New book: "Das Eiserne Kreuz 1. Klasse von 1939" by Frank Thater

[ben bijker]

and today my books arrived.
Will be home early today

[streptile]

Over the past month or so I've exchanged many emails with fellow collectors, all excited about the release of Frank Thater's new German-language book on the 1939 Iron Cross 1. Class called Das Eiserne Kreuz 1. Klasse von 1939. It seems I am one of the first customers stateside to receive a copy, and my friends are curious to hear my thoughts for this reason. With the SOS upcoming, I've received 10 or more emails asking me for an opinion on the book.

I will start by making it clear that I don't know the author, and I don't have any stake in the book. None of my crosses are shown and I rendered no service, advice or help to Mr. Thater in the preparation of the book. This review is as impartial as I can make it

First off I should mention that Thater's book is a terrific accomplishment of sheer size. Over 1200 pages spread over two thick, heavy volumes show what must certainly be the most complete array of 1939 1. Class Iron Crosses and Spangen ever collected for a single reference work. The dedication, time, and energy it must have taken to assemble this collection of photos is a marvel in itself. The examples shown are beautiful, and sometimes rare. Thater has made a great effort, quite obviously, to select examples in the finest condition for his photos. And the photos are magnificent. Great detail shots of beading, core designs, hinges and catches. My one note about the crosses themselves is that many of them seem either to have been cleaned, or the photos desaturated to the point where they appear colorless.

It's in the details of the book that I believe Thater has the most problems. Some of his maker attributions seem extremely tenuous (similarity to a single catalogue photo, for example), while he has apparently rejected or ignored other attributions made on far firmer evidence. Another problem is that he hasn't even addressed some of the major issues that the collecting community has been discussing for the past couple of years, preferring instead to pass over them with little (or no) mention. Apart from these problems, there are a surprising number of outright errors, some of which I will discuss below.

Those of you who know me know that I focus primarily (but not exclusively) on a few makers of the Iron Cross that interest me for one particular reason or another: Godet, Juncker, Schickle, as well as the variants: Schinkels, Round-3s. I will limit my observations to those chapters, since a page-by-page analysis of the entire book is way beyond the scope of this post.

The first section that interested me was the section on Schinkels. I was eager to read how Mr. Thater addressed the precise definition of "Schinkel." I was dismayed to read that he completely ignored it. He limits his definition of "Schinkel" to a single sentence, which explains that a Schinkel is "a 1939 Iron Cross in the shape of the World War I Iron Cross." As we now know that Iron Crosses were manufactured in the standard 44mm so-called "LDO size" since at least 1900, complete with the wide-flared arms we now associate with the 1939 shape, this definition is entirely meaningless. The only indication Thater gives us about what really constitutes a Schinkel, is the crosses he chooses to include in the section, some of which very obviously are not 1939 crosses (they have 1914 cores), and some of which do not have the shape of, for example, the archetypal Deumer Schinkel. An example is the "Straight-9" EK1 (here labeled the "Unknown Maker 2"). Thater notes that the swastika on this example is small, which fact is presumably responsible for its inclusion in the category. Don't get me wrong -- I believe the "Straight-9" ought to be considered a Schinkel. But no coherent reason is given in Thater's book to merit such a conclusion. In other words, Thater defines Schinkels very briefly and nonsensically, and then proceeds to include many, many crosses that do not fit his definition. Overall the Schinkel section is muddied, inconclusive and totally confusing. A novice would finish the chapter with no greater understanding of what defines a "Schinkel" than they would had they read Gordon Williamson's The Iron Cross of 1939, which was published over ten years (and a mountain of research) earlier.

How about the Godet section? Thater writes that "between 1864 until about 1924 the products were sold under the name J. Godet & Sohn and later under the name Eugen Godet &Co. The last and more prominent name Gebrüder Godet & Co. was introduced about 1930." However it is now (since at least 2011) well established that the famous maker of Imperial Iron Crosses and other high decorations of the German states, J. Godet, was a totally different company from Eugene Godet's "Gebr. Godet," which was founded around 1929 or 1930. This fact has been presented on multiple forums, discussed at a talk at the DGO (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ordenskunde, a German society for the study of medals much like the OMSA) last year, and again in a widely respected German medals journal called Orden und Ehrenzeichen. It is, I would say, almost common knowledge at this point. Even if it's not common knowledge, surely if you're writing a book you should get it right? Mr. Thater implies in the introductory remarks to the chapter that the maker of the Iron Crosses sold under the name Gebr. Godet, also made (for example) the Pour le Mérite. This is simply not true. In fact, it is currently unclear just exactly what Gebr. Godet made at all. This fact -- or rather, this uncertainty -- has major consequences for the Iron Cross, none of which is addressed in even the most cursory form in the chapter. He settles for a brief and incorrect introduction, then shows some variants, and moves on.

Another big surprise is that Gebr. Godet's first EK1 frame -- which he labels Type 1 -- is identical to a 1914 EK1 from the "WWI award period." This would be huge news to me -- by far the biggest news in the book -- for a few reasons. First: we would have a Gebr. Godet Schinkel, something previously unknown to the collecting world. Second: no one, despite years of looking, has ever found an authentic 1914 EK1 made by Gebr. Godet before WWII. (Of course the proposition of a Gebr. Godet 1914 EK1 from the "WWI award period" is totally untenable from the outset, since Gebr. Godet did not exist at that time, but this is explainable by his earlier error about the companies) In any event, any "WWI award period" EK1 by either Godet company that shared the same frame as Godet's early 1939 EK1s would qualify as earth-shaking news within our small community. But he doesn't even illustrate the 1914 EK1, except to show the extreme detail of the inner corners. We have no way to judge its period of manufacture: no pin, no core, no weight or materials or measurements. To me, this ranks as one of the single largest disappointments of the book. I suspect, anyway, that the cross does not date from the "WWI award period."

A few of the "Godet" variants in the book are included in the chapter with no apparent mention of what distinguishes them from Zimmermanns (p. 352, p. 354). This is an oversight that is destined to confuse, especially given the lack of any explanation of (or even guess at) the nature of the relationship between Godet and Zimmermann, or Godet and Mayer -- a field quite ripe for the type of primary study we hope authors of major reference works would deign to undertake (in my opinion the evidence supports the conclusion that Gebr. Godet made no EKs). However, the 21-marked Godet EK1 shown on p. 358-359, with a pin never seen before in any reference book, is a magnificent addition to the section and makes up for some of the its problems.

In the Juncker section, on p. 389, Thater notes that Juncker's first frame is identical to that used by Imperial Iron Cross manufacturer AWS. True enough. But he never shows one of these frames. He doesn't show it on a Juncker, or on an AWS. Rather, he incorrectly identifies Juncker's L/12 frame (so called because it is almost always found marked L/12) as the AWS frame. It is not. This frame was never used on any cross other than mid- or late-war Junckers, and bears no real similarity to the famous AWS frame. This is a particularly egregious mistake given the complexities of the Juncker story: multiple frames, cores, and even suppliers. The L/12 frame (which in my opinion was Juncker's third frame, and in no one's opinion that I know of was their first) is then called "Type 1," and so identified throughout the rest of the chapter, so mistake piles on top of mistake. The "Type 2" frame is the one we know colloquially as the "crunch-bead" frame. In my opinion this was indeed their second frame. But in this book, it is their only other frame, and on a number of occasions (p.411, 412, 416) he identifies EK1s with W&Ls frame (which Juncker certainly used and which looks similar to the "crunch-bead" frame) as "Type 2" frames. So Thater has labeled just two of four Juncker frames. On one, he completely mis-identifies it. On the other, he conflates it with the frame of another maker. These mistakes render the section on Junckers worse than useless -- it is destined to do positive harm within the community with its mistakes. That said, he does show some beautiful Junckers in the section. Especially of note is the magnificent 800 silver 1914 EK1 (pp. 430-431).

The section on B.H. Mayer there are at least two examples (p. 490, 494) shown of a controversial type that utilizes the same frame as the notorious "333" fake and a core completely unlike any Mayer EK anyone I know has ever seen before a couple of years ago. This type has been discussed over and over here, and I won't re-argue the case in this post (the type is also illustrated in The Iron Time with Karl Dönitz's signature engraved on the reverse, which is universally acknowledged to be fake and which was available for $350 at the last three MAX shows running). But Thater doesn't even mention that the frame or the core is different from the traditional and well-known Mayer type, or that Mayer is known to have sold their "tools" for manufacturing Third Reich orders and medals to a known manufacturer of reproductions (Göde). He simply illustrates the type without comment, as if it's an accepted original. It may be an original (I don't know but I don't think so), but it is far from universally accepted at this juncture. I think the collecting community deserves at least a footnote to this effect, but there is quite literally no mention of any difference from a regular, textbook Mayer to give anyone pause.

The section on Otto Schickle presents an entirely new set of problems. Their early one-piece Schinkels are entirely left out of the section. Nor are they identified as Schickles in the section on Schinkels themselves. There is overwhelming evidence available to attribute this type to Schickle, not least of which is the fact that the cross is illustrated in their 1940 catalogue. The 1914 version is also quite clearly illustrated in their interwar catalogue, not to mention an avalanche of other evidence: pins, catches, core design, and the list goes on and on ad infinitum... But for some mystifying reason, he has chosen to label the cross an "unknown maker." However, he has no problem labeling other crosses and Spangen based on much flimsier evidence. For example, he attributes the EK1 most believe to be made by Schauerte & Höhfeld and/or Assmann u. Söhne to F reidrich Linden. Why? Linden shows the 1914 version in its catalogue. However, so does Assmann, and a virtually identical cross has been found marked L/54. Again, this review isn't the place to re-argue the case, so suffice it to say that there is at least as much evidence to conclude the cross in question was manufactured by S&H or Assmann rather than Linden, and in the opinion of most researchers, quite a bit more evidence for the latter attribution. Yet this evidence is nowhere discussed in the book. Why these oversights?

Another example of Thater's too-easy attribution is a Spange he notes is "probably a 1st type Schickle" (p. 1116). He's made this attribution based solely on the similarity (not identity, mind you) of the Spange to a photo in the Schickle catalogue. Similarly, Thater calls the famously unidentified "Unknown Maker" Spange (p. 1066) a Eugen Schmidhäußler based on the fact that one single example has been found in a Schmidhäußler outer-carton. To be clear, I don't necessarily disagree with these attributions, but they are made here with remarkably little evidence when other attributions made on firmer ground have been ignored. Usually we like to find a handful of EK2s (for example) in marked packets before we conclude the EK2 was indeed manufactured by that maker.

There is no way for a single review to catalogue all the mistakes and oversights in Thater's book, and I will not try. Frankly, I don't know what all the mistakes and oversights are; I am not conversant with the minute variations of every single maker and I've closely read only a few chapters. But the handful of makers I do know about are presented in such a flawed fashion that I do have to wonder about the rest of the chapters. I will, however, mention one more problem: the L15 controversy. Thater identifies these controversial crosses as authentic. And yet, in their English-language Iron Cross book published a couple short years ago, Maerz/Stimson revealed that these crosses were of postwar manufacture. It is well-known within our community that this information was acquired indirectly from the source. Thus it is difficult to refute. Thater doesn't even try. Like other important research conducted over the past three or four years, he has completely ignored it.

Let me say plainly that this book would have been an absolute masterpiece had it been published in 2006. Overall, though, there is way too much new information that is ignored here to make it a masterpiece in 2013, too many mistakes that would have been so easy to remedy had he submitted the manuscript for peer review, or even editorial help from an equally knowledgeable collector. It's hard to know what is more frustrating about this book: the errors, or the omissions. All research books have errors (although this one seems to me to have more than its fair share), but what about the omissions? It would have been one thing if Thater had rejected recent research by reasoned argument. But for the most part he simply ignores important questions, maker attributions, and controversies within the hobby. Why? It's not as if Thater has set a high bar of evidence for his work and refused to draw conclusions unless this bar was surmounted; too many of his conclusions are based on a single, refutable (or at least debatable) observation to imagine that the omissions are explainable by evidentiary rigor.

I'd like to end on a positive note if I can, and reiterate that this reference work contains, without any doubt, the largest and most complete collection of photographs of the 1939 Iron Cross to date. There are plenty of rare variants, and a lot of eye-candy for those of us who are fascinated by this famous decoration. Of particular note is the Spange section, in which Thater has chosen beautiful examples of most makers. Again, there are a few questionable ones in there presented without comment as originals. Like the cross sections which comprise the majority of the books, the reader is left to do much of his own research, and draw most of his own conclusions. For the collector who is looking for an Iron Cross reference that can help him build a collection of safe originals, understand the awarding process, production timeline, the differences between makers as well as the different models made by each maker, I would recommend a book burdened with fewer errors, or simply this forum. But for the highly advanced collector who stays on top of recent research and who knows how to separate the wheat from the chaff, this book would be an invaluable addition to the library for its photos alone, and I would not be without it myself for this reason.

[Dietrich Maerz]

Apart from the things mentioned in the post above I would like to make a comment which really has nothing to do with the factual errors regarding the makers and models in the content of the book.

In the foreword Thater writes, and I translate literally :
"Gordon Williamson pusblished in 2002 for the first time with "The Iron Cross of 1939" a book a specific time frame, with the goal of a classification of individual manufacturer.
In this book (here) shall now take place for the first time a listing of the Iron Cross 1. Class of 1939 over a specific time frame. Therein the multitude of variations and their manufacturers, as far as this was possible at the time of publishing, will be defined in catalog style."

When I bought the book last November at the Kassel Show I talked to Frank Thater briefly (we know us and he bought our Iron Cross book some time ago personally at a show in the USA) and he mentioned that the book does not really shown a lot more as our book apart form one unknown maker which has now a name (I guess meant the Schmidthaeussler Spange). Arriving at home and looking through the book I was immensely surprised to read this self-serving, wrong and misinforming foreword and I was even more surprised to see that the book by George Stimson and myself (which is and always will be the first that looked at the Iron Cross 1. Class in detail!) was not even mentioned in the bibliography of Thater's book.

This, in my opinion, is very, very low and does not speak well about the intellectual firmness of the author. Also, it is worthwhile mentioning that Thater has not mentioned WAF and SDA where is reads and posts and not even the Belgian forum where he is a highly praised moderator of the EK section. If this is the state of the hobby and the research today, we are in for some more of this untruthfullness. For me this is not acceptable! At a university, the thesis would be rejected because of that!
The reader is left with the impression, that everything in the book has been researched, discovered, concluded and for the first time compiled by the author. He even "forgot" to mention the publishing company, which is owned by his friend. Instead it simply says "A book by Frank Thater". All that has nothing to do with the content and has no impact on the collector. It is only a thing that is just not right. And I posted the same thing in the German forum SDA and got a very unsatisfactory answer. So I am not doing this posting behind his back or at a place where he doen't read.

I also want to mention some errors on the research side which could have been easily avoided and will create confusion in the future:
- Thater states, that the PKZ numbers were introduced in mid-1941. I challenged him several times to show the reserach behind it. He finally came back and declared that there is no prrof for any date at all and he might have "choosen his date a little bit to early." And since this is for the definition of "good" or "bad" of a cross of no importance, the reader should excuse that he did not make this statement clear as his opinion only..... That is not how one treats the reader, I think. In addition, there is at least conclusive evidence that is was NOT mid 1941!
- then, based on that "opinion" he also decalers that the maker "6" is also the maker "24". And that is how it is done!
- Thater also mentions that Hitler issued an order that for a time frame of roughly 8 month between August 1940 and March 1941 an "award stoppage for war decorations" was issued. This is extremely confusing (and wrong) and might lead to some collector starting to doubt award dates which fall in this time frame. What really happened is that Hitler stopped the excessive awarding to and amongst staff members far from the front. This did not affect the majority of the fighting soldiers at all.

But this also does not really affect the collector who uses the book to determine his crosses. The book is the best one available in German language , no doubt. As a funny (at least for me) side note I would like to cite the laudatio magnifico of a Belgian forum administrator:

"This book , although Frank himself is to modest to mention it, is the first true collectors guide covering the 1939 EK I and its Clasp. As an EK collector himself it is obvious that the author understands the importance of a logical presentation as well as the importance of quality photography to illustrate the awards as well as the findings and conclusions he wants the illustrate and share with the reader.
The picture quality in this book is mind blowing and consistent throughout the entire work. Although at the moment only available in German the pictures in most cases are self-explanatory and will allow the reader with non or very limited command of German to find an answer to most of his questions.
As far as I’m concerned this books sets new standards and also closes the subject of the 1939 EK 1. Difficult to imagine that even in 50 years from now somebody would feel the need to write a new and better book. In this respect this book deserves a place among only a handful of publications on German WW II awards that can be considered a definitive collector guides."

His first sentence bears witness that his command of the German language is even below "limited" since Frank Thater does not shy back to mention exacly that! In his deep review he also did not stumble across the minor and mayor mistakes in the book which are mentioned above by Trevor. That bears clear witness about his knowledge about the subject. The "50 years" comment is just comical in the light of the subject......

However, as I also said in the German forum: the book should be bought by the German collector (and/or every interested collector) since it really shows very nice pictures which will be very helpful in the long run as a documentation.

[StefanK.]

Very interesting discussion. As i am an EK collector myself who owns and has read almost all books on the Iron Cross i want to comment on that book also.

Trevor has made some very interesting points and for sure the book of course has some errors. Needless to say that there is no book on the market without some very severe mistakes, no matter if you take Williamson, Geissler, Maerz/Stimson or Thater.

As we collect medals - lets take iron crosses - we are faced with a big problem. During the war millions of Iron Crosses were produced. Many factories were involved in that process. Some produced themselves, others bought assembled crosses and marked them with their codes, again others bought parts from different suppliers and assembled them to a final masterpiece. We as collectors just have one source we can, or better must trust: the experience given from generation to generation from one collector of the other, and the existence of yet undiscovered groupings. Only these two sources supply the informations we can use to say wether a piece is considered as wartime or postwar. Noone can by now proof that an xy- cross is really pre-war, just we can base our assumtion on the two sources mentioned above.

With the beginning of the internet-age and the upcoming of the first forums, the collector community started to interest in different makers. Before that scientific approach hardly existed. But suddenly collectors interested in the weird numbers that were stamped on the crosses' rings or backplates. And with a few contemporary documents which linked the different codes to certain manufacturers the collector was able to name a producer behind a certain cross. Over the time it was even possible to identifie crosses that are never never marked, such as the Schinkel EK1 by Deumer.

As the research went on the community found out that some manufacturers produced mother dies, some just produced the hinges and pins, others produced cores. Some manufactures probably never made eks themselves but just bought and delivered them. Some crosses match 100% but have adiferent mark, some markings are showing up on different styles and so on. Summa summarum we can say that

• Our knowledge is just mainly based on experience
  
  There hardly exist any sources as a lot was destroyed/ not available or the firms dont want to comment on their wartime business
  
  Many different firms were involved in the production process in the EK. They swapped tools and produced for eachother
  
  The marking does not by force provide a hint on the actual maker.
  

Conclusion: most of the things written in books or here in the forum by any possible connection between manufacturers, production, way of marking, etc. is pure speculation. Collectors spend hours to discuss an issue like a specific marking, a problem like L15 and try to draw a boarder between postwar or pre-war. The same is for certain variants which are considered as original while others are considered as fake. And this boarder is shifted every now and then. The more people discuss the clear it gets that these problems are more complex than we expected. Comsequently this stubborn need to find a maker to every cross is not very useful nor it is scientific.

So my advise is look at the nice pictures, and dont take the written Text too serious. No matter which book on medals you read. And under this viewpoint the book by frank thater is by far the very best that is on the market.

[Darrell]

....
So my advise is look at the nice pictures, and dont take the written Text too serious. No matter which book on medals you read. And under this viewpoint the book by frank thater is by far the very best that is on the market.

Now that's a statement ... lol
You need to read that again ... does it make sense to you? It doesn't to me.

[Tony T-S]

Yes, sorry, but how can it be by far the best when only the pictures are worth a look? I certainly agree that there is a lot of speculation, but not everything is still speculation. Ironically we probably have a better picture of what did happen than most of those who were in the business of making the crosses at the time. Company secrets and all. All the research to date must not be left out of a "definitive" book, even if the author doesn't agree with them. Research needs debate to keep asking it the questions that spur it on to more debate.

Every major book on the EK I should be in the bibliography even if not among the references. There aren't that many. I wish I could read German so I could get the best out of these volumes

[Dietrich Maerz]

So my advise is look at the nice pictures, and dont take the written Text too serious. No matter which book on medals you read. And under this viewpoint the book by frank thater is by far the very best that is on the market.

This is the most devastating critique I have read about that book! It basically says it would have been better if he would have produced a picture CD!

Trevor has made some very interesting points and for sure the book of course has some errors. Needless to say that there is no book on the market without some very severe mistakes, no matter if you take Williamson, Geissler, Maerz/Stimson or Thater.

I agree basically with that statement, but there is a huge difference in what you call; errors. When Bowen, or Geissler, or Williamson wrote their books they reported what was known at that point in time and they named their sources and they named (in greater part) the reason for their conclusions. The same applies to Stimson/Maerz, at least I certainly hope so! It is fortunately or unfortunately the case in our hobby that constand development renders some earlier conclusions wrong, partially wrong, or outdated. That is unavoidable and it is the case in EVERY scientific endeveour, be it nuclear physics, chemistry, or phaleristic. And it is nothing bad at all - it is called progress!

Nobody with his brain intact would critizize such a thing.

However, if the latest book on a certain subject is NOT mentioning the latest proven developments, resources, and research and makes flat out wrong assumptions which can be verified as wrong fairly easily and independently opr already have been proven wrong years before - well, then we have a different case. The difference is whether a book is proven "wrong" or "outdated" after several years (which is possible and likely) or whether such mistakes can be found days after publication......

[Telbin]

English version pls!!

[streptile]

Hi Stefan,

Thank you for your interesting comments. Of course I agree with you on all of them, specifically:

Needless to say that there is no book on the market without some very severe mistakes...

I agree. Every reference book has some errors. Geißler's book, published within the last year I think, can barely be considered a reference book at all.

look at the nice pictures, and dont take the written Text too serious... and under this viewpoint the book by frank thater is by far the very best that is on the market.

I agree with this also; if you ignore the text and concentrate only on the photos, Thater's book contains the most comprehensive collection of EKs of any book on the market, as I wrote here:

...this reference work contains, without any doubt, the largest and most complete collection of photographs of the 1939 Iron Cross to date... for the highly advanced collector who stays on top of recent research ... this book would be an invaluable addition to the library for its photos alone, and I would not be without it myself for this reason.

[Leroy]

No book is complete, although some are better than others. I buy almost every reference book published (even those related to fields I do not collect, such as SS) because there is a chance that there will be some piece of information, whether by photograph or legitimate documentation, which will shed additional light on the fields I am interested in. The cost of my library pales in comparison to the knowledge gained and money saved.

I bought these books. I'm not sorry I did. Yes, they could be better (and it is just ego to intentionally, or foolishly, ignore the contributions of others), but still, they are worth having, if only (as already mentioned) for the wonderful photos, many of which do not appear elsewhere. They were clearly assembled as a "labor of love" for the subject and the many times irritating errors, omissions and unsupported-by-documentation conclusions can't take that away.

It is access to all the EK books (Bowen, Geissler, Williamson, Maerz-Stimson, et als) which provides the broad view of the puzzles in our hobby.
Everyone will have their favorites (I certainly have mine, but I read them all).

Although Tony T-S made very good points, I disagree (in a very friendly way) with one of his comments:

Ironically we probably have a better picture of what did happen than most of those who were in the business of making the crosses at the time.

After over 50 years in this hobby, I am very grateful for (and constantly supportive of) the advances made by real research. BUT...I am convinced that only the surface has been scratched and that, while we may have a pretty fair idea of some things (thanks to a lot of effort by a lot of people - including specifically Dietrich and Trevor, both of whom posted here) there is a huge amount of information we don't have (and may well never have because so much has been lost to the winds of time and memory) which was common, every day, knowledge to the people involved during the period. My great fear for this hobby is that we are starting to believe that we know more than we do, when in fact we are still (and, despite our best good faith efforts, likely to remain) the "blind man describing an elephant".

Buy ALL the books!

[streptile]

Buy ALL the books!

I totally agree, and as I mentioned above, I would not be without these books myself (or all the others).

[Robert T.]

My great fear for this hobby is that we are starting to believe that we know more than we do, when in fact we are still (and, despite our best good faith efforts, likely to remain) the "blind man describing an elephant".

I agree....

[Darrell]

I agree....

Only thing ... you are supposed to ignore the comments and just look at the picture

[Tony T-S]

I'm not sure this picture/ cartoon applies to the situation. We are not looking at the medal industry from within as members of one of the companies, but as those who can stand back and look at the more general view. Certainly the research of individuals focuses on particular areas, but that research is generally being shared so that an over all picture can BEGIN to emerge. As has been stated, the particular and the general views will need to be adjusted as new information comes to light. There will need to be new editions coming out all the time to keep up with the research, particularly if there are in accuracies that come to light. There is no excuse for anything else in scholarly research.

I still say we probably know more about the general picture than those making the medals did because they were in various different parts of it trying to follow government regulations and trying to getting paid in the middle of a war. They weren't trying to write history. Of course, it would be marvelous to have the knowledge of various individuals in the midst of the work. We certainly don't have that. It would clear up a lot of questions if we did.

The advice is good, buy them all, but when one can't do that, or speak the language then one really wants to be able to rely on a good (not perfect) volume that is as up to date as possible.

[Robert H]

Nice to see a Kopiermaschine is mentioned.