Chapter 463: The Domino Effect
After handling the rocket-propelled grenade launcher that would simply become known as the Panzerfaust I in this timeline, Bruno moved onto another weapon that caught his interest. Frankly speaking, the need for pistols was not as grand as it had been in his past life.
The only men who would really be wielding them at any level within the German Armed Forces would be officers like himself. But even so, he had to admit — the Mauser C96 he carried to this day as his standard sidearm was rapidly showing its age.
He loved everything about the gun: the looks, the history, the symbolic meaning. Well — everything except for its utter lack of practicality on a modern battlefield.
In his past life, Germany had been woefully behind when it came to the development of handguns. Single-stack, small-frame pistols remained the norm for German manufacturers well into the 1980s, before they finally began modernizing alongside the rest of the world. It was perhaps the one area where Germany had never been forward-thinking.
But the prototype sitting before him was something different — and yet so familiar with the small flaws that had always plagued German handguns. Still, compared to the absolute 19th-century relic Bruno still carried, or the alternative — the expensive and horrifically fragile Luger — this weapon was already on the right track.
Bruno picked up the handgun and immediately noticed the designer behind it: A man by the name of Charles Petter.
Charles was Swiss by birth, and after serving in the army of his host nation, had moved to Germany to develop weapons for Krupp, based in Essen. However, in Bruno’s past life, the man had instead joined the French Foreign Legion during the Great War and gone on to gain French citizenship, where he would develop the Pistolet automatique modèle 1935A for the French Army.
Luckily for Bruno, he had known exactly who this man was — and the sheer potential he carried — and as a result ensured through some subtle maneuvering behind the scenes that Charles came to work for him before he could ever run off to fight for the French. As a result, the brilliant mind had long since become a lead engineering expert within Waffenwerke von Zehntner GmbH.
Because of this, Charles had produced the Pistolet automatique modèle 1935A much earlier than in Bruno’s past life. It was a design that would go on to inspire the Swiss Sig P210 — which itself had a brief double-stack prototype that, unfortunately, due to budget constraints and politics, never saw full adoption.
When Bruno handled the weapon, he couldn’t help but smile. It was, in many ways, revolutionary for the era: a perfected improvement of John Moses Browning’s 1911 breechblock, featuring a far more modern concept of an enclosed, integrated hammer and fire control assembly.