Beautifully designed, beautifully executed, named and rare... IMHO these batons are the epitome of German military collectibles. Thanks for showing.
As a side note, re: the photo of PFC. Lilley- the photo has been "doctored", but (most likely) NOT with any deceptive intention. The strange appearance of the background is due to a typically done, period-painted retouching of the background. Much faster than airbrushing and predating digital manipulation, backgrounds were often painted out and/or "retouched" with grayscale paints, resulting in unnatural, hard edged silhouettes, in order to simplify the original image for better low resolution newspaper publication of the period. Few photo retouchers had the time, talent and/or necessity to paint back in the background shadows and toning that would make this masking technique less noticeable.
Nothing clandestine here, simply good photo journalism.
Just a bit of vintage graphic design trivia
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