Good afternoon to all

I'm glad to present you my latest find :

A complete 1936 Nickel Silver SS f?hrerDegen with portepee & its bag ... This beauty was probably given in hands to the officer by H. HIMMLER at the Feldherrnhalle ceremony that year ...

Hope you like it !



















Best Regards

K.

Questions for the specialists :

I read a theory saying only the SS Officers that graduated from SS Schools received the degen with runes ... Did the other that graduated from merit have a degen or not ? In case they had one, was it the runeless degen so called candidate ?

Do you have an idea of the number of SS officier degens produced ? And an idea of the number of degens remaining now ?

Best Regards

K.

Hello Kurt_Menliff, the "honor degens" (those with the runes button in the grip) have been bestowed by the RFSS to a lot of (elder) SSleaders AND to those leaders who did graduate SSleader schools. This is proofed by the DALs. Concerning the degens without runes emblem this is a question which did arise some years ago. Not an easy one as in "wearing" pics the grip of many degens is hidden. Nevertheless these pics reveal that after around the year 39, the start of the war, when the bestowal of the degens through the RFSS has been officially ceased "until end of the war", SSofficers did a lot of compensating measures. On "wearing" pics mostly seen is the wearing of normal police leader degens (it is proofed by some documentations that this was the case even by men who NEVER have been members of the police! But was -see below- against regulations). I have also a pic where the wearer did reverse the grip of the (obviously) police degen to hide the police emblem from the public. I have also a pic with an obviously custom made SSrunes button in the degen to resemble the former SS leader degens.
It is the assumption that the socalled "leader candidate degens" are in truth degen for leaders who have not already been bestowed the official SSleaders degen. There are several pics which let lead us to that assumption but up to now I am not aware of detailed written regulations. There are regulations (Runderlass) concerning the wearing of police degens but, as far I can read and understand them, these are NO regulation concerning SSdegens (other than these will be bestowed after the end of the war). My understanding of these regulations (Runderlaesse) is, that it was NOT intended to replace the SSleaders degen, for those leaders who have not been already bestowed the SSleaders degen, by waering the police degen until end of war!

Your degen seems to be a very nice one, it is a shame that the grip material has been brittle and therefore did cause small nicks around the runes plate. But these are the traces of time. There are nearly no degens without those nicks around. If there is one it has other issues...

Regards,

Kurt, For sure a beautiful sword in looking at the DAL's, catalogs, surviving regulations etc. my understanding is that the HH presented Leader Degens were only from HH and were accompanied by an award document. The document needed if for some reason repair parts were needed. With besides the schools, some awards to selected (by HH) SS members until a 1941 dated order that was not officially published until 1942 that the awards were to be stopped due to a (lack of) steel quotas. The German Police Leader swords not existing until 1938. And there being some discussion that as far as I know has not been disproved that the so-called "Officer Candidate Swords" was the private purchase version that was intended to be worn by those Leaders who were not in the two groups previously mentioned (but not the German Police). Best Regards, Fred

Good morning and thanks again for your precious information.

Apparently the figure 1442 returns regulary about the amount of Degens delivered between 1935 & end of 1937 and for a total of 10.000 SS officiers which made it scarce ... ( Ulric of England / Angolia )

I suppose we can assume that is more or less the amount of Silver Nickel Degens produced since it moved to plated steel from 1938 ...

How many of them remaining now ? I guess we'll never find out ...

Regards

K.

Kurt, I'm not disputing the numbers, but I also know that new information keeps getting added to the overall body of knowledge. How old were the numbers reported? Best Regards, Fred

Hello FRED

I found these numbers of 1442 in the following books :

Inside the Allgemeine SS 1925 - 1945 ( Ulric Of England )

Edged Weaponry of the Third Reich ( Angolia )

I suppose UOE took the figure from the Angolia book which dates from 1974 ... So yes the numbers aren't so young

Best Regards

K.

Good evening to all

Wondering about the correct way to tie the officier SS portepee to the sword ...

We see different version either on period photos or collector pieces

Tied like Heer sword style :


or like this :



most of the period photos show what would look like the second version :

Heydrich




Von Ribbentrop



while Atwood list the correct way to tie the knot as follows :


Problem, i don't remember ever seeing that knot on a SS sword !!!

Any further informations from specialists here ?

Many thanks in advance

K.

Just my opinion but the area around the runes button looks funky to me. Contrary to the poplar thought that most degens will show chipping around the runes button due to brittle wood from what I have seen it is just not that common.

what would you suggest ?

That it would be a polizei sword turned into a SS degen ?

Hello Kurt_Menliff, I would not think so, as there are no typical traces of the police-eagle s wings. But it could be possible that somebody has tried to break out the rune emblem (or has it indeed broken out and reset it) due to the traces. Would be interesting to take a look into the pommel fixation.

Would also be interesting what FSMC is thinking in concrete.

Regards,

Nice looking sabers.

Thank you mark

I'm not saying it is or it isn't, what I am saying is that there is a lot of chipping around the runes button and it should be looked at closely.

The runes buttons on this type of sword are pinned throguh the tang. So, resting on the wood if the sword sustains a "jolt" from hitting the ground often does chip the wood as in this case. It is pretty common to see on this type of sword, nice sword:)!
Bob
PS- Hi Wotan! I have to write you and will soon, Happy New Year to all!!!

I understand your explanation and it makes sense but I disagree with your statement, one that I have read (Wittmann's Offerings) and heard many times over that it is common to see chips around the runes button on a SS degen. Maybe it should say early "SS degens" but I even disagree with that. Over the years I have owned or held in my hands quite a few SS swords but I really don't remember seeing that many with this so called common problem. We can probably discount over 85 percent of those due to different grip construction if your theory is correct and it very well could be so. This only leaves a small percentage of these early degens of which I have personally owned four or five to go by. Of these four or five none had this "common problem". Again I am not saying K's degen is bad or even problematic but that all SS degens with chipping around the runes button should be looked at very carefully.