The StG 44 fulfilled its role effectively, particularly on the Eastern Front, offering a greatly increased volume of fire compared to standard infantry rifles.

That fighting style was taken over by the widespread introduction of machine guns, which made use of these powerful cartridges to suppress the enemy at long range.

[14] This practice left a large gap in performance: the rifle was not effective at the ranges it could theoretically reach while being much larger and more powerful than needed for close combat.

He pointed out that firefights rarely took place beyond 800 metres (870 yd), about half the 2 km (1.2 mi) sight line range of the 7.92×57mm round from a Mauser Gewehr 98 rifle or less for MG 08 machine gun.

The German Army showed no interest, as it already had the MP 18 submachine gun firing 9 mm pistol rounds and did not want to create a new cartridge.

HWA requirements were for a rifle that was shorter and with equal or less weight to the Karabiner 98k and as accurate out to 400 metres (440 yd); and be select-fire with a rate of fire under 450 rounds per minute.

The German army had been attempting to introduce semi-automatic weapons such as the Gewehr 41, but these proved troublesome in service, and production was insufficient to meet requirements.

The German 7.92×57mm Mauser chambered FG 42 battle rifle/automatic rifle was one of the first inline firearms incorporating a "straight-line" recoil configuration and an elevated sight line over the bore axis.

Contracts for rifles firing the 7.92×33mm Kurz[3] round were issued to both Walther and Haenel (whose design group was headed by Hugo Schmeisser), were asked to submit prototype weapons under the name Maschinenkarabiner 1942 ("machine carbine") or MKb 42.

[b] Nonetheless, production was allowed to continue, since the Gustloff company had been developing a machine carbine for normal rifle cartridges as a cover since July 1942.

This goal was eventually realized to be impossible; the MP 43 cartridge was too weak to fire rifle grenades, too inaccurate for sniping, and the weapon was too short for bayonet fighting.

[14] On 6 February 1943, an early production MP 43[e] was presented to Hitler and Colonel Friedrich Kittel, with the former expressing his considerable annoyance at the change in designation.

Shortly after this unveiling, Minister of Armaments Albert Speer sent a telegram from Hitler to the Waffenamt demanding the termination of the machine carbine project.

[23] In the spring of 1943, small batches of the new weapon were used by troops in the Eastern front, with the Army Group North receiving 2,000 MKb 42(H) rifles on 21 April 1943.

Meanwhile, officers and other ranks in the Army were showing a growing interest in the machine carbine, with the guards at Hitler's headquarters enthusiastically expressing their approval upon receiving the new weapons.

A properly trained soldier with a StG 44 had an improved tactical repertoire, in that he could effectively engage targets at longer ranges than with an MP 40, but be much more useful than the Kar 98k in close combat, as well as provide covering fire like a light machine gun.

The StG 44 was an intermediate weapon for the period; the muzzle velocity from its 419 mm (16.5 in) barrel was 685 m/s (2,247.4 ft/s), compared to 760 m/s (2,493 ft/s) of the Karabiner 98k, 744 m/s (2,440.9 ft/s) of the British Bren, 600 m/s (1,968.5 ft/s) of the M1 carbine, and 365 m/s (1,197.5 ft/s) achieved by the MP40.

[30] Germany had ammunition logistics problems, thus Hitler's calculations came true in part: for the initially planned 200 million rounds per month, 86,000 additional workers were necessary, but were not available.

[18] One unusual addition to the design was the Krummlauf; a bent barrel attachment for rifles with a periscope sighting device for shooting around corners from a safe position.

[18] In a somewhat unrelated development, Mauser continued design work on a series of experimental weapons in an effort to produce an acceptable service-wide rifle for the short cartridge system.

[31] Other countries to use the StG 44 after World War II included Czechoslovakia (although it was not officially adopted)[31] and Yugoslavia, where units such as the 63rd Paratroop Battalion were equipped with it until the 1980s,[32] when the rifles were ultimately transferred to Territorial Defense reserves or sold to friendly regimes in the Middle East and Africa.

[31] Argentina manufactured their own trial versions of the StG 44 made by CITEFA in the late 1940s and early 1950s,[33][34] but instead adopted the FN FAL in 1955, because it used the then more common and powerful 7.62×51mm NATO round, which also lacked connections with the Third Reich.

New semi-automatic civilian reproductions of the MKb 42(H), MP 43/1, and StG 44 are being manufactured in Germany today by SSD (Sport Systeme Dittrich) and distributed by HZA Kulmbach GmbH[35] in the original 7.92×33mm Kurz chambering and accepting the standard magazines.

A late-war U.S. assessment derided the StG 44 as "mediocre", "bulky", and "unhandy", declaring it incapable of sustained automatic fire and prone to jamming, though the report accepted that its accuracy was "excellent for a weapon of its type".

[39] "The principle of this weapon – the reduction of muzzle impulse to get useful automatic fire within actual ranges of combat – was probably the most important advance in small arms since the invention of smokeless powder.

In July 1943, the Soviet Technical Council of the People's Commissariat for Armament (NKV) met to consider new foreign weapons firing lower-powered rounds.

[42] United States and, later, NATO developed assault rifles along a roughly similar path by at first adding selective-fire capability in a reduced power, full-caliber cartridge.

[31] After World War II, the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc states supplied allied regimes and guerrilla movements with captured German arms, such as the StG 44, along with newly manufactured or repackaged 7.92×33mm ammunition.

The gun was controlled by a wired joystick, vision was provided by a video camera mounted behind a scope, and the picture was displayed on an LCD screen.

[62] In 2013 a small number of StG44 rifles were seized from rebels in Burkina Faso, it is thought that they were looted from government depots during the Libyan Civil War and later sold in the black market.