Carl Walther GMBH

Pronunciation of the name Walther

The correct pronunciation of Walther is [ˈvaltɐ] like the English word vaulter. In German, w sounds like /v/, th sounds like /t/, and a is an open front vowel similar to the u in ugly. However, it is common for English speakers not familiar with German phonology to pronounce the name as /ˈwɔːltər/.

History

The history of Walther started with the factory created by Matthias Conrad Pistor who was the chief armorer of the Kassel Armory. Pistor is the ancestor of the Walther family. This plant was operating in 1780 and made pistols and other weapons. It was the granddaughter of Gustave Wilhelm Pistor who married August Theodore Walther whose son Carl Wilhelm Freund established the factory that employed apprentice Carl Wather. This small shop was established in 1886 in Zella-Mehlis, in what was then Hesse but is today Thuringia. The company originally manufactured hunting and target rifles.

It was not until 1908 that, under the initiative of Fritz Walther, the oldest son of Carl Walther, they began to make pistols. Models 1 through 5 and 7 through 9 were in calibers 6.35 and 7.65. The Model 6 was Walther's first attempt at a 9mm Luger pistol. It used blowback rather than a locked breech and proved unsuccessful, with only around 1,000 made. Its rarity has made it highly sought after on the collectors market. In 1929 they began to make the popular Polizeipistole (police pistols) or PP models. This was followed in 1931 by the first of the PPKs (Polizeipistole Kriminalmodell, or Police Pistol Detective Model). Both PP and PPKs were manufactured in .22 Long Rifle, .32 ACP (the most common caliber), .380 ACP and a very small number in .25 ACP. The PP models were the first mass-produced pistols with stamped parts, but the overall increase in dependability and high quality of production with lower relative manufacturing costs made them the best option to replace the P-08 Luger. In 1938 the German Reich awarded the contract for that replacement to Walther for the 9mm P38 with a weight of 960 g.

From 1942 until 1945, the company used slave labour at the Neuengamme concentration camp, and operated its own factory at the camp.

With his factory destroyed by World War II and Zella-Mehlis in Soviet-occupied East Germany, Walther was reduced to just a collection of designs and patents. But Fritz Walther started anew and began manufacturing in Ulm, West Germany in 1953. The company resumed production of the P38 (renamed the P1) in 1957 in order to equip the new West German Army, the Bundeswehr, with sidearms. When Fritz Walther died in December 1966, his son, Karl-Heinz, took over the company, which then concentrated on the sports sector and the introduction of new technologies.

In 1993 the Walther firm was acquired by UMAREX Sportwaffen (now part of PW Group) of Arnsberg, Germany who continued to manufacture under the Walther name in Ulm and Arnsberg. The German Walther company is known as Carl Walther Sportwaffen. In 1999 the US based Smith & Wesson company became the authorized importer for Walther Firearms.

Two of the divisions of the PW Group, Carl Walther Sportwaffen and UMAREX Sportwaffen formed a new US company named Walther Arms, Inc. located in Fort Smith, AR, USA. in 2012. The distribution of Walther arms in the United States was taken over by this new company on January 1, 2013.

Design Innovations

Walther is known for the advanced features that appeared with the PP series. The advent of the single/action, double/action trigger, the decocker lever, and firing pin block safety were first seen on Walther handguns.

In 1937 designs for the 9mm Luger were being developed to replace the expensive to produce Luger designs. Walther produced hammerless and external hammer designs which featured their SA/DA trigger, decocker lever, and a loaded chamber indicator on the models that eventually became the P38 when it was adopted by the German army. The P38 when developed, was considered one of the best natural pointing handguns in existence. Walther's open top recoil action permitted the handgun to continue to fire even if an obstruction in the barrel had caused a bulge in the barrel (typically caused by squib loads).

Handguns

Air Pistol

Submachine guns

Rifles

Knives

Walther makes a long line of tactical knives.