In the current year, you will never find a more revered and loved WW2 firearm as the STG-44. Wehraboos love it, tacticunts love it, Neo-Nazis fetishize it, and its in every WW2 video game ever made. its commonlyt cited as the first gun ever called an Assault Rifle, and how it was just a fantastic all around gun. I am here to tell you why this is bullshit.
To give some perspective on just how much of a boat anchor the STG-44 is, its worth noting that it is a 10 pound rifle. the entire gun is massive, even compared to other early assault rifles/automatic rifles. The 1918 Assault Phase Rifle, a 30-06 automatic rifle, weighed only 2-3 pounds more, and the FG-42 Type I weighed almost a full pound less than the STG-44.
Non stop I will hear about how high quality the StG-44 is. This is complete crap. Whenever people bring up the post war testing of the StG-44 and how it was shown to be poorly built and too fragile, you will get a hoard of wehraboos screaming about how "NO THEY TESTED A LATE WAR GUN THE EARLIER MP43 WAS MUCH HIGHER QUALITY". I personally have experience with an early MP43/1, an absolutely beautiful one in immaculate condition, and even it felt like if I dropped it the whole thing would bend in half. The stampings were thin, parts had a huge amount of flex to them, and the whole thing just felt awful. I remember from SHOT Show 2023, when PSA was showing off their STG-44 "reproduction", and one of my colleagues had said "did anyone else feel that the PSA STG-44 felt super low quality?" only for one of my other colleagues, who had experience with the same exact MP43/1 I messed with, to chime in and say "Yep, just like the real ones". The entire backbone of fetishizing how well made the STG-44 is comes from people who have never touched one in their life.