Mauser 98s re-worked to K98ks
I am aware that the Nazis re-worked a lot of M98s and Kar98bs into K98ks during their clandestine re-armament in the late 1930s, and that this practice continued well into WWII. My question is based on the fact that a lot of them I have observed do not have the 1920 rollmark on the receiver ring. It was my understanding that all rifles that the Wehrmacht/Reichswehr was allowed to keep under the Treaty of Versailles were so marked. I can't find any ready reference to it, but does anybody know where the unmarked 98s came from? I wonder if they were illegally stashed somewhere or the Nazis got them back from wherever the Versailles folks sent them.
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Most of the Gew 98's from WWI that were hidden were converted to Transitional 98's for the SS in the early thirties. This consisted of replacing the Lange sight with a leaf sight. It's never actually been determined where they were hidden, but the Freikorps was probably responsible for hundreds of thousands of them that they used in the 1920's against the Reds. 0 -
Thanks, p3skyking - I'm sure you're right about the Freikorps. 0 -
Yeah, I have a few matching Gew 98's that didn't go through the transition that have EWB burnt into the stock. I've never seen a 98b with any Freikorps markings since Simpson made them for Weimar. 0
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