Broomhandle Mauser “Red Nine“ - the C96 in World War One (Updated)

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! The German military did not actually adopt the Mauser C96 “broom handle“ before World War One. It was the first really successful semiauto pistol, but the German military chose the Luger instead, in 1908. However, as World War One continued, the German military realized it was going to be seriously short of handguns. The P08 Luger was a slow and expensive gun to produce, and so Germany went looking for alternatives. They would adopt a variety of .32 ACP caliber simple blowback pistols as substitute standards, but also took a new look at the C96. While the design was quite complex, Mauser still had all the tooling set up to produce them, and deliveries could begin relatively quickly. In July 1917 the German military placed a contract for 200,000 C96 pistols, specifying that they be chambered fo