This is my grandfather, mother's side, taken in 1936 I believe, or it could be a few years earlier.
I'd love to know more about the uniform, and in particular the unusual left hand cuff band. Thankyou.
This is my grandfather, mother's side, taken in 1936 I believe, or it could be a few years earlier.
I'd love to know more about the uniform, and in particular the unusual left hand cuff band. Thankyou.
Allgemeine~SS,,unterscharfuhrer rank,about 1934 with the m-1933 SS em dagger,wears the Brunswick treffen badge on left pocket,,i cant make out the insignia on the left sleeve under the SS armband,maybe former NSKK membership diamond,,,SS sturm cuffband,but i cant see clearly the image,,,can you post good closeups of the two insignia in question?
Welcome to the forum. You are very lucky to have that foto!
An excellent photo ! Do you have any other of your Grandfathers memorabilia ?
Nick
"In all my years as a soldier, I have never seen men fight so hard." - SS Obergruppenfuhrer Wilhelm Bittrich - Arnhem
Thanks for the welcome/comments.
I'd have to rescan the photo, but the resolution of the original isn't that good. Most other memorabilia [and their isn't alot of it] is held by my mother's half-sister – a few photos and other papers.
Its an odd one really.
Before joining the party in the early 30s [he must have been one of the 1st few] he'd started out as a ship's radio officer and spoke 7 languages. My mother remembers them living in Berlin & Köln during the war years and recalls his black leather long coat [she would've been around 5 at the time]. I believe he may have been attached to some Ministry where his language skills would've been an advantage although we were always told he was part of the Leibstandarte. At wars end we were also told he ended up with the rank of Obersturmbannfuhrer.
They divorced and my mum more or less ended up orphaned, finding herself near Wessel on the Rhine when the Americans crossed in '45 [she lost 3 sisters to bombing raids].
He remarried, and this is where it gets more interesting, because he married a Jewess. My mum's half-sister was totally unaware of his Party connections well into the late 70s, until she was shown that photo she simply denied it. But it gets a bit odder, because by the end of the war he'd buried his uniform and was captured by the British in Belgium [we have these POW papers], where he passed himself off as a grenadier. I don't know. Evelyne [the half-sister] who still lives in Germany has traced much of the family tree on that side but not much of his SS involvement has ever surfaced.
He survived the war but died in a motorcycle accident when his BMW hit the back of truck in thick fog in the mid/early 50s. At the time he was accepted by the newly formed German government for some other ministerial position. I only wish I knew more.
... I have never seen anywhere the cuff insignia 'M3', as shown here and wondered what that meant. It was suggested he was infact Leibstandarte and one of Hitler's own personal body guard, but hey... as there's so little to go on I really couldn't say.
A fascinating story, I think you need to get yourself over to Germany and start some digging around the records offices !
Nick
"In all my years as a soldier, I have never seen men fight so hard." - SS Obergruppenfuhrer Wilhelm Bittrich - Arnhem
Difficult I think, as many of those records have been destroyed.
I guess I'm just left wondering... wondering about the history, his motives ...
I'm married to a French girl now, and even in their history families were split: because, as I understand it & as they saw it at the time, it was a fight between two ideologies: fascism & communism. My wife's father [French/Lyon] fought in both WWs and gained 2 Croix de Guerre [the later with Bar], and 2 Legion d'Honor [the later being the 'Chevalier' type]. I believe he captured some Germans in WWI. But even within his own family loyalties were split... the Alsace part sided with the Germans with 'uncle Felix' joining the SS Charlemagne Division purely because they were anti-communist. The French resistance even sprayed the house with gunfire at one point, missing my now father-in-law's cot by millimetres. Anyhow, aunt Magaritte still has Felix's ceremonial SS dagger & scabbard along with some other nice examples and my hope is these, like her father's medals, will be passed down to us for safe keeping. The history's there at least, so it would make sense, but how would one propose such an awkward request?
We did have the Party armband shown in the photo above, but my brother took that [and we don't talk at all]. Families, eh.
M 3 was a specialized motorized unit of the Allgemeine SS, (along with engineer, signals and cavalry units on a paramilitary basis) which someone here will remind me of its location. Thank you for showing us the image. European history is always complicated and interesting, to be sure.
His hat looks like this....
After digging around a bit, allow me to do so:
The 3rd SS Motorstandarte (later Kraftfahrsturm) belonged to SS-Oberabschnitt "Ost", later renamed "SS-Oberabschnitt Spree". It was headquartered at Berlin/Senftenberg.
(Data as per the 1 Dec. 1938 and 30 Jan. 1944 Dienstalterslisten, Mark C. Yerger's ever-useful work on the Allgemeine SS and this thread over at the AHF: Axis History Forum • View topic - Motorstandarten )
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