I happen to have a 1944 Long Branch Number 4, unfired, and a 1945 dou Kar 98k with about 100 rounds through it since I took the grease out.
The Long Branch is a beautiful rifle with a deep, rich finish..... but it ain't SHINY. Actually, I rather suspect that it might be a lunchbucket gun, although I have seen other Long Branches that are almost this nice, and they were issue pieces. But it doesn't reflect light.
The Mauser has a shiny deep blue finish, too reflective for war duty.
Considering that Fritz was LOSING the war in early 1945, it was nothing less than sheer insanity to be producing a battle rifle with a standard of fit and finish to rival many commercial rifles.
IMHO, the mania for excellence was a good chunk of why Fritz lost the war in the first place. You can say the same thing about tanks: our Shermans were junk, but they ran and they didn't break down. the Tigers were masterpieces of engineering, but were halfway impossible to keep operational.... and they took about 5 times the man-hours and 3 times the materials to build.
With semiautomatic and automatic machine-tools, the machining takes pregressive less and less time. Fritz was spending as many man-hours finishing his rifles and making them pretty, as he was spending making them in the first place.
Sorta silly.
