This machine also kills fascists

As a counterpoint to the B-17, I'd propose the PPSh-41, the iconic submachine gun of the Red Army in World War II.  Like the B-17, this was a mass-produced (five million units during the war) weapon that, in the hands of a few scared farm boys could really fuck up some Nazi shit.

But unlike the B-17, which dealt its damage from afar, this was - short of a bayonet - the most up-close and personal weapon possible.

Ready for his close-up

The Russians probably got serious about integrating this weapon into their tactics after the disastrous Winter War in Finland, in which (according to the WarisBoring post linked below) "well-camouflaged Finnish ski infantry equipped with excellent Suomi submachine guns decimated Soviet units in ambushes. Afterwards, the Red Army prioritized developing an effective submachine gun that could be cheaply mass produced."

They succeeded, and the PPSh-41 helped change the logic and the course of the war.  With 1.5 million units produced just in 1942, the weapon rapidly became ubiquitous in the Russian infantry.  According to Wikipedia:  "The Soviets would often equip platoons and sometimes entire companies with the weapon, giving them excellent short-range firepower."  This paid huge dividends at Stalingrad, where, for the first time the Russians infantry could obtain a firepower advantage over the Wehrmacht, if they could get close enough:

From the diary of a German soldier*:

September 26. Our regiment is involved in constant heavy fighting. After the elevator was taken the Russians continued to defend themselves just as stubbornly. You don’t see them at all, they have established themselves in houses and cellars and are firing on all sides, including from our rear-barbarians, they use gangster methods. In the blocks captured two days ago Russian soldiers appeared from somewhere or other and fighting has flared up with fresh vigour. Our men are being killed not only in the firing line, but in the rear, in buildings we have already occupied. The Russians have stopped surrendering at all... 

October 4. Our regiment is attacking the Barrikady settlement. A lot of Russian tommy gunners have appeared. Where are they bringing them from? 

October 10. The Russians are so close to us that our planes cannot bomb them. We are preparing for a decisive attack...

He died there.

The gun makes an appearance in this iconic photo from the end of the battle, one of the great propaganda shots of all time, illustrating both the material advantages of participation in the socialist system, and, perhaps a little too well, the consequences of opposing it:

The gun became a tribal marker of the Red Army, with the same identity-shaping power as the six-gun in an Old West story.  In Volokolamsk Highway - a book that in glorifying the rifle also illustrates its many shortcomings - a submachine gun is the last signifier of identity for a man who has failed his unit, but is given the mercy of dying as as solider:

Baurjan is irate. Brudny had abandoned the road without orders and fled! He berates Brudny, calling him a coward and saying, "You think it was only a road you abandoned? No, you've given up Moscow!" He then throws Brudny out of the battalion, telling him to go back across the river where he can either fight the Germans on his own or join them. Thus shamed, Brudny hands his papers over to Boszhanov and slowly trudges away. The only concession Baurjan makes is that he allows Brudny to take a tommy gun with him.

Further west the gun made an appearance at the surrender of Breslau, now (as every schoolchild knows) Wrocław:

And all the way to Berlin - this shot was taken in front of the ruins of the Reichstag in 1945:

The Chinese and North Koreans used them, and they were still turning up in the Iraq War.

Hickock45 demonstrates the PPSh-41 here:





* Maybe - as near as I can tell the source of the quotations is Chuikov, who apparently stated in his memoirs that he had the diary in his "personal files."


WarisBoring:  The PPSh-41 Submachine Gun Makes Me Want to Shout ‘Uraah!’ (link)

Wikipedia - (link)