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Noticed the Garand demonstration in the article too. Curious as your opinion regarding the submachine guns? How did the Thompson compare to the Nazi guns?

Better than the MP 40 in hitting power [.45 ACP vs. 9mm], but one of the few cases where we over engineered, and the Germans didn't. So there were a LOT more MP 40s than Thompsons [even after they were simplified. Plus the Germans tended to issue their troops a lot more semi-auto weapons than we did [and a lot more handguns, including the P-38].

But the critical difference was the machine gun. The MG 42 was the best machine gun of the war. Period. The MG 34 wasn't far behind. This allowed the Germans to build an entire offensive infantry doctrine around those guns. Made them much more dangerous on offense AND defense, since they issued a lot more machine guns to their small infantry units than we did.

The Thompson Submachine Gun (Tommy Gun) is a classic firearm. Carefully cast and molded, it is a beautiful piece.

The MP-40, (Grease Gun) was made out of stamped metal pieces and indeed looked like a grease gun. Nowhere near as nice as the Thompson, it was a helluva lot cheaper and there were a helluva lot more of them made. As far as I know they were reasonably equivalent for short range killing. I don’t know how they compared in terms of reliability and maintainability.