Description
In one of history’s great ironies, from Nazi Germany to the new Jewish State!
The fledgling state of Israel, predominantly made up of Jewish displaced persons from Nazi concentration camps, won its independence largely with German K98 rifles.
Recently imported direct from Germany in our latest consignment is this rare & hard to find pre-WW2 Mauser Standard Modell with a matching bolt which ended its service life with the newly founded State of Israel, most likely via Czechoslovakia.
The ‘Standard Modell’ was Mausers’ interwar attempt to remain commercially viable & compete with their version of the ‘Model 1924’ being offered by Czech & Belgian manufacturers selling to China & South America & was the acknowledged forerunner to the famed Kar98k. In 1935, the Standard Modell had further improvements which made it identical to the K98k which was the idea with the re-armament intentions of Nazi Germany commencing. As part of Hitler’s rearmament program which started around this time, the Standard Modell was also ordered for official issue to the German Postal Service to ‘guard postal offices & rail cars during riots’. The arming of the postal service was an official government Act, effectively arming them with the exact same rifles intended for the Wehrmacht. This was no coincidence & definitely the government preparing the German arms industry for mass production of the K98 with the added benefit of getting these rifles into the hands of the Nazi Party. Let’s face it, commercial rifles don’t need a bayonet lug!
Mauser were making Standard Modell rifles for export to China & South America plus secretly, the various regional High Commands of the SA. The SA was the Nazi Party’s original paramilitary wing whose methods of violent intimidation played a key role in Adolf Hitler’s rise to power & who after the ‘Night of the long knives’ were replaced by the SS.
The Standard Modell was produced for only a limited time before Hitler gave the world a surly display of two fingers, rejected the Treaty of Versailles altogether, geared up the war machine & gave up any effort at stealth. As on 21 June 1935, the Karabiner 98k was officially adopted to replace the Rifle 98 & Carbine 98b in the German Wehrmacht. It is known that many Standard Modell’s ended up with the military, mainly Waffen SS as the SS continued to have conflict with the traditional military with regard to weapons acquisition although this rifle does not appear to be one of these.
This particular rifle bears all of the correct commercial proof marks including the Crown over the U & the Crown on N, indicating it is Nitro proofed. On the receiver ring is the classic commercial Mauser banner with 1934, leading to these also commonly being call the ‘Banner Mauser’. The matching numbered bolt has been turned down & it has been fitted with a very late war stock.
On the surface, the easy assumption is that post WW2 the victorious Western Allies supplied the new Jewish state with these arms, but that’s not so. As German troops surrendered in the closing days of World War II, the Allies had no intention of stockpiling German arms for future use. Actually, the Americans tended to destroy captured weapons en-masse. The British generally did the same or turned weapons back to police & border guard units. The French sent theirs to North Africa & Indochina for use in their post-war colonial conflicts. Thus, the Israeli K98 rifles didn’t come from Israel’s current allies. They came from behind the Iron Curtain.
The vast majority of Israel’s 98k inventory was obtained from Czechoslovakia, in one of history’s greatest arms-smuggling operations. The country had a shaky democracy dominated by communists, many of whom ironically were Jewish by descent & pro-Zionist. The Czechs were sitting on stockpiles of German weapons surrendered in 1945 & the country was largely unscathed during the war. As such, it had many fully functioning arms factories that had operated under German supervision. In fact, to keep its workforce occupied the new Czech government kept the factories running at the end of the war. They turned out German-designed weapons at the CZ & BRNO factories from excess wartime parts & stockpiled the end products. The trouble for the Czechs, though, was how to sell all that wartime & mounting post-war material.
In 1947, Haganah & other groups were fighting a small-scale insurgency, both against the Arabs & against the British. The Jewish effort to obtain weapons overseas was code named operation “Balak”. This came at a very opportune time as the communist bloc was, for a very brief period, positively inclined towards a secular Jewish state in the mid-east, which Stalin foresaw as a possible counter to the Egyptian & Jordanian monarchies & the early Syrian nation which had (briefly) shown friendship to France & the USA. This situation seems almost unbelievable today & the window only lasted a brief while before events in the Arab world “flipped” it towards the Soviet side.
Czechoslovakia was identified as an ideal source for arms. A large number of K98k’s which the Brno Arsenal had already began to recondition in 1946 were available, plus Czechoslovakia also inherited a full set of blueprints & production tooling & briefly manufactured the K98k itself after WWII under the name VZ98N. On 14 January 1948 an agreement was reached for the delivery of 4,500 K98k rifles (designated “P-18” in the contract) along with 200 ex-German MG-34 machine guns & around 50 million rounds of ammunition. Most likely all, or almost all of this first batch were actual ex-Wehrmacht weapons from WWII. In Czechoslovakia, the project was code named “DI”, the Czech-language abbreviation for “Classified, Israel”.
In the early 1950’s Israel converted these into 7.62 NATO as marked onto the receiver ring & also on the butt stock making them instantly recognisable for soldiers to use the correct ammunition. This means that you can shoot commercial .308 with this rifle!
These early Standard Modell 98 rifles are highly sought after as are those with genuine Israeli provenance so this is an excellent opportunity to own a very early & highly collectable rifle which was genuinely part of this historical event to complete your Mauser or WW2 rifle collection.
Do your own research & you will know if this is for you. Please view the photos carefully & make your decision based on what you see as they form the main description & override all written information. Ask for more if desired.
We think we have described it accurately & correctly but do not claim to be infallible so if we have got anything wrong, it is unintentional & are happy for feedback from people who know more than we do.
Whilst we check these out for serviceability, the warranty has expired & this is sold on an ‘as is’ basis. As with all used guns, we recommend you have this checked by a suitably qualified person prior to shooting.
Call for shipping cost to your dealer.
