Article about: Yesterday at the flea-market I was offered three German dog-tags - two I bought, third one I've a option on. One a NSKK dog-tag I'm happy with, looked through the forum no issues with it. Th
Yesterday at the flea-market I was offered three German dog-tags - two I bought, third one I've a option on. One a NSKK dog-tag I'm happy with, looked through the forum no issues with it. The second one I bought is what I took to be a Gendarmie dog-tag looked through the forum can't find another similar one. Stamping are - KDR.D.GEND.STRASSBURG/ELS which I take to be ***.*. Gendarmie Strassburg/Elsass does anyone have a idea what the first part of the abbreviation could stand for ? or if I'm thinking long the right lines? on the reverse stamped is the blood group.
The third one I didn't buy, supposedly a SS dog-tag, what put me off was SS didn't have rune styling (looking through threads, I see now, not all did) and the stamping I didn't understand - which on reflection could be 7th SS Division, only a guess. Do members have any ideas? Regards
I've not seen the abbreviations "DR.D" before but you're right about the Gendarmerie part of course; the only possibilities I know of for the first bit might be 'Deutsches-Reichsbahn Depot', but that's not at all certain. I can see the railway having a Gendarmerie, so it's reasonable at least. I guess the thing to check is if there was a depot at Strassburg/Els.
I don't like that 'SS' disc at all- it's purporting to be the Deutschland Regiment (abbreviated simply SS-,,D'' on discs), and the 7. is the 7. Kompanie. But it lacks the quotation marks the few originals I've see have, and overall it just doesn't look right to me. I'd definitely have passed on that one too unless the person who dug it up were someone I trusted completely.
Hello Matt,
Thanks for the post, what you suggestion is a strong possibility, I'll have to get researching. Its hard to see from the photo, but the stamping start is actually - KDR.D. perhaps the K is "Kreis" which would make "Kreis Deutsche-Bahn Depot" a bit of mouthful, but Germans do have a love of these long nouns, have to check it out.
The SS dog tag belongs to a man I'm on nodding terms with, I did seize up when he showed me the tag, asking 70€ for it, told him my concerns about faked SS dog tags. He said, this one was genuine he'd got it from the author of the black book about SS dog tags. As I only know the green covered reference book Deutsche Erkennungsmarken by Jean Höidal, I didn't give much credence to what he say - treated it as just a sales pitch. Since then, I've learnt there's a black book - "Die Erkennungsmarken der SS - Einheiten" (pictured) now I'm wondering, maybe its still a sales pitch, but I'd love to get a peep inside. Again thanks for your help.
Oh duh- of course; I didn't notice the K or, it seems, read your post very well LOL KDR is Kommandantur, and since all are capitals, I believe it's simply Kommandantur der Gendarmerie Strassburg/Els. Normally in German the 'der' would be a lower case letter, but that isn't true when everything is capitalized.
And just because someone's written a book doesn't necessarily mean anything- there are many discs in Höidal's first edition that I have doubts about and there's that Burroughs guy whose first publication was absolutely awful, so I suspect his second, published by Ulrich of England, is just as bad. I can't see how any publisher could be sure the book someone submits is any good- since we ourselves are often stumped LOL I've never read this SS disc book but given how many fakes there are out there and how few good ones, I'm dubious anyone could have enough to write a useful book. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find many questionable examples within. I'd love to know the proof he must have to say that Deutschland disc is real...
Hi Matt,
I did pick up KDR.D. in the abbreviations list, which has a small d - as it should be and it was a small doubt, plus I always thought of Kommandantur as being one man, which couldn't be right as rank is not included on tags. Reading your second post - the penny dropped - its a number of men - equivalent to Heer's Stab units. Then I thought the roll number 219 was high for a administration unit, on the other hand Strasbourg did at the time have a population of nearly 200K and they had gone to the trouble of having two stamps cut for the dog tags - the KDR.D.GEND.STRASSBURG/ELS and BL.Gr. (they are much too uniform and neat to be hand stamped) I assume they were thinking in high numbers.
Regarding the SS tag I wont be buying it - I'm sure I could get its price down to 60€, but I don't believe the sales pitch and your right - too much uncertainly. Unless of course, the seller shows up at the next flea-market with this black book under his arm with a picture of this tag or something very near it in the book, then I might take it. To be honest I get more of a buzz, when I find a good Gebirgsjäger dog tag, any day. Your information was most welcome.
Regards
Well just because the roll number is 219 doesn't mean there were 219 personnel active there at any given time- he was just the 219th man there; and also it's not necessarily the case that he was assigned to the Kommandantur, it may be that they simply kept the roll, like a Stammkompanie in an Infanterie unit. The disc just tells someone where the roll on which a soldier's details are recorded- not necessarily where he's serving or, sometimes, even actually served.
Even if the seller can show you the disc in the book, that just means the authors believe its real- it doesn't prove anything. It has the side-effect of affecting their reputations but that isn't any big issue because it's just an opinion and we can all be wrong LOL It wouldn't to me be sufficient to even risk 60EUR since the disc itself has nothing positive to me- I see nothing that makes me think it might actually be real and thus worth a chance.
Gendarmie + SS Erkennungsmarken
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