Vanderboegh: A Handgun Against An Army - Ten Years After

Western Rifle Shooters Association ^ | 29 July 2008 | Mike Vanderboegh

[Sopater]

The original article is now nearly 20 years old... but somethings are just so good that they're worth repeating.

[NFHale]

Thanks for posting this masterpiece.

God bless ya Mikey... RIP, we miss you.

[Sopater]

MASTERPIECE

Well said.

Perhaps even an understatement...

[alloysteel]

The handgun is for fighting your way to the long guns....

Take the long guns off the bodies of the assassinated members of the invasion force. Then turn them against the enemy.

Equalization of what had been asymmetrical warfare.

[2ndDivisionVet]

What Good Can a Handgun Do Against An Army?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/2312894/posts

[piroque]

Thanks for the re-post & marked

[Kartographer]

I’ve always said that better the death of Masada than the death of Dachau. The first only takes courage the second only needs despair.

[Sopater]

Thanks, I couldn’t seem to find it with a search.

[Kommodor]

Still a classic

[tet68]

“How we burned later in the camps...”

[bk1000]

I found myself in a similar discussion once with a liberal who didn’t get it. She said “you can’t stop the army with your little gun.” I tried to explain that I don’t have to kill the army, only the tyrant.

[Sopater]

I don’t have to kill the army, only the tyrant.

Or, an enemy with a bigger gun.

[Zhang Fei]

“The theory and practice of it was this: First, you approach a German sentry with your little pistol hidden in your coat pocket and, with Academy-award sincerity, ask him for a light for your cigarette (or the time the train leaves for Paris, or if he wants to buy some non-army-issue food or a half- hour with your “sister”). When he smiles and casts a nervous glance down the street to see where his Sergeant is, you blow his brains out with your first and only shot, then take his rifle and ammunition. Your next few minutes are occupied with “getting out of Dodge,” for such critters generally go around in packs. After that (assuming you evade your late benefactor’s friends) you keep the rifle and hand your little pistol to a fellow Resistance fighter so he can go get his own rifle.”

---

There’s a profound lack of realism in the scenario sketched out here that’s similar to Hollywood scripts, where scribblers have to find a way for the good guy to win. They do that by making the bad guys bunglers. In reality, the Nazis were fairly efficient and well-trained. They also learned from their mistakes. They understood they were in hostile territory, and took care to go out in groups and never let their guard down. And when significant attacks occurred, they took savage reprisals. In response to the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, they killed 340 people from the village of Lidice. Further reprisals by the Nazis occurred that resulted in in a total of 1,300 Czech dead. No further attacks of that nature against the German occupiers were mounted in Czechoslovakia.

The rebel pacification measures recounted here aren’t unique to the Nazis, given that they are mentioned repeatedly in historical accounts going back thousands of years. But collective reprisals remain brutally effective, because they hold as hostages everyone that potential rebels might hold dear. They might be willing to sacrifice their own lives, but are they willing to risk the lives of all of their relatives and friends?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice_massacre
The small Czech village of Ležáky was destroyed two weeks after Lidice after Gestapo agents found a radio transmitter there of an underground team who parachuted in with Kubiš and Gabcík. Men and women of the village were shot and the children were sent to concentration camps or “Aryanised”. The death toll resulting from the effort to avenge the death of Heydrich is estimated at over 1,300 people.[17] This count includes relatives of the partisans, their supporters, Czech elites suspected of disloyalty and random victims like those from Lidice.

[Wyrd bið ful aræd]

The Liberator was nowhere, anywhere, remotely close to the effectiveness imagined in the article. The Liberator saw minimal distribution, mainly to France, a few in Greece as other occupied nations. Ever heard of Alfons Moser? He is remarkable because he was a German officer assasinated in France, more or less in the way the article describes, and his death was remarkable at the time for its unusualness. The

The Germans burned and machine gunned dozens of people in retribution in some instances of attack by resistance. The French collaborated at a high rate anyway, and the resistance seldom engaged combat. Their main value was in their potential to strike anywhere, and in providing intelligence.

The popular image of dashing French resistance fighters blowing railroads and sniping sentries, and walking up to sentries and shooting them in the face with Liberator pistols, is mainly fiction. Fiction encouraged by the French to overshadow their rampant collaboration and the fact that most resistance were commie shitstains with little support from the populace much of the time.c

[ShadowAce]

There’s a profound lack of realism in the scenario sketched out here that’s similar to Hollywood scripts...

You are correct.

However, the theory would be very similar to what was laid out. Use a small gun to kill someone with a bigger gun. The method will be different, but the idea is the same.

[ShadowAce]

The Liberator was nowhere, anywhere, remotely close to the effectiveness imagined in the article.

Well, then it's a good thing we have better guns now, isn't it?

[Sopater]

You both make good points, and perhaps the FP-45 Liberator wasn't all that this article makes it out to be, but I would still rather have the best means available to me to resist an oppressor to go along with the will to use it. In my opinion, the theory is valid, even if it's chances of success are slim to none, since the alternative is even worse.

It seems that the Liberator was not even given as much of a chance as it could have been, due to decisions made by General Staffs of the United States Army, and Eisenhower's men.

“If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.” ― Winston S. Churchill

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