#Ddr

In Part 1 of this article, I talked about the history of AK rifle production in East Germany, and  Part 2 was dedicated to my personal experiences with East Germany AKs. In Part 3, I want to talk about less-known variants of DDR AKs and their destiny after the Berlin Wall fell and communism in East Europe collapsed.

In part one of this series, I wrote about the history of DDR AKs which by many are regarded as the best in the world. In this part of the article, I will describe some experiences I had when I repaired those guns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

AK rifle is often thought of as something crude and easy to produce with shabby craftsmanship performed by slave laborers in dystopian socialist factories. So many times I heard: “Oh, what do you expect, it is an AK”. That is why it is ever more interesting to look at East German AKs, produced in a country that for the last 100 years has been thought of as the synonym of quality products.

The MP-44, also known as the “Sturmgewehr”, was  a very influential weapon to post-war thinking. Even the Americans – who at the time rejected the “assault rifle” concept as we now know it – took notice and immediately began development in March of 1944 of a shorter round for infantry weapons, which later became both the .308 Winchester and 7.62 NATO rounds.