German Combat Pistols – Did the Guys Who Brought Us the Tiger Tank Really Think This was Enough Gun?

The exposed hammer was only barely thus and remained both easily accessed and snag-free. The slide locked to the rear on the last round fired but closed automatically when a fresh magazine was rammed home. Literally, nothing is faster even today. The magazine release was located on the heel after the European fashion, and there was a manual safety on the left rear aspect of the slide that did not drop the hammer.

World War 2 was the world’s bloodiest, most expansive conflict. For the first time in human history, man’s quarrels with his fellow man were settled via warfare around the globe fought on an industrial scale. Never before or since has there been such killing.

Today’s generation seems awash in a lamentable soul-drenching ambiguity. The good guys are never fully good, the bad guys are never fully bad, and classical mores once held sacrosanct are now open for moral dissection. Where previously our enemies were vilified on grounds that were cultural, spiritual, and anthropomorphic, nowadays such stuff smacks of racism and is pitilessly suppressed. The moral challenges for American youth are implicit and insidious. When playing cowboys and Indians, for instance, for whom should one root?

Alas, the Second World War was not encumbered with such.