1904 Spandau GEW 98

[free1954]

There was a faction in the "Young Turk" movement that wanted to unite all the turkic-speaking peoples in a kind of emprie. The plan was to pick off all of Russia's central asian provinces. Enver Pasha formed a Turkish Legion and led it east, participated in the nastiness around Baku and met his end in a cavalry charge against mechanized Soviet Forces somewhere north and east of the Caspian Sea. They felt they might need LOTS of rifles at the time.

jn

an interesting piece of history that is largely forgotten in the west.

[slamfire]

The rush to get guns, with respect to Germans, English, and French, was really 1914 right? By 1916 that was solved. Thus the Brits really didn't want the pattern 14s. Their own production of SMLEs had caught up and was doing fine. I'd have to expect the Germans had the same thing. From 1914 to 1916 it would be massive production expansion. A rifle shortage. After that everyone is armed. So just replacements. Not terribly hard. WW2, with respect to Germany, is something else as they were losing armies right and left. WW1 wasn't that way for them. So I'd expect 1918 production to be pretty sedate compared to 1915. Poor workmanship would be more a result of cost reduction. "Quit sanding and painting the axles for gob's sake.

The concerted allied offensives in 1918 killed more troops on both sides than had been killed in previous offensives. The offensives of 1916 and 1917 get more publicity because of the waste and futility. But in 1918, not only people were being lost in massive quantities, so were material items. I am not certain it was obvious to anyone that the war was going to be over till October 1918 when Germany was in total economic collapse. I believe I have read of Allied predictions of victory in 1919, these were best guesses. I think the Germans had a better idea of their status than anyone else, and they were in denial. Would have been a bit bad for German public morale to cancel German production contracts based on the assumption they "were going to lose the war" in a couple of months. The German public was starving at the time, Germans were actually starving to death in 1918 and into 1919. But until the Armistice, the full resources of all countries were being applied to the maximum extent possible. I am certain someone, somewhere, guessed correctly and cut production early. Even after 11 Nov the Allies kept their troops ready to go on offensive because they really did not trust the Germans. It took awhile for everyone to realize that the war was really over, and the Kaiser was out, and so was his military.

Springfield Armory (and I think Rock Island Armory) shut down in early 1918 because the rifles they were making were defective, the production lines were obsolete but there was no shortfall of issue rifles because of M1917 production. Hatcher and the US Army really don't talk about this, shutting down SA and RIA in the middle of a shooting war, because if this got out it would have been a major embarrassment to the Ordnance Department.