If a German soldier lost his rifle during World War 2 he did not simply turn to his squad leader for a spare. It didn’t work that way, a squad leader was merely a soldier in charge of a small band and took his own weapon and gear. He was not a walking storage area so had nothing extra to give out.
In German army, a soldier’s gun was his primary duty. Every rifle was given a serial number, written in a soldier’s ID book, known as a Soldbuch. If you lost that gun, you were in big trouble. You couldn’t just ask for a replacement without having a very good reason. You had to speak to some kind of senior sergeant known as the Hauptfeldwebel.
If you lost the gun because you are careless or lazy then you could be punished or tried. The army was very strict with the equipment. Getting an actual replacement from the supply trucks behind the lines could take days or weeks.
Because of this, if a soldier lost his gun during a big battle, in most cases he had to find one himself. He would pick up a rifle from a dead soldier on the ground another German or even an enemy. He had to do this in order to continue fighting with the officers dealing with the paperwork for a new official rifle. So the squad leader did not give out guns he primarily reported the loss and left the soldier to deal with the consequences.