Weird facts you just discovered.

>>33300499
Even italy and maybe france did as well, maybe more.
The assault rifle was hardly a new concept when the germans rolled out the STG-44

>>33300499
What held back earlier development of automatic standard rifles?

I can see in WWI, using bolts and shotguns since you were either at 1000 yards or clearing a trench. But the sheer amount of bolt actions even when semi-auto was becoming standard by WWII seems ridiculous.

>>33300499
Very little of what the Germans produced during the second world war was original, it was innovative in the fact that they were the first to take these concepts seriously enough to implement them in large scale and home in on the ways that those ideas should be done.

>>33300532
Availability, it was expensive to manufacture new rifles and semi automatics were astronomical in cost compared to bolt actions. It's a bit difficult to justify committing to anything but the tried and true during a war that has bankrupted virtually every nation involved and just the cost of equipping uniforms and food has to be done entirely under credit.

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>>33300518
Italy is actually the father of the 8mm Kurz round.
Their 7.35 round was copied by the Swiss and Russians.
The Russians went to 5mm and a slightly longer case before bumping up to 7.62 then back down to 5.45.
The Swiss bumped it to 8mm provided it to the Germans.

>>33300532
Production methods were expensive back then, look up the pederson device.

>>33300532

all the major powers during the war were shitting bricks trying to arm their soldiers during ww1. they set their factories to work on whatever they knew worked and could be pumped out fast.

it's why you see the Russians, French, germans and british all using a fuck ton of non-standard guns because they literally were grabbing whatever they had and giving it to people. many of these nations even took extremely old single shot rifles and used them like the French using fucking rolling blocks.

>>33300588
damn a 7.62 case necked to 5mm would be bitchin fast

>>33300532
In addition to what others said, it was still a developing technology. Some of the mechanisms being tested, like short recoil, were dead-ends for rifles. Many of the guns were overly complex. Militaries wanted full rifle cartridges and sometimes wanted to convert existing rifles, so the guns ended up weighing 10+ pounds.

>>33300518
Right. The Germans were just the first ones to mass field a weapon that ticked mostly every box of what we consider an assault rifle today and coined the name.

>>33300588
I think the Germans just went with the 8mm Kurz round because it meant they could keep using the same barrel size from their rifles, rather than having to set up new machines for one particular rifle.

>>33300676
powder and barrel material was kind of shit then so it wouldn't have worked out well.

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>>33300499
Don;t forget France

>>33301366
this along with the way the case was designed allowed for more similar tooling for the chambers

>>33301616
The balance on that gun must have been horrid. Thompson seemed to be the only designer of the era to use a pistol grip.