regular German army in many occupied countries could be staggeringly brutal, to bordering on the unimaginable, yet they did these things, and did them in places were memory's are very long. My Uncle was Army intelligence, US Army, during the war, he was attached to George Patton's staff and got a close up first hand look at the death camps and other horrors. Sometimes he saw these things in the company of old "blood and guts" himself who by the way was visibly sickened by what he saw on more than one occasion. If I was part of a military who participated in such acts I would do my best to keep silent about it also. The death camps may have been the SS, but the German regular army amassed it's own impressive list of atrocities as the war went on.
Money is the real reason behind the anti German sentiment of WW1, the newspapers fed the flames, the push behind this was from American industrialists and bankers who held the IOU's of the allied powers. If the Allies lost the war it would have devastated the American economy, this is not to say that Germany didn't commit some of the acts they were blamed for, but there was blame on all sides in the Great War. We should have just sent 10 million men over there and flattened first Germany, then France and England, then Russia, reorganized the governments along more democratic lines and ended WW2 and the Cold War before either happened.

[bunkysdad]

The next time I see a "what is this rifle worth" thread, while everyone is yammering on about how you should offer 125.00 or ask if he'll take 150.00 I shall remember this rifle whose value can't be named. Priceless!
History could have been so much different if Adolph Hitler had been killed in WWI, which he almost was. Would it have made the world a better place? Some would say yes, but we'll never know. He surely wasn't the only crazed dictator at the time with world domination on his mind. As a matter of fact the entire history of the world is known for it's horrors of slave populations dominated by dictators while building their empires. From biblical times to present. This thing called freedom that we have in America is a rare thing in history given that this country is only some 235 or so years. Given the fact that this country was founded on the Bible, and our constitution gets it's strength from those truths, every time I see another constitutional freedom come under attack I get real concerned. Dang, I am getting off on a tangent.
Marcus, thanks so much for posting this rifle and the heart-felt story of your grandfather.

[fintowin]

The next time I see a "what is this rifle worth" thread, while everyone is yammering on about how you should offer 125.00 or ask if he'll take 150.00 I shall remember this rifle whose value can't be named. Priceless!
History could have been so much different if Adolph Hitler had been killed in WWI, which he almost was. Would it have made the world a better place? Some would say yes, but we'll never know. He surely wasn't the only crazed dictator at the time with world domination on his mind. As a matter of fact the entire history of the world is known for it's horrors of slave populations dominated by dictators while building their empires. From biblical times to present. This thing called freedom that we have in America is a rare thing in history given that this country is only some 235 or so years. Given the fact that this country was founded on the Bible, and our constitution gets it's strength from those truths, every time I see another constitutional freedom come under attack I get real concerned. Dang, I am getting off on a tangent.
Marcus, thanks so much for posting this rifle and the heart-felt story of your grandfather.

right on the money!

[bocephus]

What's the Czech Red Army and why would they let a captured German soldier be in it?

[Junk Yard Dog]

What's the Czech Red Army and why would they let a captured German soldier be in it?

Limited manpower reserves at the end of WW2 had all the commie and Nazi army's grabbing any warm body they could find to fill a uniform.

[djbuck1]

What's the Czech Red Army and why would they let a captured German soldier be in it?

If Marcus' grandfather was a Sudeten German, he may have started the war in the Wehrmacht, but after his capture he may have been "recruited" into the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps of the Red Army which was built up in mid-1944. However, that is conjecture on my part. I am sure Marcus could explain this better.

It was not unheard of for combatants from distinct ethnic groups to change sides on the Eastern Front.