For decades, collectors and internet historians have repeated a remarkable story about a secret Allied commando raid to assassinate Hermann Göring, head of the German Air Force, at his vast estate of Karinhall north of Berlin. The alleged proof was a single artifact: one of the rarest German submachine guns ever made, supposedly brought back as a trophy from that raid. The gun in question, known as the MP 36, is a nearly forgotten weapon today, overshadowed by its famous successors, the MP 38 and MP 40. The MP 40 became the iconic symbol of the German infantryman in World War II, a lightweight 9mm submachine gun issued to paratroopers, armored vehicle crews, and later standard issue for squad and platoon leaders in the German Army and Waffen-SS.
It evolved from the more expensive and higher-quality MP 38. But there was another version of these storied weapons, the MP 36, a select-fire submachine gun machined from steel with wooden furniture. It shared many features with the MP 38 and MP 40, yet differed in important ways. Its magazine housing angled forward at 30 degrees, its magazine release was a protrusion rather than a button, and no dedicated MP 36 magazines were ever found, as it used MP 40 magazines.
The front sight was adjustable and unprotected. The only marking was on the underside of the wooden foregrip, reading “EMP 36,” indicating manufacture by Erma Erfurt. The gun bore no other identifying marks. The only example in the United States, serial number 014, was finely finished and widely believed to be a prototype presented as a gift.
To whom? According to the story, to Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring himself, since German paratroopers were part of the Air Force. The narrative surrounding this weapon is remarkable. In 1943, according to the account, a group of volunteers was organized for a highly secret mission: to assassinate Hermann Göring at Karinhall, about 40 miles northeast of Berlin.
Allied intelligence reportedly believed Göring would be there under light guard. The Allied team parachuted quietly into the area at night, undetected. Upon reaching the grounds, they discovered the estate was guarded by Göring’s elite Fallschirmjäger troops, heavily armed and highly trained. German forces detected the team, a firefight erupted, and in the chaos, an American major slipped into the main building searching for Göring.
In the main hall, he spotted a strange, unfamiliar weapon hanging on the wall, took it, and placed it in his bag. Deciding the mission had failed, he fought his way out with a very small remnant of the original team and escaped to safety. The major kept the weapon for the rest of the war, returned with it to the United States in 1945, and stored it away as a war trophy. That specific story comes from an article titled “MP 36, The Missing Link,” published by Frank Iannamico in Small Arms Review in 1998, and it sparked widespread online debate.
In the view of at least one historian who examined the claim, the weapon itself is genuine, but the story of its capture is not. The logistical and operational objections are severe. The first question is how, in 1943, a team of Allied commandos, or American paratroopers, could have been inserted that deep into Germany. A C-47 Skytrain, used for airborne drops throughout the war, could fly from eastern England to the Karinhall area and back without refueling, a distance of 1,150 to 1,250 miles depending on the airfield.
But when fully loaded to 6,000 pounds, the C-47’s range was limited to between 1,026 and 1,180 miles, leaving insufficient 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, unarmed transport would have been highly vulnerable to fighters, flak, and radar detection. Alternatives were problematic.
B-17s and B-24s were not configured for paratroop drops; jumping from bomb bays was dangerous and slow. The RAF’s Avro Lancaster could technically carry up to ten paratroopers seated on the floor who could jump through the bomb bay or ventral hatch, but the process was slow and extremely dangerous. Other aircraft like the Halifax or Stirling were used for airborne drops, with the Stirling able to drop up to ten fully equipped paratroopers and used on D-Day for pathfinder units. But this raised another problem: the size of the assault force.
Karinhall was a large estate surrounded by dense forest, protected by a garrison of about 200 heavily armed soldiers from the Hermann Göring Panzer Division, always present at the site, as well as a small platoon of Reich Security Service guards from the same unit that protected Hitler and other Nazi leaders. Any form of attack would have required a large assault force and more than one aircraft. Ten men from a Stirling, or 18 to 22 from a C-47, was not a significant force for such a mission, which lacked the precision of known assassination operations carried out or planned by the British Special Operations Executive during the war. The SOE typically worked with small teams for such dangerous covert operations.
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 attack method was an ambush of Heydrich’s open Mercedes as he drove through Prague without escort, using Sten guns and grenades. The operation succeeded, although most of the assassins and their helpers were later killed in German reprisals. Another operation, Foxley, was an SOE mission to kill Hitler at his mountain residence at Obersalzberg.
Again, the assassination team consisted of only two agents wearing German mountain troop uniforms. The plan was an ambush, shooting Hitler with a scoped Mauser K98k from among the trees while he walked his daily route from his house, the Berghof, to his favorite teahouse nearby. The backup plan was to attack Hitler’s Volkswagen with a British PIAT anti-tank weapon. The agents also carried modified suppressed Luger pistols prepared by the SOE for personal defense.
Several examples of this modified pistol survive in the Royal Armouries in Leeds and in the Museum of Joint Services in Maldon, Essex, where one was personally examined. A batch of these weapons had clearly been assembled as part of an SOE assassination program inside Germany. Operation Foxley was canceled for well-known reasons. For any assassination team to remain on the ground at Karinhall for any length of time, they would have had to wear German uniforms, not American paratrooper uniforms, and be armed accordingly.
Could they have been dropped from a captured German aircraft, as depicted in the film Where Eagles Dare, also set in 1943? The Allies did capture some examples of the Junkers Ju 52 in various situations, particularly in North Africa, but no evidence suggests such aircraft were used to drop Allied agents into German-occupied Europe. Allied aircraft were always used for that task. Moreover, a Ju 52 could not fly from eastern England to Karinhall and back without refueling, as its range was only 540 to 620 miles depending on load.
And how would any team of American paratroopers extract themselves from the area after assassinating Göring? This was presumably not a suicide mission. There was no friendly resistance organization in Germany at that time to help. If any assassination attempt against Göring at Karinhall was to be made, an ambush of the marshal’s vehicle would have been the best option, while he traveled between his heavily fortified house in the forest and his airfield a few kilometers north.
But such an attack would depend entirely on agents knowing Göring’s schedule and transport arrangements, requiring an actual secret agent inside Göring’s headquarters capable of passing that information. As far as is known, no such agent or information existed. So there is a rare and strange submachine gun of questionable origin, undoubtedly original and of immense historical value, attached to a story that is, at best, fanciful and practically impossible to execute as published. An attack by American paratroopers on a large, well-fortified estate like Karinhall to get close enough to kill Göring is a scenario that even Alistair MacLean would have rejected as wholly improbable.
Where did the MP 36 actually come from? As with many stories connected to objects associated with Nazi leaders, there is likely a grain of truth beneath the fabrications. One plausible theory is that the MP 36 was indeed a prototype presented by Erma to Göring, whose paratroopers were seeking a lightweight submachine gun that performed well in their type of operations. That weapon would ultimately become the MP 40, a much cheaper version of the expensive MP 38 and its wooden-furnished relative, the MP 36.
In 1945, Göring ordered the evacuation of Karinhall 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 cellar under the Luftwaffe officers’ club in Berchtesgaden, while a vast quantity of material, including his large weapons collection, remained in a freight train at Berchtesgaden station. On May 4, 1945, American forces captured Berchtesgaden after a SS withdrawal. On May 5, paratroopers from the US 101st Airborne Division took over garrison duties from infantry in the area.
Major Dick Winters, famous from Band of Brothers, was among the first American officers to find and explore Göring’s hidden treasure. It is easy to connect the fictional story of the raid on Karinhall 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, partially looted by the American paratroopers. The creator of the Karinhall raid story was probably an officer of the 101st Airborne who took the MP 36 from a freight car in Berchtesgaden in early May 1945 and kept it.
He may have invented a good story about its capture, claiming American paratroopers had dropped onto Göring at Karinhall, and the myth took hold, especially with the customary “still secret” claim used to cover mountains of fabricated stories justifying World War II heroics. This is the truth behind the legend of the MP 36, one of only two known examples of this rare German submachine gun from World War II. It is difficult to know how many were made by Erma. The weapon in the United States bears serial number 014, and another known example in a military museum in Prague, Czech Republic, bears serial number 001, meaning at least 14 were produced.
The US example has been valued at up to $40,000, and possibly much more.