The German Gewehr 1888 Rifle in 7.92 x 57mm

July 28, 1914. The world is at war. Germany and the Central Powers are fighting the Allies — the British Empire, France, Russia, Belgium, and their colonies in the far flung corners of the world. In 1917, the United States enters the fray and stayed between the 28th day of July 1914 to the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. Millions upon millions of young men climbed their trenches and stormed off into no man’s land. Many fell and never returned home to their families.

The Gewehr 88 (commonly called the Model 1888 Commission Rifle here in the USA) was a late 19th-century German bolt action rifle, adopted in 1888 by the German Empire. It was Germany’s answer to the French Lebel rifle and their smokeless ammunition.

With the invention of smokeless powder in the 1880s; it immediately made all of the large-bore black powder rifles (such as the Masuer Infanterie-Gewehr 71) obsolete.

The German Reich’s first step in countering their continental rivals: developing and adopting the Patrone 88 or M/88 of 1888. A rimless necked cartridge with a bullet diameter of 8.08mm / .318 in loaded 226 gr round-nose bullet propelled by a single-base smokeless powder.

The German Rifle Commission, the same one that came up with the cartridge, went over a number of rifle designs across Europe and as all commissions work.

They gathered the best ideas from all the different rifles and mashed them together to come up with the Gewehr 1888.

Contrary to popular belief; Mauser was one of the few major arms manufacturers in Germany that did not produce the Gew. 88.

The Gew. 88 is primarily of a Mannlicher style design with a split bridge receiver. The bolt passes through the receiver and locks in front of the rear bridge.

The bolt itself has a separate rotating bolt head and loading was the characteristic Mannlicher-style “packet loading” or “en-bloc” system in which cartridges are loaded into a steel carrier (ie; a charger clip) which is inserted into the magazine, where it holds the cartridges in alignment over the magazine spring.

Once all the rounds are fired, the empty en-bloc clip is ejected from the rifle via the bottom of the magazine.

The idea behind this: the sheet metal tube would provide protection to the barrel and increase accuracy by preventing the barrel from directly contacting the stock.

In practice it increased the risk of rusting by providing a space for water to be trapped if the rifle was exposed to harsh conditions. Which during the Great War it clearly was.

I understand that the US-built 1903A3 was a “relative” of the second generation of this design. Not an exact copy, but very similar. True?

Springfield Armory Museum - Collection Record

On March 15, 1904, an official letter, over the name of Brigadier General William H. Crozier, Chief of Ordnance, was addressed to Waffenfabrik Mauser, Wurttemberg, Germany. The letter said, 'As an examination would seem to indicate that some of the features of the cartridge clip recently adopted for the United States Army may be covered by your United States letter patent NOs. 402,605; 482,376; and 547,932, it is requested that your attorney in this country call at this office for determining what, if any, of its features are voided by your patents and if so, to arrive at an agreement as to the royalties which should be paid therefore. The Germans must have had a solid case. Crozier was wiving royalties at them even before ethe conversation.

On May 4, 19On June 16, 1904, Arthur Frazier met with General Crozier again. The Mauser people, he reported, had now carefully examined the Springfield '03 rifle and clip. As for the clip, the general's expectation there was a patent infringement was incorrect. There was not a single patent infringement on the clip. There were two. General Crosier asked, assuming the U.S. government agreed with Mauser, what kind of arrangement could be made. Mauser, Frazier answered, was asking for a dollar royalty for every one thousand clips made for the Springfield '03. General Crozier took that under advisement. But the meeting was not over. Frazier stated that the Mauser people had also examined the new Springfield '03 rifle and found not one but five infringements. Mauser required a dollar royalty on each Springfield made. Arthur Frazier then delivered more disturbing news to General Crozier. The American made Krag-Jorgensen rifle also infringed on Mauser patents. In other words, the United States had been infringing on German-held Mauser patents since 1892, when it first issued the Krag-Jorgensen to its troops. Frazier made a conciliatory offer. If, he suggested, the United States were to be cooperative in a cable arrangement might induce Waffenfabrik Mauser to waive the Krag-Jorgensen infringements. The general took the offer and went off to see his lawyers and his superiors.

On December 22, 1904, the lawyers gave the U.S. Ordnance Bureau another unhappy Christmas. Mauser, they said, clearly had U.S. Ordnance over a barrel. Since the armory had already gone to the enormous expense of obtaining and setting up the production tooling to make the Springfield '03 rifle, the Ordnance Bureau was hardly in a position to dicker unless it wanted to abandon the enormous sum expended on the Springfield '03 rifle and go in search of another rifle. The general now had no choice but to walk up to the negotiating table with his hands up and his wallet open. At the next meeting, General Crozier and Frazier reached an agreement. After a review by the comptroller of the Treasury and a few revisions, the agreement was submitted through Frazier to his client, Waffenfabrik Mauser, in Wurttemberg, Germany.

On March 27, 1905, Waffenfabrik Mauser accepted the offer. And the final agreement was ratified by the comptroller on April 5, 1905. The United States agreed to pay Waffenfabrik Mauser 75 cents for each Springfield rifle made. And 50 cents per thousand clips made. All royalty payments would cease after total payments reached U.S. $200,000. Between November 6, 1905, when the Germans received a Treasury check for $11,367.53, and the July 1909 Treasury check for $8,117.25, the U.S. Armory made nine payments to Waffenfabrik Mauser for the specified total of $200,000. In most aspects, the transaction seems a bargain. The United States was embarrassed, but now had clear title to one of the finest rifles in the world. Everyone seemed satisfied with Crozier's handling of the matter, and on November 19, 1905, President Roosevelt reappointed him to a second four-year term as chief of ordnance....

In 1907, an additional damaging blow was dealt to the new rifle when General Crozier had another German visitor, also bearing patent infringement papers and representing Deutsche Waffen-und Munitionfabriken, Berlin, Germany, the manufacturer of the spitzer rifle cartridge for the German Mauser rifle. This cartridge, the Berlin firm announced, was covered by U.S. patent 841861 issued on January 27, 1907, and the U.S. Army was infringing on itd say the United States copied the whole system, lock, stock, and barrel, infringed on seven or eight German patents, and were forced to pay royalties. This time, General Crozier assigned the problem of replying to Lieutenant Colonel John T. Thompson, acting chief of ordnance whenever Crozier was absent. Colonel (and later General) Thompson, who was to invent the Thompson submachine gun, went to a gathering of government patent attorneys and listened to their analysis of the situation. Deutsch, they assured him, had a very weak case and told him not to pay. Deutsch, they felt, could be beaten in court. Colonel Thompson contacted Deutsch and informed them that the United States felt there was no case. When Deutsch pressed for a settlement, Thompson refused. On July 18, 1914, Deutsch brought suit against the United States in the U.S. Court of Claims asking for royalty payments on a quarter-billion M9106 rifle bullets at a dollar a thousand for a total of a quarter of a million dollars. The timing was ironic, just ten days before the start of the worst war the world had ever seen, in which many millions of rounds of spitzers would be fired.

But in 1920, Deutsch reopened its claim in the American court. A U.S. tribunal did not try to determine whether Deutsch had a patent infringement suit. Rather, it focused on the wartime seizure of the German patent, which was covered by a U.S. treaty with Germany. On July 2, 1921, the tribunal stated that the United States was in open violation of that treaty and awarded Deutsch $300,000 in damages. The U.S. government appealed and the case was in the courts for more than seven years before it was finally settled, on December 31, 1928. After twenty-two years of on-again off-again litigation, Deutsch won. With interest, the $300,000 award for damages had grown to $412,520.55 - another Christmas present for the Ordnance Department." - Hallahan

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