CZ: The Czech Factory That Survived the Nazis, the Communists, and Privatisation — Then Bought Colt
In 1936, Czechoslovakia built a secret arms factory disguised as residential housing in a small Moravian town called Uherský Brod — as far from the German border as geography allowed. Within three years, the Nazis took it. The factory made Mauser rifles for the Wehrmacht. Then the communists took it. The factory made the vz. 58 assault rifle, the Škorpion machine pistol, and the CZ 75 — one of the most copied pistol designs in history. The communist system classified the CZ 75's patents as "secret," which meant no one inside Czechoslovakia could copy it, but the factory was forbidden from protecting the design abroad. Italian, Turkish, Chinese, Israeli, and Swiss companies cloned it freely. The designers never saw a cent. When the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, most Czech arms factories collapsed. Zbrojovka Brno — the factory that built the BREN gun — went bankrupt. Česká zbrojovka survived, privatized, and started building for NATO instead of the Warsaw Pact. Then in 2021, CZ did the unthinkable. It bought Colt — the company founded by Samuel Colt in 1836, the brand that armed American soldiers for nearly two centuries, the company that had filed for bankruptcy twice because its private equity owners gutted it. A Czech factory that was seized by two occupying powers bought the most iconic gun company in American history for $220 million. This is how that happened. — Sources and further reading: Česká zbrojovka official history — czub.cz/en/about-us-history Colt CZ Group corporate history — coltczgroup.com/en/about-us-history CZ 75 Wikipedia entry — en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CZ_75 Colt bankruptcy coverage — Bloomberg, NPR, The Daily Beast (2015) CZ acquisition of Colt — all4shooters.com, Fortune, Guns.com (February 2021) Colt CZ Group 2024 Annual Report — coltczgroup.com Sellier & Bellot acquisition — American Rifleman (January 2024) — #CZ #CeskaZbrojovka #Colt #CZ75 #Firearms #Manufacturing #ColdWar #Engineering #Privatisation #ColtCZGroup
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