Totenkopf collar tab/numbers

[jimt]

I collect Deathshead collar tabs with the arabic numeral below them, The highest number I have in my collection is the skull with the Arabic numerals "31" below it . Has anyone any knowledge of or pehaps a example with a numeral higher than this ? I think this is the last company formed ?
Jim

[Sayle F]

Skull Tab

I do have this one Jim,

[Donald Abenheim]

Stuerme # in SSTV

One way to approach this issue is via Chas. Sydnor's book on the SS Totenkopfverband/Totenkopfdivision (Princeton UP and more lately of Schoenigh Verlag), which is the most complete work of its kind. You can also write to the historians in the Militaergeschichtliches Forschungsamt in Potsdam who are also likely to know the STAN or TOE/TDA of these units in the period in question or they know someone who does know. I think it is in Mollo, too, but this far from a complete source. At what date did the # on the vertical TK tabs become fully obsolete? Yet another source, I think, is Kurt Mehner, Die Waffen SS u. Polizei, '39-'45: Schriftenreihe Fuehrung u. Truppe (Patzwall/Norderstedt, 1995). Sapere aude. PS I took a look at the German version of Sydnor, and it does contain some # on the strength of these units in the era 1938-1939, in which the order of battle of the SSTV grew quite a bit. The reinforcements from other branches, viz: Allgem. SS, SA as well as Polizei obviously played an important role in the end-strength of these units at the beginning of the war. To be sure, the above does not speak directly to the empirical evidence of the # of such bataillons and companies, but it gives a kind of yard stick. The SSTV had a strength of around 24,000 in the midst of the Polish campaign. Apparently, Eicke also recruited SA men into the SSTV and they were supposedly able to wear SA badges of rank on SS uniform. I had not read of this, actually, heretofore. Sydnor is the work with the highest reputation and the notes contain archival citations on orders of battle, t. o. & e's and other data of this kind.