POTD: When Luger and Bergman Meet – The Husqvarna Lahti Model 40
Sam.S 11.03.23
Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Here we have a mixture of a Luger and a Bergman pistol. When Sweden couldn’t get enough Walther P38s in 1940, they turned to Finland’s homegrown Lahti L35 pistol. This sturdy 9mm had proven itself in the brutal 1939-40 Winter War against the Soviets. Sweden licensed production from Lahti’s company VKT, contracting manufacture to Husqvarna. But material shortages forced metallurgy downgrades on the Swedish M40 version. Cracked slides and other issues cropped up. Still, around 80,000 M40s were churned out into the 1940s for Swedish forces. The simple blowback M40 worked fine in freezing Scandinavian winters despite flaws. Later supplanted by the Hi-Power, some unmarked M40s also went to the Norwegian resistance. So while the M40 wasn’t perfect, it got Sweden through the war. Today it remains an interesting example of wartime small arms manufacturing and subcontracting.
Lot 4719: Four European Semi-Automatic Pistols – A) Husqvarna Lahti Model 40 Pistol. (n.d.-bb). Rock Island Auction Company. photograph. Retrieved November 2, 2023, from https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/1034/4719/four-european-semi-automatic-pistols.
