The gun was produced from 1931 to 1938 in roughly 10,000 copies (in three main variants) and exported to Spain, Mexico, China and Yugoslavia, but also used domestically by the SS.

(The Reichswehr was prohibited by the Versailles Treaty from having sub-machine guns in service, although the German police were allowed to carry a small number.)

Secret funding was given to Vollmer to continue development, and this resulted in the VMP1926, which mostly differed from its predecessor by the removal of the cooling jacket.

In late 1930, the Reichswehr stopped supporting Vollmer financially; consequently he sold the rights to all his designs to the company known as Erma Werke (which is an abbreviation for Erfurter Maschinenfabrik, Berthold Geipel GmbH).

A provisional manual was printed in French as Provisoire sur le pistolet-mitrailleur Erma – Vollmer de 9mm, issued on December 26, 1939 and updated on January 6, 1940.

After the Germans conquered France, some EMPs armed the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism, which eventually became part of the SS Charlemagne division.

Numerous EMPs have been found in the last-stand battlefields of the SS Charlemagne division; most of these guns lack any German military stamps or marks.

Although many details of the mechanism were changed from the EMP, it retained Vollmer's telescoping main operating spring basically unchanged.

On the exterior, the most obvious differences are that the magazine housing was now almost vertical, although still canted slightly to the left and forward.