POTD: A Belt of Boom… I Mean Doom – Nazi Belt Buckle Pistol
Sam.S 07.25.23
Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Here we have a strapping piece of unfortunate history. This is the Nazi Belt Buckle Pistol. While belt buckles that conceal small firearms like derringers do exist, the infamous Nazi belt buckle pistol occupies a controversial place in history. Supposedly invented by Louis Marquis during World War I, their legitimacy and origins remain debated, with some historians claiming they were postwar fakes profiting off Nazi artifacts. Only about ten specimens of these strikingly designed buckle-pistols are known to exist. As oddball weapons associated with a regime responsible for tremendous atrocities, they understandably provoke mixed reactions.
“This unique belt buckle gun is chambered in the desirable 22 LR cartridge. These belt buckle pistols had a hinged cover plate that would swing up/open to expose the barrels and firing mechanism inside. The barrels consist of a single, 1 13/16 inch barrel/block that actually has four separate barrels in this one block. This entire barrel/block was designed to spring open when the release levers on the sides were depressed. Each barrel was individually triggered and all four were cocked each time the barrel block was pushed into the closed position. The front cover has a postwar cast aluminum German Army eagle emblem affixed to the front. The underside of the belt buckle is spuriously stamped: “BLN.-44-SS/R.V.F.Z. NR. 1/L”. Each major component of the buckle has also been stamped: “1” or “1/L”, indicating that it has matching visible parts. The actual design of belt pistols was an invention originally conceived by Louis Marquis while in a WWI POW camp in 1915. As an engineer and inventor, Marquis refined his design and in 1943 received an order to make five initial examples for Himmler’s SS. The originals were all SS marked and had SS Eagles on the belt plate.”
Lot 1529: SS Style Marked Nazi Belt Buckle Pistol. (n.d.-ae). Rock Island Auction Company. photograph. Retrieved July 24, 2023, from https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/62/1529/ss-style-marked-nazi-belt-buckle-pistol.
