UBB.threads Forums Edged Weapons SA & NSKK Dagger Forum New member with family heirloom dagger

Thanks for the responses so far. I'll tell the "rest of the story", at least as I know it. The dagger was actually passed down from my grandfather, who was a B-17 waist-gunner in the war. When the war with Germany ended, my grandfather, who had been stationed in England, re-enlisted to serve as an MP in Germany during the occupation.

As it's passed down to me, he was tasked with confiscating weapons from individuals who were thought to be potential troublemakers (I suppose when there was still fear of post-war partisan fighting among die-hard NSDAP adherents). My grandfather entered a home which appeared to be empty, and while searching it, was surprised by what he described as an old man in the bedroom, wielding a knife. Someone in my grandfather's unit dispatched the old man, and gave him the knife since he was nearly done in with it. The knife turned out to be this SA dagger, and the old man turned out to be the father of Josef Strätz. The dagger was probably not in great condition at any point in the past 60 years, because I'm sure my father played with it when he was a child.

Josef Strätz, though, appears to have been a Gefreiter in the Luftwaffe, and served as a Fallschirmjäger. He was killed on, well, May 28, 1941, during the Battle of Crete, although I'm not sure if he was killed from a wound received on that date, or on an earlier date during the initial attack. He is currently buried in the Maleme German War Cemetary on Crete. Any information on how I could dig up his service records would be great.

I assume that this dagger would have been something left at home when Josef, who was 33 when he died, joined the Luftwaffe, and that his father may have had an engraver put this on there (or more than likely, engraved it himself?) as a memorial. That he chose to use it in an attempt to "take revenge" just makes the story that much better.