For decades, a story has circulated among gun collectors and across the internet claiming that Allied commandos launched a mission to assassinate Hermann Göring, head of the German Air Force, at his sprawling estate Karinhall north of Berlin. The supposed evidence for this raid was a single object: one of the rarest German submachine guns ever made, allegedly brought back as war booty. The German MP 40 submachine gun is an iconic symbol of World War II. It evolved from its more expensive and higher-quality predecessor, the MP 38, and was originally designed to equip paratroopers and armored vehicle crews.
Over time, the MP 40 became the standard submachine gun for squad and platoon leaders in the German Army and the Waffen-SS. It was a lightweight, compact, and fast-firing 9mm weapon. There was another version of these two iconic guns, the MP 38 and MP 40, and it actually existed. That version is the MP 36, a weapon almost unknown today.
Unlike the MP 38 and MP 40, the MP 36 was a selective-fire weapon, machined from steel with wooden components. It shared several characteristics with the later guns but also differed from them completely. Its magazine housing used a protrusion-type lock rather than the button found on the MP 38 and MP 40, and it was positioned at the rear of the magazine housing. The bolt assembly was similar to the other weapons, except that the front of the MP 36 bolt was a separate piece.
The front sight was adjustable and unprotected. The weapon carried no identifying markings except on the underside of the wooden front grip, which bore the marking “EMP 36,” referring to the manufacturer Erma Erfurt. The magazine housing also differed, 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 finishing, and is believed to be a prototype presented as a gift. To whom? According to the story, it was given to Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, head of the German Air Force, since Germany’s paratroopers were part of the air force. The tale of how the weapon ended up in Allied hands goes as follows.
In 1943, a group of volunteers was organized for a highly secret mission. The objective was to assassinate Reichsmarschall Göring at Karinhall, located about 40 miles northeast of Berlin. Allied intelligence sources reported that Göring would be at Karinhall and that the area would be under light guard. The Allied team parachuted quietly into the region at night without being detected.
Once they reached the grounds around Karinhall, 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 detected the team, a gun battle broke out and intensified. In the chaos, a particular American major managed to infiltrate 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 placed 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 part of the original Allied team managed to escape and return to safety. The weapon remained in the major’s possession 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, stored it away, and moved on with his postwar life. That specific story comes from an article titled “MP 36, The Missing Link,” published by Frank Iannamico in a magazine called Small Arms Review in 1998, and it has sparked considerable debate online. In the view of firearms expert Mark Felton, the weapon itself is completely genuine, but the story of its capture is not, and he explains why. The first question is how, in 1943, an Allied commando team, or in this case American paratroopers, could successfully be inserted that deep into Germany.
What kind of aircraft could have been used? A C-47 Skytrain, used for parachute drops throughout the war, could fly from eastern England to the Karinhall area and back without refueling. The distance, depending on the English airfield used, ranged 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.
That would have left the aircraft short of fuel on the return flight over occupied Europe or the North Sea. The Allies did not possess air superiority over Europe in 1943. A slow, heavy, unpressurized, unarmed transport plane would have been highly vulnerable to fighter attacks, anti-aircraft fire, and radar detection. What if they did not use a C-47?
Neither the B-17 nor the B-24 was equipped for parachute drops. Jumping through the bomb bays was possible but dangerous and slow. For example, German agents were dropped over England and Ireland from modified German bombers during World War II, specifically Heinkel 111s, but individually with a single supply canister dropped automatically by parachute. The RAF’s Avro Lancaster was not equipped to drop paratroopers.
It could technically hold up to ten paratroopers sitting on the floor, who could jump through the bomb bay or the ventral hatch, but the process would have been extremely slow and dangerous. Of course, there were alternative aircraft types actually used for paratroop drops, such as the Halifax or 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 encounter a problem regarding the size of the attacking force.
Infiltrating a heavily fortified position like Karinhall, a large estate surrounded by dense forest, would have required dealing with a garrison of around 200 heavily armed soldiers from the Hermann Göring Panzer Division. These troops were permanently stationed at the site. 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 deliver that number of 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 appears to lack the precision of known assassination operations carried out or planned by the British Special Operations Executive during the war. The British always worked with small teams in such dangerous covert 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 to ambush Heydrich while he traveled through Prague in an open Mercedes without an escort.
The attack used Sten submachine guns and grenades. The operation succeeded, although most of the assassins and their helpers were later killed in the German crackdowns 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 at the Berghof to his favorite tea house on the nearby Mooslahnerkopf. The backup plan was to attack the Volkswagen Hitler used to return home after tea, using a British PIAT anti-tank weapon. The agents also carried modified Luger pistols with silencers, modified by SOE for personal protection. Several examples of this modified British pistol exist in the Royal Armouries in Leeds and at the Joint Military Services Museum in Maldon, Essex, where Felton had the opportunity to examine one personally.
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 canceled for known and numerous reasons. For any assassination team to survive on the ground at Karinhall for any period, they would have had to wear German military uniforms rather than American paratrooper gear and be 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, although no evidence has emerged of such aircraft being used to drop Allied agents into German-occupied Europe.
Allied aircraft were always used for that mission. Furthermore, a Ju 52 could not have flown from eastern England to Karinhall 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 be extracted from the Karinhall area after assassinating Göring? Presumably this was not a suicide mission.
There was no friendly resistance organization in Germany at that time to assist. If any assassination attempt against Göring at Karinhall were to be carried out, Felton suggests an ambush of the marshal’s vehicle would have been 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, 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 required an actual agent inside Göring’s headquarters capable of passing on such 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 authentic and a very rare weapon of enormous historical interest and value, attached to a story that is, at best, fanciful and practically impossible to carry out in the manner published. An attack by a force of American paratroopers on a large, well-fortified estate like Karinhall to get close enough to kill Göring. Alistair MacLean would have rejected such a scenario as wholly improbable. So where did the MP 36 actually come from?
As with many stories attached to objects belonging to Nazi leaders, there is probably a grain of truth beneath all the lies and empty claims. Felton offers a theory he cannot prove. The MP 36 was indeed a prototype presented by Erma to Göring, whose paratroopers were seeking a lightweight submachine gun that worked well in their type 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 parts, the MP 36.
In 1945, Göring ordered the evacuation of Karinhall as the Red Army approached. 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 beneath the air force officers’ club or casino in Berchtesgaden. A huge amount 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 withdrew. On May 5, paratroopers from the US 101st Airborne Division took over garrison duties from the infantry in the area. For example, Major Dick Winters, famous from the series Band of Brothers, was among the first American officers to find and explore Göring’s art cache. It is easy to link the fictional story of the raid on Karinhall by American paratroopers with the discovery of the MP 36.
The weapon was likely among Göring’s guns and on one of the trains partially looted by American paratroopers. Felton believes the creator of the Karinhall raid story was an officer in the US 101st Airborne Division who took the MP 36 from a freight car in Berchtesgaden in early May 1945 and kept it. He may have fabricated a good story about how he acquired the MP 36, claiming American paratroopers had landed on Göring at Karinhall, and the myth took hold. Especially with the usual “still secret” phrase used to cover a mountain of fiction and fabricated stories used to justify World War II heroics.
This is Felton’s opinion of this myth or urban legend, whatever one calls it, attached to the real MP 36, one of only two known examples of this rare German submachine gun from World War II. It is difficult to determine how many pieces 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, and possibly much more.