Very interesting thread and I hope it continues.
My numbered SS partial Rohm is documented in Johnson's Volume VII. Although it had a very low number (4403), the original owner was a farm boy and only an Untersturmfuhrer. What's most interesting about it though is at the time I did the research, he was still alive in his early 80s and I wrote to him and actually got a reply. So the provenance for this dagger also contains a letter from the SS officer that owned it. Not something you see every day.
With respect to low SS numbers not being in The Key and hence not belonging to officers, I have a theory about that.
At the time, many young men without jobs and the depression looming would have joined the SS. These strapping youths in their mid 20s would have been tough street fighters used by Hitler as bodyguards at his early speaking rallies as well as the bully boys who fought the Communists and other "agitators" in the bloody and often deadly street battles of pre-war Germany.
Most would have had low or no education, would not have been promoted up through the ranks and would have remained enlisted men and most would eventually end up in the Waffen-SS.
If you look at the Dienstalterslistes, most high ranking officers were either intellectuals (many doctors) or ex-Army officers (aristocrats, etc), but all having higher education. There are obvious exceptions in the Waffen-SS where good soldiers and tacticians would progress up through the ranks.
Again, just a theory of mine.
My numbered SS partial Rohm is documented in Johnson's Volume VII. Although it had a very low number (4403), the original owner was a farm boy and only an Untersturmfuhrer. What's most interesting about it though is at the time I did the research, he was still alive in his early 80s and I wrote to him and actually got a reply. So the provenance for this dagger also contains a letter from the SS officer that owned it. Not something you see every day.
With respect to low SS numbers not being in The Key and hence not belonging to officers, I have a theory about that.
At the time, many young men without jobs and the depression looming would have joined the SS. These strapping youths in their mid 20s would have been tough street fighters used by Hitler as bodyguards at his early speaking rallies as well as the bully boys who fought the Communists and other "agitators" in the bloody and often deadly street battles of pre-war Germany.
Most would have had low or no education, would not have been promoted up through the ranks and would have remained enlisted men and most would eventually end up in the Waffen-SS.
If you look at the Dienstalterslistes, most high ranking officers were either intellectuals (many doctors) or ex-Army officers (aristocrats, etc), but all having higher education. There are obvious exceptions in the Waffen-SS where good soldiers and tacticians would progress up through the ranks.
Again, just a theory of mine.
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