Included with this pistol is an extensive collection of documentation, mainly in the form of correspondence between a previous owner and two interested parties. The first party was James Rankin, noted author on the subject of Walther handguns, who had the chance to examine photographs of the pistol and stated confidently that it was a late wartime production (c.1944) Walther PP and that the engraving looked appropriate for a non-factory engraver or jeweler. Among other suggestions, Rankin encouraged the owner to seek out verification of the inscription. Following this advice, the owner reached out to and contacted Helgart and Folkrat Berger, the surviving children of General Berger. In turn, this led to a long correspondence between the owner and Folkrat, including both information on the handgun and general friendly exchanges on the subjects of family, travel and occasionally politics. Central in the documentation is a signed affidavit from both of the Berger children, which claims this pistol as one of a grouping ordered and prepared by the General as presentation pieces for distinguished men and officers in the Waffen-SS on his own personal initiative. In addition to a number that had been distributed prior to war's end, a group of them were in the possession of the family when hostilities closed out. In 1945 they were living with their mother, who was running a convalescent home for crippled German veterans and witnessed the handguns being confiscated by an American officer, one Lieutenant Davenport, along with any other weapons (and a number of valuables; in the letters, Folkrat mentions that virtually everything of value the family had was "liberated" during the occupation of Germany). Born in 1896, Gottlob Berger interrupted his education to be a teacher to volunteer for World War One; during the War he would be injured 4 times, lose his three brothers (two to combat action, one convicted of espionage in America and executed) and earn the Iron Cross 1st Class. After the war, he was a member of the Einwohnerwehr militia and became a National Socialist "old fighter" in 1922, being briefly arrested in the aftermath of the Beer Hall Putsch. Rejoining the Party in 1929, he signed on for the Sturmabteilung (Stormtroopers, aka Brown Shirts), leading Schutzhaft ("protective custody", a euphemism for rounding up adversaries and undesirable, many of whom wound up in concentration camps without trials) operations, acted as a school inspector and a Cultural Ministry official. He would be tapped to join the Allgemeine-SS by Himmler himself in 1936, originally to head up the SS Sports Office. In 1938 Berger was made chief of the recruiting department of the SS Main Office. In this role would be responsible for reorganizing and staffing the combat formations of the SS in the aftermath of the Invasion of Poland, which would be formalized as the Waffen-SS (Armed SS, a term he is credited with coining in some sources). Finding enough men for the Waffen-SS was a constant struggle, having to square off against the Wehrmacht, both directly for the limited pool of prime young German recruits, and politically as the traditional armed forces maneuvered to keep Himmler's private force from expanding. Berger solved the problem by going outside of Germany, recruiting ethnic Germans from occupied lands and setting the precedent of non-German SS troopers with units formed from Denmark, Norway, and Belgium. Over time, as the manpower need continued to grow, Berger continually widened the net, resulting in a wide array of foreign fighters seeing action with the Waffen-SS, the organization of "anti-communist volunteers" expressly committed to action against the Soviets, and the formation of the Sonderkommando Dirlewanger. Led by Oskar Dirlewanger, a decorated WWI combat vet, National Socialist, and convicted felon, the unit was composed of convicted criminals, originally focusing on poachers with outdoorsman and marksman skills, but later expanding to virtually anyone willing to trade prison stripes for feldgrau, including captured Soviets and political dissidents. In contrast to Wehrmacht "penal battalion" units, which were run with brutal discipline by military police officers authorized to kill at any disobedience, Dirlewanger's outfit was crooked all the way to the top, and the men essentially were allowed to run wild so long as they kept their base impulses targeted towards "undesirables". Even in an outfit with a history as grim as the Waffen-SS, Dirlewanger and his henchmen still managed to be a blight on the organization, committing numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity, both under the pretense of their role as "anti-bandit/anti-partisan" fighters and also in their down time because they just felt like it. Though Berger's recruiting practices flew directly in the face of Himmler's ideal of the Waffen-SS as an elite band of Aryan knights and exemplars of the Nazi movement, they were critical to providing enough manpower to keep the organization productive and relevant. While all this was going on, Berger also acted as Chief of Political Operations in the occupied Eastern territories (where he was an architect of the "Heuaktion", a plan to take 40,000+ Polish children to Germany for forced labor), was placed in charge of German POW camps, acted as a chief of the Volkssturm, and acted as a field commander of Waffen-SS forces in the "National Redoubt" in the Alps before making his surrender to the 101st Airborne near Berchtesgaden. At Nuremberg, in addition to the general charges leveled at the upper ranks of the SS, he would also be charged with organizing slave labor (for his activities in Eastern Europe in general and the Heuaktion in particular), mistreatment of POWs (particularly the illegal force-marching of POWs away from the front lines with inadequate food and support and the reprisal killing of French General Gustave Mesney following a Resistance hit on German General Fritz von Brodowski), and war crimes and crimes against humanity (with particular emphasis on the actions of Dirlewanger, for whom he was considered legally responsible). While acquitted on some charges, he was first sentenced to 25 years in jail, which was then reduced to 10 on review, and finally served 6 years and change before being released in 1951. In his post-war life, he settled in West Germany and remained a supporter of right-wing causes, including advocating for the social redemption of SS men so they could join NATO-aligned armed forces in anticipation of an open shooting war with the Soviet Union, and passed on in 1975. Among other decorations, Berger was a recipient of both the 1914 and 1939 First and Second Class Iron Crosses, Hindenberg Cross, the Knight's Cross of the Friedrich Order, the SS Honor Sword and SS Honor Ring, the Knight's Cross of the War Merit Cross with Swords, and the Golden Party Badge. The pistol itself is a late-WWII PP as noted by Rankin, with "eagle/swastika" proofs on the appropriate areas, traditional slide markings, matching external numbers and a flat base magazine. On the upper left side of the slide, professionally cut through the factory blue, is the inscription "In herzlicher Kameradschaft/G.Berger SS-Obergruppenfuhrer" (In Cordial Companionship).