Serge your Weyerberg WKC guards have a twin brother in my Paul Seileimer early Wkc guard
Serge your Weyerberg WKC guards have a twin brother in my Paul Seileimer early Wkc guard
Serge
I always love seeing your private stash great early examples. I often wonder if Weyersberg and Horster made these daggers in small numbered batches. As many officers in the army I struggle to believe they only made 400 initial production daggers but I guess until a duplicate number surfaces that’s just an unfounded theory. I know of a consecutive pair of numbered Horster slants 35 & 36 somewhere deep in the heart of Texas. Merry Christmas to you guys.
I found this interesting reading concerning the German Army and the amount of men who served.
The German Army in the Second World War
Serge, Great pieces!! These early Weyersbergs are really special.. let one slip through my hands once, Hope to get another chance at one!
Tom, Interesting read on the size of the Army, I wonder what % of those were officers? Kevin.
I did a quick mathematical estimate based on the 35 rank lists and I figure in 35 about 7500-8000 officers with that number exponentially increasing every year moving forward. So based on that if Weyersberg produced 400 daggers they had ballpark 5% of the initial production Army Officer Dagger Business. Based on a quick mathematical estimate on the 39 rank lists about 22,000 officers! So how many army daggers were produced during the period? 25,000 +?? Now correlate that to the article I referenced which states - 1934 the SA had grown to a force of over 4,500,000 men. Interesting not sure anyone has ever came up with estimates of numbers of daggers produced by branch of service love to see those numbers.
Yes! Love to see those numbers too.. be tricky to figure just the Heer daggers even though they are one of the more simple to do as there were very few that didn't go to officers(uncommon to be used by senior NCO's unlike the Luft 2nd!) Even at that you would have to try to figure out what percentage of officers did buy the dagger and then you would have to consider how many of the officers were newly commissioned each year and go on those numbers? The later in the war production you go the percentage of newly commissioned officers buying daggers would have dropped each year with less and less dress functions due to the heightening war! Tricky number to estimate indeed! Kevin.
Thanks Tom and Kevin.
You two guys, Degens, Ger, Denny Roach, Peter Ford, and naturally Tom Wittmann (and I'm leaving out and handful of others), have really dissected these early Army daggers. The knowledge here is really astonishing. Great contributions, with willingness to share key details with everyone out in the open.
Serge
In the article it says a total of around 12.5 million Germans served in the army during the second world war. Of course they didn't all serve at the same time but when you consider that for every hundred men you need atleast one officer, the number of officers had to be tens of thousands.
Danny
Last edited by dr73; 12-26-2014 at 03:37 PM.
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