das reich

[Matt L]

That example possibly provides an interesting lesson about Erkennungsmarken and the variability of their lettering. Jean Höidal shows an example from this very unit that has a very close Stammrollennummer, 4638, so one would expect they should be identical- but they're not. That would usually suggest one is a fake since it's a bit difficult to imagine the only two discs I, at least, have ever seen just happened to fall just on either side of the change- but it's not impossible, so I looked closer. The 3 is different as is the K, the D, and Höidal's examples has the quotation marks as is proper- first low, second high, which the posted example does not; fakers often screw this up and fail to realize that the Germans don't put both quotation marks high. That didn't bode well for this new example. However- I noticed that while the last three numbers of the Stammrollennummer have no matches, both discs have a '4' and they looked quite similar- in fact they do appear to be identical; moreover the parentheses also look to be the same, and possibly the Sigrunen; although it's harder to tell with those but at least they're of very similar appearence and not clearly different. That all does seem to suggest that the 3./ SS-Deutschland Ersatz-Bataillon may well have changed the majority of its stamps at some point after the early 4000s- keeping the special characters (the parentheses, and Sigrunen), and, strangely, at least the '4' (perhaps other numbers as well, but not the '3').

[Paul D]

Excellent examination and explanation Matt