Bet you have never heard of these before, (or the unsung heroes who carried them)
Ian with Forgotten Weapons has a great video above on the Danish Schultz & Larsen Model Rigspolitikarabin in/42 (Rplt. 42) in 8x58mm Danish Rimmed.
Made for the Danish Coastal Police (Kystpolitiet) by S&L during the German occupation of WWII, just 600-1,200 (figures vary, with Walter holding that production was lacking due to persistent sabotage by patriotic mill workers at Schultz) of these 22-inch barreled, four-shot bolt guns produced from the company’s M38 target rifle design.
Most were converted post-war so it is very rare to come across a complete martial example.
Photo RIA
The men who carried these rifles had an interesting story. The Danish coastal police (Kystpolitiet) was formed from officers of the downsizing Rigspoliti (National Police) in 1941, with a very specific mission.
Ominously, the coastal police was formed by the Nazis with a two-fold mission: capture those landing secretly on Jutland’s beaches such as Allied spies, and catch those trying to leave without authorisation (i.e. Danish Jews). However, it should be noted that, as noted by Leo Goldberger in his work “The Rescue of the Danish Jews: Moral Courage Under Stress” the coastal police largely neglected their duties on the latter.
Instead, they helped keep a lookout for German patrols and pass that vital info on to resistance and refugee groups and went on strike in August 1943 when the Germans moved to dismantle the Danish military, and replace with the police with the Gestapo-like HIPO corps.
Once that occurred, Danish police and resistance groups helped some 7,200 Jews and 700 of their non-Jewish relatives to escape via boat to safety in neutral Sweden, which accepted the Danish refugees.
A boat used by Danish fishermen to transport Jews to safety in Sweden during the German occupation. Denmark, date uncertain. — YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, via USHMM
At the same time, it should be noted that Danish state police guarding undelivered rifles at S&L accidentally “lost” as many as 200 Rplt. 42s waiting to be delivered, these guns making their way instead to the growing underground resistance.
This deed was repaid with the deportation of 1 in 5 Danish policemen to German concentration camps. As noted by the U.S Holocaust Museum, while “some 120 Danish Jews died during the Holocaust, either in Theresienstadt or during the flight from Denmark. This relatively small number represents one of the highest Jewish survival rates for any German-occupied European country.”
The group also contributed directly to the Allied cause. One, coastal police officer, Olaf Jørgensen, wound up in a concentration camp after helping downed British aircrewmen escape on a ferry to Sweden, which he bribed ferrymen to take in exchange for some oranges that “fell off a truck” on the way to German troops in Norway.
