Did you ever ask yourself how closely related this rifle and this rifle are? Well, if you like history and weapons, this one is going to be interesting to you because we are going to tell you the little known but turbulent story of the Sturm Gu 44 and how it completely changed the way military rifles are used today.
When World War II began, German infantry’s main armament was the KR 98 boltaction rifle. There are many photos of German soldiers with the most modern machine guns in the world that became so infamous for good reason. or the fancy MP40 submachine gun or FG-42 paratroop rifle or the semi-automatic ga43. But the reality is that propaganda did its share of making people think these were in much greater numbers than they really were.
Each of them was produced in a few thousand or a few hundred thousand, but the boltaction rifle was produced in over 14 million. So you see the real difference. The main source of the squad’s firepower came from the MG34 and MG42, which compensated for the rifles with volume of fire, but they were cruerved, so you would not be clearing rooms with them, and they were also more expensive to produce.
Nevertheless, the Germans always wanted to modernize their weaponry, even if that meant outrunning their resources sometimes. When the war began and turned into mobile and often urban combat, five shotbolt action rifles began showing their limits. They were wellmade, highquality, and very precise rifles. No doubt. Effective range could be over 1,000 m, even with iron sights.
And the 8x 57 mm Mouser cartridge is more than powerful enough to cause some heavy damage. But the rate of fire was still the problem. So the Germans turned to submachine guns in close quarters urban combat. They also saw from the Soviets and Americans the advantages of semi-automatic rifles which led to the creation of the ga43 in the same cartridge as the Kar 98.
However, statistics from World War II show that the majority of combat actually happened under 300 yd where full power rifles were definitely overkill. But the pistol caliber submachine guns were not quite effective beyond 50 yard. So with this in mind, the Germans were actually the first to start thinking about some intermediate cartridge and a weapon that would work in this sweet spot under 300 yd to be effective at slightly longer range, but also with a higher rate of fire and a high-capacity magazine for close quarters combat. Even as far back as 1918, German officer Hman Peterit had written a paper arguing that standard rifles wasted effort with such a powerful round and range beyond practical combat distances. He even back then suggested a shorter range cartridge but a faster firing weapon. But his ideas were ignored at the time.
The Germans already had submachine guns which were a new thing back then. So they were reluctant to invest yet in another new weapon. But in 1938, just before World War II would begin, the first formal requests came for developing a shortened 7.92, also called 8mm Mouser cartridge to fill this gap. through some experimentation, basically by literally cutting the same case down to 33 instead of 57 mm in length.
By 1941, the 7.92x 33 Kurtz, meaning short, was officially adopted. This made the same bullet leave the barrel at a muzzle velocity of about 700 m/s, which is much slower than the full powered round, but also much more potent than a pistol caliber. Ballistically, it was effective up to 500 meters with enough lethality and a flat trajectory for typical combat situations.
Also, automatic fire from the shoulder was more controllable with this cartridge. They came up with the round that bridged exactly this gap they had and gave them a solid foundation to build the modern weapon platform on top of it. They initially named this new concept machine and carabiner, meaning basically machine carbine or automatic carbine.
The first concepts were soon developed through competitive contracts issued to two firms and each was tasked to come up with a select fire weapon meaning with semi and full auto options around this new intermediate cartridge. The project was not given much urgency because it is said that Hitler himself was not impressed by this idea of a new cartridge.
So development was going slowly. Those two companies came up with their own prototypes by 1942 and they were put through tests. Both designs called MKB42W and MKB42H shared the same basic concept of operation. But despite similarities, they had notable mechanical differences. Model H designed by the famous German gun designer Hugo Schmeicer used a gas piston system mounted above the barrel that tapped propellant gases to cycle a tilting bolt action.
For automatic mode, it fired from an open bolt for better cooling, while for better accuracy, it fired from a closed bolt for individual shots, but this was later changed. The Model W took a slightly different approach and used a system with a unique annular gas piston around the barrel and also initially fired from an open bolt.
Both fed from curved 30 round detachable box magazines and were largely made of stamped steel parts with wooden stocks, so they could be mass- prodduced at lower cost. Combat trials soon began and a limited number of these prototypes were distributed to select units on the Eastern Front to send their feedback.
Very soon, Model H emerged as the superior design, proving to be more robust and reliable than Model W. Soldiers appreciated the improvement in firepower, the ability to choose between full auto and single shots, and much better range and accuracy than submachine guns. So, they were quite excited at first about the new weapon.
This feedback pushed the design into further development with the most important change requested being to adopt a fully closed bolt firing system. This way, accuracy would improve and the weapon would stay cleaner in battlefield conditions. So, both of the models were basically merged together in the end, taking the best traits of each and creating a hybrid prototype and it finally entered production in 1943 as machine and pistol 43.
But here is the interesting thing about the name itself. The thing is that Hitler himself firmly believed that full powered rifles and submachine guns were more than enough for fighting the war and that using that shortened less powerful round was not going to really work on the battlefield. He directly banned development and production of any new rifles besides semi-automatic carbines in full power Mouser rounds and MP40.
So, the German Ordinance Department got creative and changed the name to MP43 to hide the true nature of the soon-to-be STG44 by making it seem like the development of another machine pistol. They basically hid this from Hitler until it was battle tested. And one general supposedly did not know that Hitler had no idea about this rifle and said that they really wanted more of that superior new weapon they were testing.
It was only then that Hitler learned about the real nature of this project and requested a demonstration. Although skeptical at first, after testfiring it himself, Hitler was impressed by its capabilities. And coupled with positive battlefield reports, he decided to reverse his earlier stance and give the project his blessing.
And him being him, he could not resist giving it a cooler name. So MP43 was changed to Sturmg, literally meaning storm rifle or assault rifle, just to add a sprinkle of propaganda and morale boosting to it. So in 1944, the weapon was fully adopted with the official name STG44. Production orders were now dramatically increased to make as many as possible of the new rifles to turn the tide of the not so good-looking odds for the Germans.
Its design for mass production made the STG significantly cheaper and faster to build than a KR98. It is estimated that for the effort needed for a single boltaction rifle, three to four STGs could be made instead, which was extremely important to German factories and resources wrecked by the Allied bombing campaign.
The STG now had a 30 round magazine, fired a moderate 5 to 600 rounds per minute to be well controllable, and weighed just over 5 kilos, which was not quite light for a rifle, but not too bad. It had reasonable accuracy at medium range with short bursts, and its ergonomics, like the pistol grip, sturdy shoulder stock, and selector switch would influence almost all new rifles to come.
The charging handle was deliberately on the left side, so a soldier could clear a jam or reload with the right hand still on the trigger, ready to continue firing. Early production models even had mounts for grenade launchers and scopes, but these were later dropped to speed up production, and even the bayonet mount was removed later, but they did add these things for some reason, although just experimentally.
It is called the Krumlau, which is this curved barrel extension for the STG meant to literally curve the bullet’s path and allow a soldier to fire around corners or from inside a tank without exposing himself. The idea was that in street fighting, it is dangerous to peer around the corner with your head.
So, they wanted to cover those peaks with fire without the soldier exposing himself. Forcing a bullet traveling at high speed to curve is not the easiest thing to do. Not to mention aiming from behind a wall with a periscope sight. They actually produced three main angles, 30, 45, and even 90 degrees. Testing showed that the 30° infantry variant was the only remotely practical one, as it could bend the bullet’s path without immediately destroying itself or the gun.
The bullet would deform, but not enough to be completely useless as it left the barrel. And it is quite fascinating that in testing they could hit a man-sized target at 50 and even 100 meters. But shooting like this stressed the material of the chroml and barrels lasted only for about 300 rounds before cracking. At 45 and 90° the lifespan was much shorter and bullets usually shattered inside the bend and only fragments would exit, turning the Sturm Gu into some form of shotgun more than an actual assault rifle. Not to mention that aiming was
impossible beyond point blank range. The Germans also had the first experimental form of a night vision system called Vampereia. And this one was actually decades ahead of its time. It was called Zilgaret 1229 and it was an infrared spotlight paired with a sensor that allowed a soldier to see and shoot in complete darkness.
Small batches of vampire units were fielded in early 1945, but it still was not practical enough to really change anything significantly. The large infrared lamp, in order to work, needed a 13 kg battery worn on the soldier’s back with cables running over the soldier’s chest. It could identify human targets at distances between 70 and 200 m depending on the conditions and was used in some special operations.
However, only about 300 units were ever built and the idea was quite fascinating for the time. Germans wanted to make the STG the universal infantry weapon, setting the stage for the modern assault rifles we have today. and the whole concept behind them, but they simply did not have the time or resources for this at this stage of the war.
So instead of replacing the boltaction rifles and machine pistols in one go, it worked beside them in the final desperate months of the war. However, it significantly improved the firepower of German squads, and it was more than noticed by the allies on the battlefield. American and British troops in Normandy after D-Day were particularly shocked after encountering the new weapon.
They also like to use captured STGs for as long as they had ammo. Like here Brad Pitt in the Fury movie. Jokes aside, Germans were not the only ones thinking about the intermediate cartridge. Americans were also trying the same thing with their30 carbine, but it was nowhere near as effective as the Sturm Guazine and a much less powerful cartridge behaving more like a pistol than a rifle round.
So the M1 carbine was mostly used as a sidearm. And despite the STG-44 proving valuable on the battlefield, it ultimately never reached its full potential because by the time it was in significant numbers on the battlefield, it was too late to change the outcome of the war for Germany. Over 400,000 STGS were produced before the war ended, which is a solid figure.
However, the more important thing about this weapon is that it introduced the new concept of a universal assault rifle to the world. One that would combine traits from different weapons into one. And now after the war, all sides were taking lessons to implement them in their own armies. The Soviets were specifically impressed after capturing and examining the new German weapon.
They liked the idea of an intermediate cartridge and studied closely both the German shortened Mouser and the American30 carbine. This influenced the development of a 7.62x 39 mm round, which would soon become the world’s most famous and deadliest cartridge. When I say deadliest, I mean that literally the highest number of people killed by any cartridge was by this one.
When the Soviets got the cartridge, they began working on a weapon that could work with it. This led first to the SKS45, a semi-auto carbine, and ultimately to none other than the AK-47, developed in 1947, shortly after the war. But were the Russians really copying the German revolutionary design? And how close is the AK-47 to the STG44? Actually, well, there is no doubt that the German assault rifle concept influenced Soviet thinking and the AK-47 certainly follows the pattern set by the Sturmg using a similar cartridge and overall ergonomics
while also being suitable for mass production. However, when it comes to the mechanical design itself, the AK-47 is not a copy of the STG-44 in the literal sense. Kalashnikov’s design used a different locking mechanism and different trigger and safety mechanisms. Although the long stroke piston concept and reliability focused construction certainly took lessons from the Sturmg design.
What is really interesting is that the Soviets after the war gathered all valuable German intelligence, patents, plans, drawings, and even engineers and scientists themselves. Hugo Schmeicer, who was the STG’s principal designer, was taken to work in the Soviet Union for 6 years after the war. We can never really know how much he and other German engineers had on the development of the AK-47, but we can speculate.
Kalashnikov himself actually said he was inspired more by the Garand, and that the resemblance to the STG-44 was only superficial, like the magazine, for example, which has a similar curved shape or the stamped steel design. So, all in all, the STG was more the father of the concept itself than a direct influence on the AK’s internals.
However, the end of World War II actually did not mean the end of service life for the STG. It actually continued to see action for decades all over the world in a time where a weapon from 1944 should have been long gone. Many rifles were captured after Germany surrendered, and some were even seen in the Syrian civil war in the 2000s with still thousands of rounds of ammo for them.
Because in just 3 years during World War II, over 820 million rounds were produced.
