The Blood Flag

[oldflagswanted]

Blood flag info ???

...Maybe someday we'll know the truth.

More from the ancient Blood Flag catacombs of the WAF...
http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/forums/showthread.php?t=368346
http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...d.php?t=176332
http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...ead.php?t=7763
and elsewhere online ---> http://flagspot.net/flags/de%7Dns_bf.html

[Forseti]

Dear Gents,

thanks for all your comments and opinions.

Of course there had been big evacuations of arts, archives etc. but of course not all items could have been evacuated (or there was just no plan to do so) or had been lost later in their new "homes".

Just see the fate of german WW1 personal-archive in Potsdam. Nearly all personal documents and files of WW1 prussian soldiers had been destroyed in a air-raid. (Bavarian docs had survived in Bavaria).
Or the fate of the Bernsteinzimmer (Amber Room). Or thousands of other pieces, including lot of personal docs, most Wehrstammbücher, Personenstandsdokumente in Berlin, and so on.
So not all items had been secured or evacuated.

OK. Back to the main question. What facts do we know?

1. The Flag was in the Braunes Haus in Munich, when not on ceremony
2. The Braunes Haus was destoyed by bombs

Please find here a picture of the Flaggenhalle (can someone spot out the Bloodflag?). Or can somebodyidentify a flag that still exists? If so, that would be a big step!

http://www.historisches-lexikon-baye...auneshaus4.jpg

The Flaggenhalle was in the Flat just when you ve entered the house.
I am unsure if the bloodflag was held there or on the 2.nd floor where another room was with the names of the Blutzeugen and it was called "Standartenhalle".
I have not found more information on that room.
I did not have pictures of this Standartenhalle, but it seems really possible that the Blutfahne was kept in that room. If there are pictures or other known facts, please share them with us.

So we have 2 possibilities:
1. The flag had been destroyed while those air-raid(s)
2. Id had been rescued or evacuated before.

If it had been evacuated, this matter is not known by me.

There had been much other things in the braunes Haus. There had been other flags, furniture Bronzetafel with names of Blutzeugen.
The Parteizentralarchiv had been in 3rd flat but I dont know if there just had been the offices or also archived documents.

If some of this items did survive the war it is a clue that tere may had been evacuations and then it may be a chance the flag had also survived.



Thats maybe the key for the answer

So does anybody know that some other items survived? And if so, where are they now or where had they been storaged in 1945 and later?

Thank you

best regards
Michael

[N.C. Wyeth]

I found it curious today to read the following, from "Great Treasure Stories of WW2" by Kenneth D. Alford, on page 20:

"In the waterlogged basement of the Fuhrerbau, an unidentified American Seargent was rummaging through the heaps of paper and personal items when he discovered a box. Inside were some of Adolf Hitler's most personal belongings, including his gold plated pistol. The container also housed Hitler's swastika ring, a tiny oil painted portrait of his Mother, a framed photo of his German shephard, Blodi, the swastika blodd flag belonging to the unit of a comrade killed in the Munich Putsch of 1923, and numerous pieces of silverware with the initials A.H. These items turned up in a private collection in 1981."

So, if these items turned up in a private collection in 1981, where is the Blutfahne today?

[Thorsten B.]

Ask the owner of the AH desk set.

[ErichS]

I found it curious today to read the following, from "Great Treasure Stories of WW2" by Kenneth D. Alford, on page 20:

"In the waterlogged basement of the Fuhrerbau, an unidentified American Seargent was rummaging through the heaps of paper and personal items when he discovered a box. Inside were some of Adolf Hitler's most personal belongings, including his gold plated pistol. The container also housed Hitler's swastika ring, a tiny oil painted portrait of his Mother, a framed photo of his German shephard, Blodi, the swastika blodd flag belonging to the unit of a comrade killed in the Munich Putsch of 1923, and numerous pieces of silverware with the initials A.H. These items turned up in a private collection in 1981."

So, if these items turned up in a private collection in 1981, where is the Blutfahne today?

What is the reference for the story in the book? I would have major doubts that THE BF was in a box. Grimminger said that the last time he saw the flag it was in the Brown house if he can be believed.

[Br. James]

Good thought, Thorsten; I wonder if the owner of the AH Desk Set had 'liberated' other material from the basement area under the Führerbau and perhaps sold it after he returned to the US? That should be pretty easy to establish, since the owner of the desk set is still alive. The desk set may have been the only piece he retained from his original 'liberation...' Any further word on this, Craig?

As I understand it, the Blood Banner had been removed from the memorial flag display in the Hall of Honor surrounding the monumental bust of Dietrich Eckhart in the Brown House in the mid to late 1930s because of security reasons; by that time the Blood Banner was regarded as one of the most sacred of National Socialist treasures and it could not be replaced if damaged or stolen. I have never heard whether Jakob Grimminger described any detail about how the Blood Banner was stored or how it was transported, and I believe him when he says that all he was responsible for was picking the banner and staff up at the Brown House, transporting it to where it needed to be, setting it up, and then returning it to the Brown House. He had no need of knowing exactly where the banner was stored within that building; that wasn't his responsibility. It was a great honor to be known as the Bearer of the Blood Banner! I don't assume that the Blood Banner was folded up and put in a box when not in use; more likely it was wound around the upper section of its staff when the lower staff section was disconnected, and the sections stored in some sort of a transportable and probably waterproof case. That would have also made it easier to carry off when the buildings on the Königsplatz were 'secured' by US forces in 1945.

It is not surprising to read that many 'treasures' were discovered in the cellars beneath the Führerbau, for that is the logical place to store all sorts of things to protect them against air raids. The Brown House, the Temples of Honor, the Führerbau and the Party Administration Building were all connected by tunnels built into the ground when the NSDAP construction was designed by Prof. Troost and completed in 1936. Great amounts of material from those buildings would certainly have wound up down in the basements and tunnels, much as similar material found its way down into the basements under the Reichschancellery in Berlin or into the tunnel system behind the Berghof and the other buildings of the Obersalzberg Administration. Indeed, beneath every NSDAP-used building throughout Greater Germany and the Occupied Territories there must have been a treasure house of artifacts of all sorts -- plus furniture, artwork, office machines and files, etc. That the famous Blood Banner could have wound up in a corner of a dark and flooded basement in Munich should certainly not be surprising, and who among the US Occupation Forces would even have known what it was if he/she happened to pick it up amid the debris that must have been floating around in the muck?!

Br. James

[herd118]

I found it curious today to read the following, from "Great Treasure Stories of WW2" by Kenneth D. Alford, on page 20:

"In the waterlogged basement of the Fuhrerbau, an unidentified American Seargent was rummaging through the heaps of paper and personal items when he discovered a box. Inside were some of Adolf Hitler's most personal belongings, including his gold plated pistol. The container also housed Hitler's swastika ring, a tiny oil painted portrait of his Mother, a framed photo of his German shephard, Blodi, the swastika blodd flag belonging to the unit of a comrade killed in the Munich Putsch of 1923, and numerous pieces of silverware with the initials A.H. These items turned up in a private collection in 1981."

So, if these items turned up in a private collection in 1981, where is the Blutfahne today?

This is the collection referenced; the flag is not the Blutfahne:

http://editinternational.com/photos....=47a882ad5592a

[Br. James]

Many thanks to herd118 for the fine detective work! It's good to be able to close this issue, at least for the moment. As for the "blood flag" -- it turns out to be an NSKK Standard, and a very nice piece in its own right.

Br. James

[Mac 66]

Blood Flag on Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSSJ01vUDG8

[Skipper Greenwade]

Here is a shot of a photo in my collection showing Hitler and Grimminger (partially obscured by the Blood Flag) that was liberated, along with a number of other really great photographs, from the Berlin studio of Friedrich Franz Bauer by an American GI who brought them in to a Richardson, Texas show a number of years back. I was second in line, but still wound up with this one as well as a really good studio porarait of Himmler that I display with my Himmler presentation SS dagger.

[Skipper Greenwade]

Reverse of the photo, showing Bauer's address, etc.:

[Jon Fish]

Awesome image,thanks for sharing! Can we be treated to the HH some time as well please?

[ErichS]

Here is a shot of a photo in my collection showing Hitler and Grimminger (partially obscured by the Blood Flag) that was liberated, along with a number of other really great photographs, from the Berlin studio of Friedrich Franz Bauer by an American GI who brought them in to a Richardson, Texas show a number of years back. I was second in line, but still wound up with this one as well as a really good studio porarait of Himmler that I display with my Himmler presentation SS dagger.

A great photo Skipper! Here's an original photo from my collection of the BF at the 1929 RPT.

[Thorsten B.]

Friedrich Franz Bauer was THE photographer for the SS!

Do you know how many of these very interesting pics from that source initially surfaced?

Might very well be that among them were unpublished shots of works of art and inner rooms of party- and SS-buildings.

Thank you in advance for your answer regarding this matter.

[jimt]

Friedrich Franz Bauer was THE photographer for the SS!

Do you know how many of these very interesting pics from that source initially surfaced?

Might very well be that among them were unpublished shots of works of art and inner rooms of party- and SS-buildings.

Thank you in advance for your answer regarding this matter.

I have been searching for the Baur Archive for years , it is my knowledge that it exists in many small parts unfortunately with no main Archive for it . What a shame
jimtoncar