A Grand WW2 Party Leader Pistols Intro
Walther PPK Introduction, WWII History
Hi, I'm Tom Whiteman, president and founder of Legacy Collectibles. Here to introduce our new YouTube series on party leaders. One of the most popular things that are collected are the party leader PPKs. But along with that is the belt, the buckle, you notice the hat, the ornate, every button has a party leader eagle on it. Again, nothing like the American army, but very ornate and highly desirable among collectors.
What's our goal here at Legacy Collectibles?
Our goal at Legacy Collectibles is to honor the veterans and the sacrifices they made for our freedoms. There's no way we endorse Nazism or Nazi ideology. In fact, one way that any culture shows dominance over another ideology is they conquer them and they take their stuff. And that's exactly what happened at the end of World War II, all of the vets brought back these things.
Meet Fritz
Now Fritz here, would wear this uniform. This is a party leader uniform, and he would carry around an ID that looks something like this. There's a picture of Fritz, he's got the little Hitler mustache going on, he also has a little booklet that shows he paid, there's a picture of Fritz. And also, when he paid his dues every month, he got a little stamp. So in order to be in the party, you joined the party, you paid your dues, and with that, you're allowed to own an honor weapon. They called it... In German, they called it a honor weapon. We tend to call it a party leader.
Variations of Party Leader Pistols
There are three variations of party leader pistols. They're all commercial Walther PPKs. If you see any other party leader, that's a different pistol. It's an embellishment, not original from Germany. A lot of the vets... Well there's a whole cottage industry of people who try to make money off of faking party leader Luger grips and party leader PP grips. The only official party leader issued to Fritz and his cronies were one of these three variations.
First Variation of Party Leader: RZM
The first variation of party leader PPK is the RZM variation. The most important part of the RZM is the logo RZM right here on the slide. And these were only made in 1934 and 1935. RZM was actually their buying purchasing department, and I can't pronounce the word that it stands for, but it was the Reich's purchasing department. And so they put that logo right on the slide.
Second Variation of Party Leader: PPK, The Best Known
The second variation of party leader is probably the best known and probably also the most expensive and that's the PPK. RZM is not there but instead you have a party leader grip, and we'll get you a close up of that grip. But they generally look exactly like the regular grip, except it has the party leader a eagle.
And again, this was considered an honor weapon. As a party leader, you had the honor of carrying this piece. You'll notice that most of these are beautiful guns. Again, they were not taking the war, they were not out in the field, they didn't go to the Russian front, they generally sat in desk drawers.
Tom with the Zinger
Party leaders generally never shot anybody other than themselves at the end of the war, but they generally were ruling a city or a town or a province.
Third Variation: Black Party Leader Grip
The third variation is the black party leader grip. Now these were made in 1944, but probably distributed in '44 and '45. Why? At the end of the war, when there was very few resources and they could barely keep up with the need for troops to have weapons. Some people questioned the black party leader grip saying they're not real. That these are fake, a post war.
They are Real, We asked a Vet
But I've talked to vets, I talked to a vet who's now passed, who said that when he went into the factory at the end of the war, they had pickled barrels with black party leader grips on them. My theory is that they issued these at the end of the war to boost morale. You have to imagine a lot of people were getting disgusted with the war, morale was low. Himmler in particular, and also Goebbels who was the propaganda minister, did a lot to give out a lot of awards and presentations.
And one of the things that I theorized that they gave out to all the party leaders again 30,000- 40,000 of them across the country, they got a brand new beautiful black party leader grip. And also there's the brown party leader holster, we do have black party leader holsters. So this was the last variation just given out at the very end of the war and they're even more rare than the other two variations.
Keep watching and Thank You Very Much!
We have a lot more to cover about party leaders, so stay tuned and make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel.
In the meantime, if you have questions, please contact me at legacy-collectibles.com or you can just click the link in our description. Thanks for watching.