German Hands on the Arms: Designs from the Flammenwerfer 35 to the HK433

The Flammenwerfer 35 was a one-man German flamethrower fielded from 1935 and used to clear trenches and fortified buildings. It weighed about 35.8 kilograms, carried 11.8 litres of fuel and threw burning fuel roughly 25 metres. It stayed in German service to 1945 even though production ended in 1941, when the lighter Flammenwerfer 41 replaced it.

The Gewehr 41 was really two incompatible German semi-automatic rifles, one by Walther and one by Mauser, both firing the 7.92x57mm cartridge from a ten-round magazine. About 120,000 were made between 1941 and 1945. The Walther version proved the more practical, but the rifle was heavy, complex and unreliable, and the improved Gewehr 43 superseded it.

Designed by Hugo Schmeisser and built by C.G. Haenel, the Maschinenkarabiner 42(H) was an early assault rifle firing the intermediate 7.92x33mm Kurz cartridge. Roughly 8,000 to 11,800 were built and issued from 1942, chiefly on the Eastern Front, and its design fed directly into the later Sturmgewehr StG 44.

The HK33 scaled the roller delayed blowback system of the G3 down to fire the 5.56mm cartridge, and entered production in 1968, chiefly for export. Brazil, Thailand and Malaysia adopted it, and it was built under licence in Turkey from 1999, though it never matched the commercial success of the larger G3.

Designed by Alex Seidel and introduced in 1970, the VP70 was an eighteen-round, double-action-only 9x19mm pistol. Its name means people's pistol, from the idea of mass-producing sidearms for civilian resistance to a Soviet invasion. It was the first handgun with a polymer frame, twelve years before the Glock 17.

The P7 was a West German 9x19mm pistol designed in 1976 by Helmut Weldle and made by Heckler and Koch from 1979 to 2008. Its squeeze cocker, a lever in the front of the grip, cocks the firing pin only while squeezed, and releasing it de-cocks the weapon, so it can be carried safely with a round chambered.

Developed by Dynamit Nobel from 1978 to 1985, the Panzerfaust 3 entered Bundeswehr service in 1987 and was formally adopted in 1992. This semi-disposable recoilless launcher replaced the older PzF 44 Light Lanze and the Carl Gustaf 84mm as the infantry answer to Soviet armor. It shares only a name family with the Second World War Panzerfaust.

The Mark 23 is a large-frame .45 ACP pistol that Heckler and Koch designed as a dedicated offensive pistol, with deliveries beginning in May 1996. It fires a subsonic load suited to suppressors and is built for match-grade accuracy. United States Special Operations Command adopted it, along with special forces in Indonesia, Malaysia and Poland.

The XM8 was a lightweight rifle system developed by Heckler and Koch with Alliant Techsystems, sharing design elements with the G36. It grew from the American Objective Individual Combat Weapon program and was considered as a replacement for the M4 carbine, but the Army program was cancelled in October 2005. The PASKAL special forces of the Royal Malaysian Navy adopted it instead.

The HK433 is a modular 5.56x45mm assault rifle combining features of the G36 and HK416 families. It was introduced at the EnforceTac show in Nuremberg in March 2017 and entered service in 2024, firing about 850 rounds per minute from a 30-round magazine. Germany's KSK special forces, police units and Ukrainian forces have adopted it.