The Volkspistole ('People's Pistol') was a prototype pistol produced by Carl Walther GmbH, Mauser-Werke and Gustloff-Werke in 1945 for an emergency German pistol design to help mitigate the loss of pistols before the war's end in Europe.

History

In the first half of 1944, the German troops had lost more than 110,000 pistols, when the project started (by the end of the year, an additional 170,000 had been lost), as Carl Walther GmbH, Mauser, and Spreewerk, the three major producers of the current service pistol, the Walther P38, could not produce P38s fast enough to account for their losses. It was to be assembled from simple steel pressings with a minimum of machined parts and to be used by the Volkssturm. Only prototypes were produced before the end of World War II. These prototypes had various unusual locking systems to figure out a cheaper design than the short recoil action of the P38. They also all reused the P38's magazine, another pivotal point in the plan's goal for low-cost production. Three prototypes were designed by Walther, Mauser and Gustloff-Werke, and all three failed. These prototypes had slightly different actions: