In 1944, during the last months of World War 2, when northern Italy was occupied by the Nazi German troops and admininstrated by the puppet-state of the RSI, the italian engineer Giovanni Oliani created an interesting SMG in 9x19mm-Parabellum caliber of which 14 prototypes were built by the Armaguerra plant located in the town of Cremona. It never entered mass production, however, due to both the end of WW-2 and to the massive concurrence of the well-known Beretta products. This weapon, however, represented a massive step forward with respect to WW2-era submachine gun technology, introducing the "slender frame: in fact, it was approximately configured in an "L" shape, the shorter part was the face of the weapon, including the striking pin in it; when firing, the weight of the longer part of the L-shape, and consequently the greatest part of the weapon's mass, "moved" towards the barrel, thus balancing it during sustained fully-automatic fire. The Armaguerra OG-44 was gas-operated with selective-fire (with a cyclic rate of 500 rpm), and had ventilation holes on the handguard that were a consequence of the construction method, being made by stampings from a single 1.5 mm thick steel sheet. Fixed wooden buttstocks and folding metal stocks were both available. According to the original project, the Armaguerra OG-44 had to be fed by 25-round magazines, but to accelerate an eventual adoption procedure by the Italian Armed Forces, it was engineered to accept the widespread Beretta 20, 30 and 40-rounders. The Armaguerra OG-44 had a 292 mm long barrel, a 788 mm total length, and weighed 3.5 kg when unloaded.

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