Box 36
Woodstock, MD 21163-0036
ssdolch
We have been able to acquire a few daggers over the past year and one half using my SS number research and we thought we would post more about one of my acquisitions made that give you some insight into what it takes to identify them. Some of you saw this SS dagger with full Röhm inscription numbered 25 824 that was offered for sale on several websites dedicated to dagger collectors during 2007 by a collector in England. It has a documented history of previous ownership by noted collectors and dealers though the identity of SS man 25 824 had been lost in time.
For many months we have been diligently gathering the numbers of SS men not in the Dienstalterslistes and inputing them into our database while checking all of the numbered daggers that had been offered for sale or referenced in inquiries on the net. Every time we get a match is always exciting. In June 2007, we were amazed when we found that we had one for 25 824 in our database- our first ever for a dagger bearing the full Röhm inscription. (We have been just two digits off from another one that was offered for sale recently). As collectors at heart we had thought that we would like to at least own one and decided that this was it. And we particularly liked its established history of ownership as an unidentified piece. We believe provenance like this along with publication in authoritative books will become even more important as time goes on. But how did we identify it and the others we have been successful at unlocking their history? We though that we might share with you what it takes and what can be found.
The keys to the lock are held here at the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland, commonly referred to as Archives II (the main building is in Washington, DC). This state of the art facility is the largest archives in the world, and the world comes here to research the past since the freedom of access to information is a basic tenant of our democracy. This is 80 miles round trip from my house in Baltimore through some of the worst traffic in the entire United States. We try to travel between the morning and afternoon rush hours, but with many federal workers on flextime there seems to be no end to the weekday rush hour.
Metal detectors, x-ray machines, property passes for computers & cameras, researcher identity cards, and guards are among the hurtles you must pass over to gain access like getting into an airport (security prevents me from showing you pictures). Once inside, a trip to the fourth floor and another swipe of your identity card brings you to this in the Microform Reading Room. Along this wall are most of the microfilmed records of the TR captured by the United States Army at the end of World War II and are the answers to many of the questions that get debated in this forum. Here are records of the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, German Navy, SA, SS, NSDAP and other organizations. Visit www.archives.gov/research/captured-german-records/ for more information about what records are found here.
The National Archives houses more than 70,000 rolls of microfilm reproducing captured Germans and related records. Each drawer holds 125 or more rolls of microfilm. Each roll of microfilm usually has more that 2000 frames per roll and each frame is usually a picture of one document. That should give a perspective of the enormity of the amount of information that resides here. These two drawers hold just a small portion of the 909 rolls of microfilmed records of SS officers. These files, maintained by the SS Personalhauptamt and captured at the end of the war, were supplemented with other documents in preparation for war crimes trials. Files can contain large amounts of information on officers and their military careers including, in most cases, photographs of the officer. This record group is the most used my WWII researchers, and I am always curious when Germans are here looking at these records. All of the original captured documents were microfilmed and returned to Germany as a good-will gesture.
We have spent hundreds of hours searching microfilm rolls frame by frame looking for any documents that contain the SS numbers of the rank of Obersturmführer and below that are not in the Dienstalterlistes. At this point, our database has more than 77,000 numbers which is to date the largest collection we believe ever collected. This is the entry found on a list of Leibstandarte SS. Adolph Hitler members that was the Rosetta Stone for interpreting my dagger. Included with the SS number is the name Erich Brauer, the original owner of the full Röhm dagger! Listed here is also his NSDAP party membership number, birth date, and rank.
Once a name and, hopefully, a birth date is connected to a SS number, a researcher turns to this central index of SS men in these black binders. Amazingly, this priceless set is the only one in existence in the United States. It is not published in a book. It is not online. It is not on a CD.
In these volumes is the computer generated index of names for SS men found in the SS officer files, the limited number of enlisted men files, various lists of SS men, and the records of the Office Race & Settlement (Rasse-und Siedlungshauptamt or RuSha). We have been unable to find out what ever happened to the database file that generated this information so this printout remains the only copy here. It also lists birthdates, but not SS numbers, since not everyone had one. It looks to me that the unique SS numbers were no longer given to new members who joined after 1939 and birthdates usually became the numbers used to tell the difference between people with the same name.
In looking up Brauer’s name, we found that he was listed as having a RuSha file, which is what you hope to find. Looking in another finding aid, helps direct you to a specific man’s file located among 7,811 microfilm rolls.
The original documents for every RuSha applicant were placed in a folder that has the SS man’s name and SS number (if he had one) along with his application number.
Every SS man that was getting married had to secure permission from the Office of Race and Settlement. This was to insure the purity of the SS bloodline. Forms were filled out and family trees for the man and his perspective spouse were submitted along with photographs. If the SS man was not an officer, sometimes copies of one or more of his service personnel file cards end up in here too since this file made a convenient catchall when documents were sorted after the war. Among the many papers in Scharführer Erich Brauer’s file is this 1938 document that shows his assignment at that time was in the Berlin headquarters of the Sicherheitsdienst or SD! This was the party’s own intelligence service established to seek out disloyalty and traitors among party members.
This is what you hope to find in this file. As part of the RuSha application, the man and his spouse were required to submit a bust photo, a profile photo, and a full length view of themselves. Often SS men were photographed in their uniforms as well. At this point Brauer may have not been part of the uniformed branch of the SD and chose not to wear his uniform. He does wear in his lapel the eagle and swastika insignia like that found on a dagger handle. Early members of the LAH were supposed to be at least 6 feet 1 inches tall and he certainly looks like he met that requirement when standing next to his bride. Sometimes the photographs did not copy very well on microfilm, but Brauer’s did.
The SS man and his spouse had to submit copies of their family trees going back to at least 1800 to establish their bloodline. Many go back even further. I wonder if genealogists use these documents today or view them as too tainted. This is just part of Brauer’s pedigree.
Many, but not all, members of the SS were also members of the NSDAP. There were two separate sets of registration cards kept for each person. One set had photos of party members attached as well. At the end of the war, an American army group captured these records in a paper mill just before they were to be pulped. This is Erich Brauer’s party registration card that shows he joined 1 July 1931. His photo was no longer attached. This is the case with many of these since they were removed as an attempt to conceal identities at war’s end.
Such are the fruits of this “search and research” collecting adventure of the type that I have done over the years in early American photography, Civil War artifacts, and military artifacts of WWI and WWII. And Brauer’s SS dagger raises a very interesting question. Why would a man who was among the most zealous early supporters of Hitler and Nazism, a member of the LAH when he received his Röhm dagger, a party member, and a member of the SD whose job was to seek out and expose the party disloyal, himself be a naughty Nazi who did not follow directions? We heard of a newspaper editor that used to ask job applicants seeking employment as reporters to define “irony” which many had trouble doing. Here is Exhibit A that shows you how the identification of your numbered dagger can add a whole new dimension to its ownership.
Box 36
Woodstock, MD 21163-0036
ssdolch