Erkennungsmarken reference

[Thanatos]

Gday Fella's
Whilst Erkennungsmarken are not really my thing I love reference material.
I picked up this little gem ex UK last week.
Sorry about the order of the images but I still have not worked out how to swap them around.
Cover,example of text and images and a list of abbreviations and their German-English translations.


The authors are Michael and Ian Burroughs.These gent's are in the UK.
Hope it's useful to someone.

[Matt L]

Ouch- the infamous German Identity Discs of World War Two It's as far as you can get from a 'gem' I'm afraid Dave; in fact I once calculated it has almost exactly as many errors as true facts. It's really just a very, very poor- I can't even call it a book LOL

Just in those shots you've posted there's one extremely obvious fake (upper right); one ludicrous, unsupported statement- about discs being painted black to avoid shining in the field (lower left); 'Freiwilligen' and its abbreviation are mis-spelled- and one abbreviation given is dubious (ei is transposed as ie- and I've never seen just 'Frei'); 'Gr' is misidentified as standing for 'Gross', but it's actually 'Grenadier' (both lower middle); 'Nachschub' is also mis-spelled as 'Nach scub' and very badly 'Verfügungstruppe' is mis-translated as 'reserve unit'! (upper middle). There's more but I'm sure you get the point. That one abbreviations list- lower middle- has 8 errors on it alone. It's really quite terrible so what you have there is bird cage lining or kindling sadly...

[Adrian Stevenson]

Matt is correct. I bought a copy when it came out many years ago and I was very dissappointed. And I speak as someone who loves books.

Cheers, Ade.

[Paul D]

Me too i also got a copy but soon realised it contained a lot of incorrect info etc !!

[Matt L]

I was lucky- a friend sent me just a photocopy so I wasn't cheated out of any money LOL I proceeded to highlight all the errors and each page turned yellow... I can't believe anyone published this thing; it sure tarnished their reputation. Worse still I heard Ulrich of England, I think it was, published a larger book written by one or both of these guys on discs a while back- I've never seen a copy but I cringe at what new horrors surely lie within.

Really these days, save on rare occasions, there's no point in bothering with books when it comes to militaria- they're usually so limited in what they contain, you're usually better off using the Internet; there are so many images and so much information out there to find that no book could ever hope to equal. Plus you get live support in places like this And I too speak as someone who loves books but in cases like this has reluctantly recognized their significant limitations...

[Thanatos]

Thanks gents from your comments re this publication.You live and learn I guess,didn't loose to much coin so the damage is not severe.
Appreciated.
All the best fella's.

[Matt L]

Oh good. And at least you won't be taken in by the misinformation in there- that'd be worse.

[don_kihotis7]

Pity that people are releasing stuff like that.

[Thanatos]

Oh good. And at least you won't be taken in by the misinformation in there- that'd be worse.

That's to true Matt.
Thanks again mate.