For decades, a story has circulated among firearms collectors and across the internet claiming that Allied commandos launched a mission to assassinate Hermann Göring, head of the German Air Force, at his vast estate Carinhall north of Berlin. The supposed proof of that raid is a single object: one of the rarest German submachine guns ever made, allegedly taken as spoils of war. The German MP 40 is an icon of the Second World War, a light, compact, fast-firing 9mm weapon developed from its more expensive and more finely made predecessor, the MP 38. It was originally designed for paratroopers and armored vehicle crews, though it quickly became the standard submachine gun for squad and platoon leaders in the German Army and Waffen-SS.
But there was another version of these two legendary weapons, one that is nearly unknown today: the MP 36. It differed from the MP 38 and MP 40 in being a select-fire weapon, machined from steel with wooden furniture. It shared many characteristics with the later designs, yet it was also completely different. The magazine catch was a protruding lever rather than the push-button of the MP 38 and MP 40, and it was located at the rear of the magazine housing.
The bolt assembly resembled the other weapons, except that the front portion of the MP 36 bolt was a separate piece. The front sight was adjustable in design and unprotected. The gun carried no identifying markings except on the underside of the wooden foregrip, which bore the marking “EMP 36,” with EMP standing for Erma Werke of Erfurt. The magazine housing also differed, protruding forward at a 30-degree angle.
No dedicated MP 36 magazine has ever been found; the weapon uses MP 40 magazines. The only example in the United States today bears serial number 014 and has a high-quality finish. It is believed to be a prototype that was given as a gift. Given to whom?
Well, to Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, head of the German Air Force, because in Germany the paratroopers belonged to the air force. And how did this weapon end up in Allied hands? The story goes like this. In 1943, a group of volunteers was organized for a highly secret mission.
The objective was to assassinate Hitler’s Reichsmarschall and head of the air force, Hermann Göring. The attempt was planned to take place at Carinhall, about forty miles northeast of Berlin. Allied intelligence reported that Göring would be present at Carinhall and that the area would be under light guard. The Allied team parachuted quietly into the area at night, virtually undetected.
Once they reached the grounds around Carinhall, they quickly discovered the estate was guarded by a private army of Göring’s elite Fallschirmjäger troops, all highly trained and heavily armed. After the German forces spotted the team, a firefight broke out and quickly escalated. In the chaos, a certain American major managed to slip into the main building to look for Göring. As he moved through the main hall, he spotted a strange, unfamiliar weapon hanging on the wall.
Thinking it might interest American intelligence, he pulled it down and put it in his bag. Then he decided the mission had failed and tried to fight his way out of a situation that was deteriorating fast. He and a very small remnant of the original Allied team managed to escape and return to safety. The weapon stayed with the major for the rest of the war.
In 1945, when he returned to the United States, he brought the MP 36 home as a war souvenir. He stored it away and went on with his postwar life. That story comes from an article titled “MP 36, The Missing Link,” published by Frank Iannamico in Small Arms Review magazine in 1998, and it created a great stir online. In my opinion, the weapon itself is completely genuine, but the story of its capture is not, and I will explain why.
The first question is how, in 1943, a team of Allied commandos, or in this case American paratroopers, could have been successfully inserted that deep into Germany. What kind of aircraft could have been used? A C-47 Skytrain, for example, which was used in parachute drops throughout the war, could have flown from eastern England to the Carinhall area and back without refueling. Depending on the English airfield used, the distance was between 1,150 and 1,250 miles.
However, loaded to its full capacity of up to 6,000 pounds, the C-47’s range was limited to roughly 1,026 to 1,180 miles. That would have left the aircraft short of fuel on the return flight over occupied Europe or the North Sea. The Allies did not have air superiority over Europe in 1943. A slow, heavy, unpressurized, unarmed transport would have been terribly vulnerable to fighter attack, flak, and radar detection.
So what if they did not use a C-47? Neither the B-17 nor the B-24 was equipped for paratrooper drops. Jumping through the bomb bays was possible but dangerous and slow. German agents, for example, were dropped over England and Ireland from modified German bombers during the war, specifically Heinkel 111s, but only individually, with a single supply canister dropped by parachute automatically as well.
The RAF’s Avro Lancaster was not equipped for dropping paratroopers, and while it could technically accommodate up to ten men sitting on the floor, they could jump through the bomb bay or the ventral hatch, but the operation would have been slow and extremely dangerous. There were, of course, alternative aircraft types already used for dropping paratroopers, such as the Halifax or the Stirling. In the case of the Stirling, up to ten fully equipped paratroopers could be dropped, and it was indeed used to drop them during D-Day, particularly pathfinder units. But here we run into a problem concerning the size of the attacking force.
Infiltrating a heavily fortified position like Carinhall, a large site surrounded by dense forest, would have meant dealing with a garrison of around 200 heavily armed soldiers from the Hermann Göring Panzer Division. These men were at the site at all times, and killing Göring would have been extremely difficult, as he was also protected by a small platoon of Reichssicherheitsdienst guards, the same government unit that protected Hitler and other Nazi leaders. Any form of attack would have required a large assault force and more than one aircraft to insert that many men and their equipment. Ten men dropped from a Stirling, or 18 to 22 from a C-47, do not constitute a large force for a mission that seems to lack the precision of the known assassination operations planned or carried out by the British Special Operations Executive during the war.
The British always worked with small teams on such dangerous secret missions. In the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in 1942, only two agents were dropped by parachute to join an existing resistance network in Czechoslovakia. The method of attack was an ambush of Heydrich as he drove through Prague in an open Mercedes without escort. Sten guns and grenades were used in the attack.
The operation succeeded, although most of the assassins and their helpers were later killed in the German dragnet that followed. Another operation was Foxley, an SOE mission to kill Hitler at his mountain home in Obersalzberg. Once again, the assassination team consisted of just two agents dressed in German mountain troop uniforms. The plan was an ambush, this time shooting Hitler with a scoped Mauser K98k from among the trees while he took his daily walk from his house at the Berghof to his favorite teahouse at the nearby Mooslahnerkopf outcrop.
The backup plan was to attack the Volkswagen he used to return home after tea, using the British PIAT anti-tank weapon. The agents also carried Luger pistols with silencers modified by the SOE for personal protection. Several examples of this modified British pistol exist in the Royal Armouries in Leeds and at the Combined Military Services Museum in Maldon, Essex, where I had the opportunity to examine one personally. I strongly recommend visiting this museum, which has a massive display on spies and special operations.
Clearly, a batch of these weapons was assembled as part of some sort of SOE assassination program inside Germany. Operation Foxley was cancelled for known and varied reasons. For any assassination team to survive on the ground around Carinhall for any length of time, they would have had to be dressed in German uniforms rather than American paratrooper gear and armed accordingly. Think of the film Where Eagles Dare.
Could they have been dropped from a captured German aircraft, as in the film, which is also set in 1943? A Junkers Ju 52, for example. It is not impossible. The Allies captured certain examples in various situations, especially in North Africa, although there is no evidence of such aircraft being used to drop Allied agents into German-occupied Europe.
Allied aircraft were always used for that job. Also, a Ju 52 could not have flown from eastern England to Carinhall and back without refueling, as its range was only between 540 and 620 miles, depending on its payload. And how would any team of American paratroopers have been extracted from the Carinhall area after killing Göring? Presumably this was not meant to be a suicide mission.
There was no friendly resistance organization operating inside Germany at the time to help them. If any assassination attempt on Göring at Carinhall was to be carried out, I would have thought an ambush of the marshal’s vehicle was the best option, while he traveled between his heavily fortified home deep in the forest and the airfield he used to fly in and out of the area, which was a few kilometers to the north. The problem is that any such attack would have relied entirely on the agents knowing Göring’s schedule and travel arrangements, which would have meant having an actual agent inside Göring’s headquarters capable of passing on that vital information. As far as we know, no such information or undercover agent existed.
So we have a rare and unusual submachine gun of questionable origin, undoubtedly genuine and extremely rare, of great historical importance and value, attached to a story that is, at best, fanciful and practically impossible to carry out in the way published. An attack by a force of American paratroopers on a large, well-fortified property like Carinhall to get close enough to kill Göring. Alistair MacLean would have rejected such a scenario as utterly improbable. So where did the MP 36 really come from?
As with many stories attached to objects connected to Nazi leaders, there is likely a kernel of truth underneath all the lies and empty claims. Here is my theory, which I cannot prove. The MP 36 was indeed a prototype presented by Erma to Göring, whose paratroopers were looking for a lightweight submachine gun that worked well in their kind of operations. That weapon would eventually become the MP 40, a much cheaper version to manufacture than the costly MP 38 and its relative with wooden furniture, the MP 36.
In 1945, Göring ordered the evacuation of Carinhall as the Red Army approached, and all of his possessions were moved by three trains to Berchtesgaden, where he owned a smaller mountain villa near Hitler’s at Obersalzberg. Much of Göring’s art treasure was hidden in a vault beneath the Air Force officers’ club, or casino, in Berchtesgaden. Meanwhile, a huge quantity of material, including his large collection of weapons, remained in a freight train at Berchtesgaden station. On May 4, 1945, American forces captured Berchtesgaden after the SS had withdrawn.
On May 5, paratroopers from the American 101st Airborne Division took over garrison duties from the infantry in the area. Major Dick Winters, famous from Band of Brothers, was among the first American officers to find and explore Göring’s art cache. It is easy to connect the fictional story of the raid on Carinhall by American paratroopers with the discovery of the MP 36. The weapon was likely among Göring’s arms and aboard one of the trains that American paratroopers partially looted.
I believe the creator of the Carinhall raid story was an officer of the 101st Airborne Division who took the MP 36 from a freight car in Berchtesgaden in early May 1945 and kept it. Perhaps he invented a good story about seizing the MP 36, claiming American paratroopers landed on Göring at Carinhall, and the myth took root. Especially with the usual “still top secret” line used to cover a mountain of fiction and fabricated stories employed to justify World War Two heroics. That is my take on this legend or urban myth, whatever you call it, attached to the genuine MP 36, one of only two known examples of this rare German wartime submachine gun.
It is difficult to determine how many were made by Erma. The weapon in the United States bears serial number 014. Another known example is in a military museum in Prague, Czech Republic, bearing serial number 001. So at least 14 were made.
The example in the United States is valued at up to 40,000 dollars, and perhaps much more.