Re: Top Handgun of the early WWI era?
Something I've learned from watching a lot of Forgotten Weapons on youtube is that there are basically two reasons for a gun not being commercially successful: (1) it's a bit rubbish, (2) it's great but too expensive. The tricky bit is working out which one applied.
At this era of tech, the firearms superstition that revolvers as a class are more reliable than automatics has been true in living memory, but it isn't true any more. So a character who wants the best available and never mind tradition will probably go for an automatic.
As far as I can tell, 9mm Parabellum is readily available in Germany, fairly available in the rest of Europe until the outbreak of war, and quite rare outside Europe. It doesn't get internationally popular until the end of the war. (May be less relevant in alternate history.)
Which comes down to: I'll also say probably the M1911. Probably not widely available outside the US at this point.
The Webley-Fosbery gives you techie credibility, and it's still in commercial production until 1924 and sold until 1939 (and it shows up in The Maltese Falcon); it's popular with target shooters, and .455 Webley is readily available from the UK. But probably only about 5,000 were made over its production lifetime, while over 68,000 1911s have been delivered to US forces by 1918.
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