Bergmann MP 18: The Gun That Created a Weapon Class

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Spent some time going down a rabbit hole on early automatic weapons history this week. The MP 18 is one of those guns that doesn't get enough range conversation — everyone talks about what came after it, nobody talks about the thing that made all of it possible.

The MP 18's basic design formed the basis of most submachine guns manufactured between 1920 and 1960 — four decades of weapons development tracing a direct line back to one German engineer's workbench.

Four decades. That's not a footnote in firearms history — that's the whole chapter. Next time you're handling a Sten, an MP 40, a Thompson, or even thinking about your PCC on the competition table, you're looking at the downstream consequences of what Schmeisser figured out in a German factory during WWI.

At 1,200 rounds per minute, neither the modified Luger nor Mauser C96 could be aimed with any accuracy. The commission concluded that a fundamentally different weapon was needed.

This is the part that always gets me. They tried to solve a new problem with an existing tool — basically slapping a bigger magazine on a pistol and hoping for the best. Anyone who's watched someone run a stock handgun in a competition and then try to compensate for its limitations by going faster knows exactly how that ends. Sometimes you just need a different gun.

German military doctrine actually called for a second soldier to accompany the MP 18 gunner just to carry spare magazines — effectively turning a weapon designed for fast solo assault use into a two-man crew system.

The magazine was a logistical anchor from day one. The testing commission overruled Schmeisser's preference for a box magazine because the drum was already in the supply system — classic institutional decision-making. The gun paid for that choice in the field. Every time you've argued with yourself at the reloading bench about whether a new mag design is worth retooling around, this is the historical version of that same conversation.

Like many open-bolt designs of its era, the MP 18 was vulnerable to accidental discharge if the buttstock received a hard knock while the bolt was forward on a loaded chamber — the impact could drive the bolt rearward enough to pick up and fire a round.

This is the kind of detail that matters if you've ever thought about the engineering decisions behind modern safety mechanisms. The Sten and MP 40 both inherited a fix for this specific failure mode. Every safety system on a modern firearm is the accumulated scar tissue of someone who learned the hard way — usually in the worst possible conditions.

What's a design compromise — magazine, safety, ergonomics, anything — that you've run into on a gun where you could tell the original engineer got overruled by someone who never had to use it in the field?

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Read the full article in The Handbook → | By The Boise Gun Club Team