Tom, if as you say you are 'trained in evaluating data, not stories', then how can you really believe in the preposterous story (in my opinion, & I hope I do not offend anyone), without providing any actual proof/data,- "postwar most makers of awards continued to make pcs as part of the souvenir market to GI.s" Name the Firms, when did this after-combat production resume, when did it stop, etc., please let us all know these concrete facts. Consider this: US Army takes over city of Ludenscheid; Nazi memorabilia production halted, many swastika items turned in by US Army Edict, to be burned, destroyed, turned into scrap-metal, etc. and/or be nabbed by souvenir-hunting GI's. Then the Plant Managers of F.W. Assmann, Berg & Nolte, Wilhelm Deumer, Freddy Linden, F&BL, & others, turn up in the office of the US Army City Commander one fine summer day in June 1945 & request that they be allowed to gear-up for & start production of Nazi swastika'd awards, in the best intentions of jump-starting the war-wrecked ecomony, to fill the demands of all those souvenir-hunting GI's. Yeah right. Especially when they had wooden bins full of finished wartime left-over badges/awards. As late as 1979, author JR Cone, while an Army 2dLt stationed in Germany, photographed wooden bins full of Nazi-produced awards in his visits to the awards firms; some are pictured in his old red-jacketed reference book on enameled badges, (not in the pirated blue-jacketed version). So Tom, it just doesn't make any sense to me that this story happened, with swastika-emblazoned things being destroyed on the left, & at the same time, swastika-emblazoned things being manufactured on the right. I am open to actual facts, not stories, & if proven to me, I'll be the first one to change my opinion.
