Interview with Nicole Wiley: German .22 Training Rifles 

the americans steal all

I have a beautiful Mauser small bore 410b my dad brought back and gave to me when I was about 12. I fell in love with it and have been shooting it and still do today. In 1977 I was assigned to an air base in Germany for three years. I discovered an old shooting club in one of the local towns that I joined and shot at every weekend I was free. On Friday nights we shot the luftgewehr and on Saturday and Sundays we shot 22’s. I wish I had my Mauser but we weren’t allowed to take any firearms with us at the time. The club had plans to build an all new and modern range using club labor and I was asked if I would help. Of course I did and Gladly would head over after work in the evenings and worked with the team until late. It was one of the greatest experiences I had during my whole tour. I made some great friends and learned the language pretty good from lessons I got while working on the range. I really loved being a member of that club and enjoyed the shooting competition and afterwards drinking and socializing afterwards. We completed the project in a year and it was beautiful. I shot there just about every weekend and holiday. I’ll never forget it and miss it terribly. I believe your right about the competitive shooting nature being removed during Nazi rule but I’m glad to see it was temporary and came back strong as it is today. TSchuss und veil Gluck fur dich.

Thanks for sharing your story, I really appreciate it. I am happy to hear you making friends with likeminded people while taking part in an awesome project. :)

James Moir I got one from my grandpa that was a Walther as well he brought back

+austenslost also 14:40 close but no cigar XD i love when people talk like that.

Imagine if they had children.

Luckily here in NZ we can get Norinco rifles and they make a fair replica the JW25A (has a detachable 5 Round mag). Have one and it shoots quiet nicely, got as I can't afford to buy a real K98. Around the $1K here for a good one.

I have a CZ .22 MAGNUM full-stocked long barreled rifle fitted with a 8x scope. It is ridiculously accurate and at 70, my eyes ain't what they used to be. The trigger feel and pull was not the greatest but I had one custom made and the pull adjusted lighter. Whilst it is still not perfect, it is a lot better than the factory set up. It wasn't cheap and that was almost 20 years ago.

Adrian Larkins I am not knocking the CZ line as they are a good value for the money. I am just saying that if I could find an Anschutz 54 with a full stock or a Kimber I would sell mine in a heartbeat. Actually, if I am not mistaken Cooper rifles now makes a full stock .22 that is absolutely gorgeous. I did once see a full stock Kimber with a butter knife bolt handle that was perfect in every way but it had a laminated stock on it which in my opinion is a crime. A full stocked rifle deserves walnut.

Full stock = walnut. My 22 mag is not walnut but still gorgeous and I love it. I didn't think you were knocking CZ. I know their reputation on triggers. That's why I had mine changed at vast expense.

Adrian Larkins Speaking of CZ i will commend them for making what are some of the most accurate barrels of all the big manufacturers. From the prone position I can shoot groups at 50 yards that my Volquartsen barreled 10/22 can't match and it cost me considerably more money. It is a damn shame their stock triggers are not better because I can't wring that laser like accuracy out of it in the pursuit of squirrels. How do you like the .22 magnum cartridge? It is my favorite cartridge as it is useful as hell as an all around small game getter. If the price was closer to .22 LR I would shoot it almost exclusively.

+Captian Nemo Yep!

Good to hear. I have always liked the very odd and obscure topics related to firearms. Maybe someday I can put together an article (Full history and development) covering the nightmare of the 6 pounder(WW2). Or the Sabot and Squeeze guns of WW2. Which, both have become an unholy nightmare with lots of dead ends on the information side.

Well, not saying I can't see where you're coming from (asking myself a similar question, whether the popularity of individual shooting pastimes might have been overstated), but do keep in mind all those traditional shooting clubs which often go back to the 19th century (might have taken a break for a couple years and be re-founded after the war, so you see founding years like 1951, but the structure and many of the members usually went right back in if they survived the war I'd suppose). Those clubs still in many communities hold the position of organizing the largest yearly festival ("Schützenfest"), and to be honest, their composition and typically german focus on tradition, orderliness and collective drinking events are for me one of the biggest hurdles of getting into the shooting sport as a young German.

decnet100 Yes of course there is an old shooting tradition in Germany with roots going back to the middle ages when the first cities were allowed by the kings to establish their own (lets call it) militias (groups of citizens and/or hired soldiers) to defend the city. The modern "Schützenvereine" (shooting clubs) have their roots in the German struggle for freedom against the French occupation under Napoleon I. 1813-1815. Nowadays there are many shooting clubs in Germany - I can go soi far to say the "Schützenverein" (shooting club) is THE form of organization of the German sport shooters. You are right and not long after WWII lots of the traditional shooting clubs were (so to say) reopened. But of course had very few members in the beginning years. No wonder, because lots of the former members laid dead under the soil of many European countries and most of the "normal population" in Germany had other things to do than to enjoy shooting. They literally had shooted enough! It took shooting sports a long time to gain its former relevance. I would say it grew up from the 1970´s up till today. Speaking for the period between the two world wars, we can see a similar development. 1918 the Germans had lost the most brutal war in history (so far) and literally speaking the Germans (soldiers, civilians and government) were finished! :-) Assuming you are American I would say it may be hard to understand what that means "finished" as you had no war in your country since 1865. Maybe you can compare the situation of the human beings living in Germany after WWI (and of course moreover after WWII) with the situation of the civilians in the State of Georgia after Shermans march from Atlanta to the Atlantic. Those people had nothing more than their naked lives. In such a situation only very few Germans thought about shooting... But during the time of the "Weimar Republic" there was the development I have written above. And of course the longer the war was ago and the more the population had recovered from its implications the more were able again to enjoy shooting and of course the "new" generation who had not experienced war and only had heard about it from the tales of their fathers, had a different connection to shooting and unfortunately were an easy prey for the radical parties and movements (left and right) and this ended up bad when Hitler took the German youth. And they learned the hard way (on the battlefield) that shooting may under certain circumstances be not very funny.

Thanks for the comparison and interesting answer, but I'm German too :). I'm still not quite so convinced that WWI presented such a great break for the popularity of shooting as WWII undoubtably did - after all I most probably don't have to tell you about the conspiracy theories on how the war was lost not on the battleground but in the home-front (by republicans, communists, jews and/or anarchists, depending on who you asked), and how widely the disarmament layed out by the Versailles treaty were regarded as disgraceful in wide parts of society. Sure, the brutal effects you describe were there directly after the war, but once things started to go back to some form of normality, the need to do something enjoyable in what free time you have must have arrived immediately. And in that regard, I think those clubs presented a vital outlet especially in economically hard times - after all, shooting small calibre or even air rifle was quite cheap once a rifle was available (and in order to buy some, a long-running club of 50 or 100 members can easily cash in and then hand those out to whoever doesn't own an individual firearm), you could do it even if you were wounded or otherwise not fit to play football or other more physical sports, and the drinking often associated with those clubs (always AFTER the shooting part, not before, right?) has rarely ever become unpopular in times of economic hardship. I imagine this was for many men a way to escape the harsh reality of life, to a place where people thought alike (cue the typical Stammtischgespräche, bitching about how badly Germany/yourself/your community was off and how everything is going down the gutters nowadays), but where members would also help each other out if someone was in a particularly bad situation. Most importantly, those must have been places where you could recover a bit of that pride, comradery and traditional masculinity that seemed in short supply after the war. Long story short, I'd guess that quite soon after WWI (early 1920s), those must have started to make a real recovery and people must have been joining by the droves - it's not like they had so many other ways to get their mind off life's problems back then. I think however, to get this off the grounds of speculation, one would have to look at membership numbers from traditional shooting clubs (and the competing paramilitary branches of nationalists and communists that you've already mentioned), and maybe actual documents of what how much actual shooting they were doing, what their resources were used on and how they were organized - unfortunately I couldn't find those online right now, but I guess if I get around to it, I'll go look something up in the library later this week, as the topic of shooting before WWII and how the Nazis managed to monopolize it has always interested me.

decnet100 You are German, too?! I ´m surprised. :-) Well, for the sake of the rest of the viewers we´ll continue in English! :-):-) Mostly I agree with you. In the moment I have no statistics at hand either, but I want to mention that the situation in the Weimar Republic between the two wars was far more fragile than it was after the total breakdown and the complete new beginning after WWII. So in 1919 we have the "humilation" of the "Versailles Treaty". We have the "activities" of the so called "Freikorps" in 1920/21. We have the "Ruhr occupation" in 1923 that accelerates the breakdown of German economy and culminate in the hyperinflation where people lost alle hope and money. So they had no chance to (lets say) calm down a bit.Only then from 1925 to 1929 things turned and with the "Locarno-Treaties" our country started its way back into the international community. Life for "normal" people became slowly better and if you want to examine the growing "rate" of participation of Germans (men mostly) in shooting clubs I would look at first at the timespan from 1925 to 1929. We know that the prosperity ends with the US stock crash on October 25th 1929. Again we had a fast breakdown of German economy followed by an exorbitant rate of unemployment and we all know that Hitler used the situation to come to power. Well, it is of course allways good to have some "hard" statistic to substantiate a theory but if I would have lived in the "golden" twenties I for sure would have been just a "normal" and average German citizen -maybe a former soldier from the "Westfront" I can´t imagine myself to find distraction and joy in a shooting club - and by good I like this sport and I like to be engaged in weapons technique and history and I like to fire some rounds also, but under those conditions... ???!!!! I am sure it would be much, much easier for me to do it during the times of the new "Bundesrepublik" and the new economical properation (called Wirtschaftswunder). Well to cut the story short, it would be nice to see some "hard" statistical data concerning this subject. And now after a quick look at the clock I want to close for tonight and find my way into the bed hopefully dreaming about my actual project - the restoration of my M91/30 Mosin Nagant! :-):-)

While I can't comment on how common shooting sports were in Germany between the wars - though rifle clubs were common recruiting grounds for militant groups including the Nazis, I think Adolf Eichman joined the SS through one such club - Germany was always a heavily militarized nation so shooting sport would be encouraged as a means to either train or prepare people for military training or war. If nothing else if you don't have a trained soldier someone who knows how to shoot will do just as well. Many nations that are militarized encourage shooting such as Switzerland and Cuba.

Schütze literally means Shooter. Beschützer means protector. It has a double meaning in the German language.

I don't think her husband would like that.

Forgotten Weapons an issue but not an obstacle, keep on Ian, love your channel, btw the new slow mo footages are awesome

Forgotten Weapons I bet you kissed the FG-42.

Forgotten Weapons He's a lucky dude! Cute girl, loves firearms and history with great knowledge of the topic. As I said, Lucky dude!

Nicole Wiley Pretty cool that you have such knowledge of these interesting firearms and history! As a military firearms buff, puts a smile on my face! I would like to add one of these really cool Mausers to my own meager collection! Thanks for sharing your day to day with Ian and with us! I learned something new that day! Your husband is a lucky guy!

old days of youtube 😢

*hochachtungsvoll

And not with you with her. Great video thanks for sharing.

I wish that the US had made .22 Garand trainers soooooo damn much. But I guess the 1903 ones are still pretty cool...

I am working on mostly German .22's, 4mm, and Air Rifles. But I have enough examples now of other trainers to make a section of 'Foreign Trainers'. Examples I have to reference are Polish, Belgian, French, British, Dutch, Japanese, Italian, Czech, Hungarian, and Russian. I'm learning from scratch on all of them though, and unlike the German .22 training rifles, have only a few from each of the above mentioned countries.

Nicole Wiley Nicole, any chance you could make some more videos with Ian on the wonderful guns you have in stock, anything rare or interesting in design ? Many thanks.

Yes, actually working on that now. Have gotten a few requests to feature specific models. Unsure of where to post them to though. Forgotten Weapons may be the only reason this topic got the light it did.