Weaponry: Krummer Lauf

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German soldiers crouched behind the shattered houses and walls of a Stalingrad suburb. Advancing Soviet soldiers edged closer, covered by a curtain of friendly small-arms and anti-tank fire. Every time a member of the Wehrmacht tried to aim his rifle around a corner, a deadly firestorm greeted him. What was needed was some type of weapon to fire around those corners.

The Stalingrad scenario played out again as the German infantry and tank corps retreated in the face of growing Allied pressure in 1943. They found themselves fighting vicious street battles, and the need for concealed firing was hammered home.

The call for a weapon to allow defensive fire from concealed positions went out to the German arms industry in late 1943. By that time, the Wehrmacht had slowly begun adopting a pair of automatic weapons as standard issue for its troops. The basic Mauser 98k bolt-action 7.92mm rifle had been an excellent infantry weapon during the war’s early stages, but it lacked firepower. The two new weapons were the Maschinenpistole 43 (MP.43), known to GIs as the ‘burp gun, and the Gewehr 43 (G.43). There remained the problem of modifying these automatic weapons to fire around corners.

The dilemma was solved by an officer from armaments minister Albert Speer’s technical office. Colonel Hans-Joachim Schaede had worked on a bent-barrel design to offer better protection to mobile, self-propelled artillery. The assault guns (Sturmgeschutz) had been particularly vulnerable during street fighting in Russia. Lacking adequate small-arms firepower, the Sturmgeschutz became an easy target for Russian anti-tank teams. Schaede’s invention, dubbed the Krummer Lauf (bent barrel), met with Adolf Hitler’s approval in December 1943.

Schaede had enjoyed distinguished civilian and military careers. As a businessman, he had parlayed his father’s washing machine factory into a successful enterprise. By the late 1930s, his businesses in Saalfield, Germany, employed more than 500 people. Schaede had gained wartime experience as a lieutenant in an observation balloon platoon during the Great War. A reserve officer, he was called to active duty as a captain in the 1st Panzer Division on August 1, 1939. When war erupted a month later, his division rumbled into Poland. His genius, however, lay in armaments development, and in 1942 he was reassigned as a major to the Munitions-Ministerium. His work on tank improvements won him a 50,000-reichsmark award presented to him by Hitler on October 26, 1942.

By autumn 1943, Schaede had turned his talents to the Krummer Lauf. In cooperation with the Rhein-metall-Borsig (RmB) firm, Schaede began experimenting with the device for use with both 7.92-by-57mm and 7.92-by-33mm cartridges. After extensive tests, it was determined that the greater powder charge of the longer cartridge increased the velocity and pressure to such a degree that the bent barrel wore out after about 100 rounds. The decision was made to adapt the barrel to the shorter-chambered MP.43.

Surprisingly, Hitler took an immense interest in the Krummer Lauf. Only a few months earlier, he had spurned the idea of machine guns as standard equipment for all infantry men. Hitler had been almost completely convinced that the rifle suits the purpose better, noted Albert Speer in his memoirs. Perhaps the Führer was now aware of the savagery of the fighting in Russia. Soviet artillery and rocket fire pinned the Wehrmacht and panzers down while the Red Army scrambled forward. The enemy suffered enormous casualties from our barrage, noted a Russian officer. Our infantry swiftly advanced through the enemy front lines. At every step there were blackened German bodies, wrecked enemy guns and mortars, shattered dugouts and pillboxes. In the house-to-house fighting, the need for concealed firing became very evident. Whoever stuck his head out or ran across the street was inevitably shot by a sniper or tommygunner, recalled Marshal V.I. Chuikov of the Stalingrad defenses.

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