POTD: Buckle Up! – Axis Angem Belt Buckle Pistol
Sam.S 07.12.21
Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Here we have a belt buckle that is also a pistol. Called the Angem Belt Buckle Pistol, this rare piece of WWII desperation functioned as follows. This Belt Buckle Pistol is toggled via a system of levers. There is a lever to open the spring-loaded door, a lever to cock the four barrels, and individual levers to fire each barrel.
“Rare WWII Nazi escape device in the form of a four barrel Nazi Belt Buckle firing pistol. It is theorized that this device was developed as some kind of a last ditch escape device that would be used by high ranking SS, Army officers or Nazi party members to evade capture by the Americans or Russians. The original design was the product of inventor Louis Marquis, who supposedly came up with the idea for this design while interned in a WWI POW camp. As an engineer and inventor, Marquis refined his original design after his release and in 1943 reportedly received an order to make examples for Himmler’s SS
The front of the belt buckle has a large gold washed aluminum Nazi Army eagle affixed to it. Normally these eagles are the natural aluminum silver color. This is the first Nazi gold eagle the writer has seen on one of these buckles. According to page 31 of “Inside The Third Reich Memoirs” by Albert Speer, Hitler was the only member of the Nazi Party to wear the gold “badge of sovereignty”, the eagle with the swastika in its talons. Everyone else wore the round party badge.
-Rock Island Auction Company.”
Lot 1715: angem Belt Buckle Pistol 7.65 mm auto [Photograph found in Auction Catalog #50, Rock Island Auction Company]. (n.d.). Retrieved July 89, 2021, from https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/50/1715/angem-belt-buckle-pistol-765-mm-auto
