Hitler's Garands: German Self-loading Rifles of WW2 by W Darren Weaver

Hitler's Wehrmacht began World War II armed with the bolt action K98k, a rifle only cosmetically different from that with which Imperial germany had fought the Great War a quarter-century earlier. Then in 1940, after a number of earlier disappointments, the Heereswaffenamt (HWaA, the Army Weapons Office) issued a requirement for a new self-loading rifle, although lingering official distrust of gas operation saw to it that a main stipulation remained: "The barrel may not be bored to extract gas."