When people think about World War II small arms as they appear in films and television, the submachine gun is almost always the star of the show. Characters charge across beaches and through ruined cities, spraying bullets from compact automatic weapons that look far more exciting than a bolt-action rifle ever could. But the movies have given us a misleading picture. In reality, submachine guns were far less common than the standard infantry rifles that equipped the vast majority of soldiers on every front.
In most armies, submachine guns were issued selectively. They went to squad leaders, platoon commanders, and soldiers manning support weapons where a long rifle was simply too cumbersome. In a typical American infantry squad of eleven men, only the squad leader carried a submachine gun, usually a Thompson M1A1. Everyone else carried the M1 Garand.
The British section, which was smaller than its American counterpart, issued Sten guns to both the section commander, a corporal, and his second-in-command, a lance corporal. Only the Soviet Union armed entire infantry platoons with submachine guns, handing out PPSh-41s and later PPSh-43s to nearly every man in the unit. The most iconic submachine gun of the war, at least in the movies, is undoubtedly the German MP40. But here again, the reality was different.
Most German soldiers carried the Mauser Kar98k bolt-action rifle, while MP40s went to squad and platoon leaders. It was only in the final months of the war that some entire infantry companies were reequipped with the new StG44 assault rifle, which offered a fully automatic setting. In an earlier video, we examined the production costs of rifles during World War II. Now we are doing the same for submachine guns, looking at six warring nations in 1945, ranked from the cheapest to the most expensive weapon.
Each gun featured here was the most numerous submachine gun in service in that year. Even though newer models had appeared by 1945, the weapons covered in this video still vastly outnumbered those newer designs. In sixth place, we have the cheapest submachine gun of the entire war, the British Sten Mk II. The Sten was born in the dark days of 1940 and 1941, after the British Army had been driven from France and evacuated from Dunkirk.
Britain desperately needed submachine guns and was buying American Thompson M1928s at a ruinous price. The Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield was ordered to come up with something far cheaper. What emerged was the Sten, a simple, stamped metal weapon that could be produced in small workshops all across the United Kingdom. It took just five and a half man-hours to build and consisted of only forty-seven parts.
Nothing more than that. The Mk II was the most numerous of the roughly four million Stens produced, with around two million built. It weighed 3. 2 kilograms or 7.
1 pounds and fired 9x19mm Parabellum ammunition from a detachable 32-round box magazine. It was a simple blowback weapon with an open bolt and a rate of fire around 500 rounds per minute. In 1945, a Sten Mk II cost about two pounds and ten shillings to manufacture, which translated to eleven dollars at the time. Adjusted for modern currency, that comes to roughly twenty-four dollars.
By comparison, the standard British rifle of the late war, the Lee-Enfield No. 4 Mk I, cost the equivalent of six hundred and twenty-eight dollars in today’s money. In other words, the British could build three Stens for the price of a single rifle. In fifth place is one of the most famous submachine guns in history, the Soviet “Papa,” the PPSh-41.
Although a simplified weapon, the PPSh-43, was introduced later in the war, the “Papa” remained the most numerous submachine gun in Red Army service at war’s end. The weapon’s development came about because of the Winter War against Finland in 1939 and 1940, when the Red Army encountered Finnish troops well armed with Suomi KP31 submachine guns. The decision was made to equip Soviet forces with a cheap domestic alternative, and the result was the PPSh-41, an open-bolt blowback weapon firing 7. 62x25mm Tokarev ammunition.
Empty, the “Papa” weighed 3. 63 kilograms or eight pounds. It was famous for being available with two types of magazines: a 35-round box or the iconic heavy 71-round drum. Given the weapon’s extremely high cyclic rate of fire of around 1,250 rounds per minute, the drum was a wise choice.
The Germans also loved the PPSh-41 and captured so many that they officially adopted it, converting the chamber to fire 9x19mm Parabellum with an adapter for German MP40 magazines and reducing the cyclic rate to around 750 to 800 rounds per minute. Interestingly, the Soviets recycled old Mosin-Nagant rifles to build PPSh-41s. A single rifle barrel was cut in half to provide two barrels for submachine guns. In 1945, a PPSh-41 cost roughly fifty rubles, which was about 11.
32 dollars. In today’s money, that is around 210 dollars. It was slightly more expensive to produce than the British Sten Mk II, but the standard Soviet battle rifle, the Mosin-Nagant 1891/30, cost only about eighty-five dollars in modern terms, making the PPSh-41 more than twice as expensive. A cheaper and simpler weapon, the PPSh-43, was introduced, but production of the earlier model still outnumbered it at the end of the war.
In fourth place is probably the rarest submachine gun among the major combatants of World War II, the Japanese Type 100. The Japanese never really embraced the concept of the submachine gun, and such weapons were issued in very small numbers. Japanese squad and platoon leaders carried rifles, or if they were officers, a Nambu Type 14 pistol and a sword. Before the war, the Japanese purchased limited numbers of Swiss SIG Bergmann 1920 and Solothurn submachine guns, and some of these saw service in China.
It wasn’t until 1944 that mass production of native Japanese designs really began. The earliest Japanese-made submachine guns were largely experimental. They were fitted with a bayonet, which was highly unusual, reflecting the Japanese Army’s obsession with edged weapons. The Type 100 of 1942 also retained the bayonet mount.
The early Type 100s were mostly issued to Japanese Army paratrooper units. As the war entered its final stages for Japan, Tokyo began manufacturing the Type 100 in greater numbers, and this version was known as the Type 100/44. It featured simplified sights, removed bayonet lugs, and was generally a stripped-down weapon. In total, only about thirty thousand Type 100s were produced.
It was a blowback weapon firing 8mm ammunition, weighing 3. 8 kilograms empty, with a detachable curved 30-round magazine and a rate of fire of 800 rounds per minute in the later version. Production cost for the Type 100/44 was sixty yen or fifteen dollars in 1945, which equates to about 297 dollars today. Compared to the standard Japanese bolt-action rifle, the Arisaka Type 99, which cost the equivalent of 370 dollars, the Type 100/44 was actually cheaper to build.
Third place goes to Italy and its iconic Beretta Model 38. This was the oldest of the submachine guns discussed so far. It was originally designed in 1935 and entered Italian military service in 1938, but because of Italy’s limited industrial capacity, it was produced in relatively small numbers. The MAB 38A version of 1941 was the standard army model, issued to officers and non-commissioned officers, as well as paratroopers, ski troops, and the fascist Blackshirt militia.
When Italy changed sides in September 1943, Germany moved quickly to secure northern Italy, established the puppet Italian Social Republic under Mussolini, seized the Beretta factory, and took the M38/42 model into production in large numbers for the German Army and Waffen-SS. Of the half-million M38s of all types made during the war, 231,000 were produced between 1944 and 1945 under German supervision. The M38/42 fired 9x19mm Parabellum ammunition and operated on a blowback system. It weighed 3.
27 kilograms or 7. 2 pounds empty and used detachable magazines of 10, 20, 30, or 40 rounds. The rate of fire was around 550 rounds per minute, and the unit cost in 1945 was roughly twenty dollars, or about 372 dollars in today’s money. In second place we have perhaps the most famous submachine gun of World War II, certainly the iconic weapon of the Axis powers, the MP40.
Designed in 1938, it drew much of its shape and function from its predecessor, the MP38, and was a simplification of that weapon, featuring lower production costs thanks to a design intended for mass manufacturing. It used stamped steel and synthetic grip materials instead of expensive machined parts. Around 1. 1 million MP40s were made during the war.
It was a simple blowback weapon with an open bolt, chambered in 9x19mm Parabellum, with a rate of fire of 500 to 550 rounds per minute. It was known for being highly accurate, very comfortable, and easy to control when firing. It weighed 3. 97 kilograms or 8.
75 pounds empty and used a detachable 32-round magazine. In 1945, the unit cost was sixty Reichsmarks or about twenty-four dollars, which is the equivalent of 446 dollars in 2026 prices. The standard German rifle of the period, the Mauser Kar98k, cost about forty-seven dollars per unit, so the MP40 was somewhat more expensive to produce. In the two previous “how much did it cost” videos, the United States took first place in both categories, having the most expensive battle rifle, the M1 Garand, and the best-paid soldiers.
And what would you expect? The most expensive submachine gun of World War II was also American, the Thompson M1A1. The M1A1 remained the most numerous American submachine gun in 1945, vastly outnumbering the newer and cheaper M3 “Grease Gun. ” During the war, the United States manufactured more than one and a half million Thompson submachine guns of all types.
They were issued to officers and squad leaders. It is also the oldest submachine gun on our list, having entered service in 1921, and it is famously known as the weapon of choice for gangsters during Prohibition, as well as being widely used by law enforcement and the FBI. The M1921 had a rate of fire of 900 rounds per minute and used 20- or 30-round box magazines or the more famous 50- or 100-round drum magazines, chambered in . 45 ACP.
The M1A1 was a simplified and cheaper version produced later in the war. Besides reducing the cyclic rate to 700-800 rounds per minute, the M1A1 did not accept drum magazines. The Thompson is a rather heavy weapon. The M1A1 weighs around ten pounds or 4.
12 kilograms empty. They were also extremely expensive guns. The price was twenty-nine dollars in 1939, rising to seventy dollars by 1942. The M1A1 was the cheapest variant at forty-five dollars per unit in 1945.
That translates to 837 dollars in today’s money. To put that figure in context, the M1 Garand rifle cost the equivalent of 666 dollars per unit in 1945. So the M1A1 was considerably more expensive. In other words, the British could produce four Stens for the cost of a single M1A1, and the Germans could produce two MP40s.
So, if you had to pick one of these weapons to take into battle, which would you choose? Personally, I would take the MP40, hands down. Thank you very much for watching. Please subscribe and share, and visit my audiobook channel, War Stories with Mark Felton.
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