Actually they wet in the opposite direction from PDWs entirely.  In a sort of half assed way Crete might have set the US Army back 20 years.

The German parachute was hot garbage.  It was too low on the back, not steerable, the suspension lines centered in the lower back, and with no deployment bag, opening shock was pretty significant.  The fallschirmjager could not jump with equipment. Their gear went in equipment cases, dropped separately.











Armed with pistols. facing British and NZ troops with .303 rifles, they were outranged, helpless, and got chewed up. Even with a PDW or SMG, they were outranged significantly by riflemen while they went hunting for equipment bundles. Significantly, fallschirmjager were solar powered airborne and never jumped at night. Which made sense as finding their equipment in daylight was bad enough.

Given their own funding stream they demanded a full powered battle rifle, the FG42, and didn't want any STG44 type of assault rifle.  Which was an out of date concept as by then they weren't jumping anywhere.

I wonder if there would have been such a push for the M14 and a selective fire 7.62mm weapon if the FG42 hadn't come along and demonstrated a sorta-successful capability.

At any rate, a very small number of fallschirmjager jumped in SMGs, but rifles and MGs were out of the question, and a contested landing zone is a tough place to be looking for an equipment case.

Its curious that they rejected assault rifles when that was presented later as an option, but no, PDWs did not solve that problem in the least.

5.7x28 PDW fits all the bills.

Velocity - can engage out to 400 yards, and defeat body armor

High capacity