For decades, a story has circulated among firearms collectors and across the internet about an Allied commando raid to assassinate Hermann Göring, head of the German Air Force, at his sprawling estate, Carinhall, north of Berlin. The alleged evidence for this mission is a single artifact: one of the rarest German machine guns ever made, supposedly brought back as a trophy from that raid.
The German MP 40 submachine gun is an iconic symbol of World War II. It was developed from its more expensive and higher-quality predecessor, the MP 38, and was designed primarily for paratroopers and armored vehicle crews. The MP 40 became the standard submachine gun for squad and platoon leaders in the German Army and Waffen-SS. It is a lightweight, compact, and fast-firing 9mm weapon.
There was another version of these two iconic weapons, the MP 38 and MP 40, that actually existed. This version is the MP 36, a weapon that is almost unknown today. Unlike the MP 38/40, the MP 36 is a selective-fire weapon made from machined steel with wooden parts. It shares many characteristics with the MP 38 and MP 40, but it is also completely different.
The magazine catch is a protrusion type rather than the button found on the MP 38 and MP 40, and it is located at the rear of the magazine housing. The bolt group is similar to the other weapons, except that the front of the MP 36 bolt is a separate piece. The front sight is adjustable and unhooded. The weapon bears no identifying marks except for the underside of the wooden foregrip, which is stamped "EMP 36," with "EMP" standing for Erma Werke.
The magazine housing also differs from the MP 38 and MP 40, protruding at a 30-degree angle toward the front. No dedicated MP 36 magazine has ever been found, as the weapon uses MP 40 magazines. The only example in the United States today bears serial number 014, has high-quality finishes, and is believed to be a prototype presented as a gift.
To whom was it given? The story claims it was for Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, as German paratroopers were part of the Air Force. How did this weapon end up in Allied hands? The tale goes as follows: In 1943, a group of volunteers was organized for a highly secret mission. The objective was to assassinate Göring at Carinhall, located about 40 miles northeast of Berlin.
Allied intelligence sources reported that Göring would be at Carinhall and that the area would be lightly guarded. An Allied team parachuted quietly into the area at night, without being detected. Once on the grounds surrounding Carinhall, they quickly discovered that the estate was guarded by a private army of Göring’s elite Fallschirmjäger troops, all highly trained and heavily armed.
After German forces detected the team, a firefight broke out and quickly escalated. In the chaos, a certain American major managed to sneak into the main building to search for Göring. While moving through the main hall, he spotted a strange, unfamiliar weapon hanging on the wall. Thinking it might interest American intelligence, he took it and put it in his bag. He then decided the mission had failed and attempted to fight his way out of the rapidly deteriorating situation.
He and a very small portion of the original Allied team managed to escape and return to safety. The weapon remained 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 the weapon away and went on with his post-war life.
That specific story comes from an article titled "MP 36, The Missing Link," published by Frank Iannamico in Small Arms Review magazine in 1998, and it has sparked considerable debate online. The weapon itself is real, but the story of its capture is likely not, and there are several reasons 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, used for paratrooper drops throughout the war, could fly from eastern England to the Carinhall area and back without refueling. The distance, depending on the English airfield used, is between 1,150 and 1,250 miles.
However, when loaded to its full capacity of 6,000 pounds, the C-47’s range was limited to between 1,026 and 1,180 miles. This would have left the aircraft short on fuel for 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, and unarmed transport would have been highly vulnerable to fighter attacks, flak, and radar detection.
What if they didn't use a C-47? Neither the B-17 nor the B-24 was equipped for paratrooper drops. Jumping was possible through the bomb bays, but it was dangerous and slow. German agents were dropped over England and Ireland from modified German bombers, specifically the Heinkel 111, but only individually with a single supply canister dropped by parachute automatically.
The RAF’s Avro Lancaster was not equipped to drop paratroopers, though it could technically accommodate up to 10 men sitting on the floor who could jump from the bomb bay or ventral hatch, but the process would have been slow and extremely dangerous. There were, of course, alternative aircraft types actually used for dropping paratroopers, such as the Halifax or Stirling. In the case of the Stirling, up to 10 fully equipped paratroopers could be dropped, and it was used to drop them during D-Day, particularly pathfinder units.
This brings up a problem regarding the size of the assault force. Infiltrating a heavily fortified position like Carinhall, a large site surrounded by dense forest, would have required dealing with a garrison of about 200 heavily armed soldiers from the Hermann Göring Panzer Division. These soldiers were always present, and assassinating Göring would have been extremely difficult, as he was also protected by a small platoon of RSD 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 drop 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 known assassination missions carried out or planned by the British SOE during the war.
The British always worked with small teams on such dangerous covert missions. In the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in 1942, only two agents were parachuted in to join an existing resistance network in Czechoslovakia. The method of attack was to ambush Heydrich while he was driving through Prague in an open Mercedes without an escort. Sten guns and grenades were used in the attack. The operation succeeded, though most of the assassins and their helpers were later killed in the German manhunts that followed.
Another operation was Foxley, an SOE mission to kill Hitler at his mountain home in Obersalzberg. Again, the assassination team consisted of only two agents dressed in German mountain troop uniforms. The plan was an ambush, this time shooting Hitler with a scoped Mauser K98k rifle from among the trees while he took his daily walk from his home, the Berghof, to his favorite tea house on the nearby Mooslahnerkopf ledge. The alternate plan was to attack the Volkswagen he used to return home after tea, using a British PIAT anti-tank weapon. The agents also carried silenced Luger pistols modified by the SOE for personal protection.
Several examples of this modified British pistol exist in the Royal Armouries in Leeds and at the Joint Services Military Museum in Maldon, Essex, where one was examined in person. It is clear that a batch of these weapons was assembled as part of some kind of SOE assassination program inside Germany. Operation Foxley was cancelled for well-known and varied reasons.
For any assassination team to remain on the ground at Carinhall for any length of time, they would have had to be dressed in German military clothing rather than American paratrooper uniforms 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 some examples in various situations, particularly in North Africa, though no evidence has emerged of such aircraft being used to drop Allied agents into German-occupied Europe. Allied aircraft were always used for that task.
The Ju 52 also 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 load. And how would any team of American paratroopers have been extracted from the Carinhall area after assassinating Göring? Presumably, this was not meant to be a suicide mission. There was no friendly resistance organization in Germany at that time to help.
If any assassination attempt were to be made against Göring at Carinhall, an ambush of the marshal’s vehicle would have been the best option, while he was traveling between his heavily fortified home deep in the forest and the airfield he used to fly in and out of the area, located a few kilometers to the north. The problem is that any such attack would have depended 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 is known, no such information or secret agent existed.
So, we have a rare and strange submachine gun of dubious origin, undoubtedly genuine and a very rare weapon of immense historical interest and value, attached to a story that is, at best, fanciful and practically impossible to have been carried out in the published manner. An attack by a force of American paratroopers on a large, well-fortified estate like Carinhall to get close enough to kill Göring is a scenario that seems highly improbable.
Where did the MP 36 actually come from? As with many stories associated with items belonging to Nazi leaders, there is probably a grain of truth beneath all the lies and empty claims. One theory is that 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 type of operations. That weapon would eventually be the MP 40, a much cheaper version to manufacture than the costly MP 38 and its relative with wooden parts, the MP 36.
In 1945, Göring ordered the evacuation of Carinhall as the Red Army approached, and all his possessions were moved via three trains to Berchtesgaden, where he owned a smaller mountain villa near Hitler’s villa at Obersalzberg. Much of Göring’s art treasure was hidden in a vault under the Air Force officers’ club or casino in Berchtesgaden. A vast amount of material, including his large collection of weapons, remained in a freight train at Berchtesgaden station.
On May 4, 1945, American troops captured Berchtesgaden after the SS withdrew. On May 5, paratroopers from the U.S. 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.
It is likely the weapon was among Göring’s arms and on one of the trains that were partially looted by American paratroopers. The creator of the Carinhall raid story was probably an officer in the 101st Airborne Division who took the MP 36 from a freight car in Berchtesgaden in early May 1945 and kept it. Perhaps he concocted a good story about his capture of the MP 36, claiming American paratroopers landed on Göring at Carinhall, and the myth stuck, especially with the usual "still secret" phrase to cover a mountain of fiction and fabricated stories used to justify World War II heroics.
This is one view of the myth or urban legend, whatever you call it, associated with the real MP 36, one of only two known examples of this rare German World War II submachine gun. It is difficult to determine how many were made by Erma. The weapon in the United States has serial number 014. Another known example is in a military museum in Prague, Czech Republic, with serial number 001. So, at least 14 were made. The example in the United States is valued at up to $40,000, and possibly much more.