American soldier guarding German POWs with a captured P38. 

The closer soldier is holding an FB Vis Radom. The soldier behind him is armed with a P38. 

The P38 was designed in the late 1930s to replace Germany's then current standard sidearm, the P.08 Luger. Although a very capable sidearm, the P.08 was extremely expensive and time consuming to produce.  In 1944 the cost of one complete P38 was $14.08, while the cost of one complete P08 Luger was $19.80. 

German tank crews first carried the P38 during the Polish Blitzkrieg of 1939. Wartime demand was so high that despite three factories producing over a million P38s, Germany was not able to completely replace the P.08 before the war was over. 

The P38 proved to be a reliable, robust, accurate pistol that gave birth to the modern double action / single action combat handguns common on today's battlefield.  It remained in service with the German military and police until 2004.

• Russian winters were so cold that gun lubricants actually froze on metal, jamming many semi automatic pistols. German soldiers quickly learned to remove all gun oil from the pistol’s moving parts. Despite the unfavorable conditions, the P38 functioned flawlessly.

• Allied soldiers who found P38s on the battlefield or liberated them from German soldiers often carried them as personal weapons.

• The P1 (a P38 with aluminum frame, rather than the steel frame of the WWII pistol) was adopted for use by the German military and police forces after WWII.  It remained in service until it was replaced by the Heckler & Koch USP in 2004.