Chris Boonzaier

And another point that 1918 was different to 1945.... Alsace Lorraine, Polish corridor, Free Hungry, etc. etc.... did not have to be done after WW2... would you have left it out in 1918 as well?

20/80 You dont REALLY believe a WW2 peace could have worked do you? Think of it... for it to work you would have had to occupy all of Germany as was done after WW2. Germany was a powder keg with left and right wing Freikorps jumping to kill each other.... would you let them have done their thing... or played sherrif? Continued the war until you had silenced the radicals? Just another small difference between 1918 Germany and 1945 Germany...

Plenty of reasons.... Germany in 1945 KNEW she had been beaten. that makes a huuge difference. Germany in 1918 thought she had been betrayed. A German Colonel once told me that the failure of Stauffenbergs plot was the best thing that could have happened. If he had succeeded and the war had ended differently, there would have been a Dolchstosslegende in 1944 or 1945 as well.... as it is Germany was beaten through and through... the nationalist and patriotic sentiments and lies of 1918 had no ground to grow on. and... Do you disagree that in 1918 communism and Ultra nationalism were flavours of the day and noone really had a taste for them in 1945 anymore? After Stalin, Hitler and co.... do you really not think the germans NOW knew better?

I never, ever said it was the best solution... but I have yet to here a realistic alternative offered. And I never said it never CONTRIBUTED to the Nazis... but I do not believed it is responsible for them. It is just too simple to say " we needed a different peace" without saying what that peace would have been like. Would you have given the poles access to the sea? Parts of France to Germany? CONTRIBUTED... just like the divorced parents of the manson girls CONTRIBUTED to them becoming unstable... but the divorces are not responsible for them becoming killers.... I mean..c'mon... what a cop out... The Germans should be able to say "Well, we are not responsible for Hitler.... The allies were..." ? Well... who supported him? Who marched for him? Who killed WW2 allied soldiers for him? Who murdered millions of civilians for him?... we gonna blame all that on the allies as well? 1) Lets hear you realistic alternative peace paln for WW1 2) To what % do you blame the allies for the Nazis? And think of this.... there was not only 1 nationalist party after the war. The Germans had a huuuuge choice of parties who did not like the peace treaty... but they supported the Nazis and their racist / Anti Semitic policies... was there anything in the peace treaty that encouraged auschwitz? Best Chris

But its all a moot point... the post WW2 approach would simply not have worked in 1918. In 1918 a good portion of the population was crying out for communist rule, and another portion for ultra nationalist... by 1945 these leading strains in society kept their mouths shut. The world had changed, same way the French army of 1939 was not the French army of 1914. All I hear is "there should have been a better peace in 1918" but so far no realistic example of what it could have been.

Hi, I dont think this is true for the Alpenkorps, in spite of their name. Best chris

As they were mainly prewar things i assume your best bet is the battalion one. The regt was wartime. Best Chris

Hi Doc, We love the Alpenkorps here!!!!! Welcome. I will dig for photos when I get back home, will be a few days. I wish there WAS an Alpenkorps Beer Stein! You will have to go with a Regt one if you can find one. Best Chris

It is possible that he was captured, or transfered away from U-Boots. I would bet EUR5 on the former. Best Chris

Nice, I wonder how his war continued? My wifes grandfather was the doctor of the 3rd U-Boot flottile for a few years. Best Chris

I think the problem is, someone once took a list of noted WW1 ring stamps and tried to match them to the initials of the LDO list, then added in initials of other known producers of medals. There is no way of knowing if they are lucky guesses or bad guesses. Best Chris

I dont know... but he paid EUR15 and I was just over EUR350... so he be a happy boy.... An interesting thing to note, and I dont know the "PP" fits in, as "through the agency of" and latin is not my bag of fish. So far on three documents I have seen it used when the document singles out someone who on the original document was one of a group of people. i.e. Bauer seems to have been listed in general orders with a group of other men who get the award. This document issued with just his name and the PP above and below seems to signal that there were more above and below him. Any Latin native speakers here ? ;-)

Hi, it was a bit of a problem finding out where he really was, but Hauptmann/Dan pulled the records for me. He was in fact with the 8th Brigade Ersatz Battalion, which was serving nowhere near his parent regiment. 8th Infantry was in the 33rd division and the 8th Brigade ersatz battalion, along with another ersatz Battalion was off with the 30t reserve division. there is a bit of extra correspondance of his family chasing down the medals and documents, nice group for a very short war...

3

in 1913

as is usual with the units on these... the unit is his parent unit, not the one he was with when he was awarded this.

1

I saw this group a few times at shows... when I saw it this weekend the seller was pretty desperate to move it and I got it about 35% off. I am very happy indeed, it is an extremely early casualty and has lots of paperwork. Lt d Res Lieber was wounded (for the 2nd time) on the 3rd (according to death card or 6th (according to records) by a bullet wound in the lower jaw. He was in hospital in Strasbourg and died on the 26th of November 1914. There seems to have been a race to award him some medals before he died. He lived long enough to get his EK2, the other two, although signed a few days before his death, did not make it to him. They were sent to his mother. Here is his EK2 doc. As is occasionally encountered, especially in with some early awards, the document took the form of a letter/notification of the award.

"I am spending my last day in the Fatherland with friends. Tomorrow I will be on the western border.... Tomorrow in the early morning I will go to church and entrust my soul and body to god. Then off to battle in Lothringen. How happy I am to see the blue and white flag again. May God be with Germany,with you, with my brothers and sisters.. and hopefully with me!"

Not common at all. I have one kicking around somewhere... have only ever seen 2-3. I think a "wild west" period cross- i.e. between the wars where anything went. I have no idea who made them. Best Chris

Fantastic! My only negative comment would be those modern ribbons (as on the star) are not nice at all. Why, oh why, can they not make proper ribbon for the stars!

German Paratroop beret worn by him on the link?!?!?!?

Hi, WAF has quite a bit, and there are forums with much WW2 stuff, but we do OK :-) Our Imperial German is good and we cover many things others dont, but we are not alone in the universe ;-)

what the hell you doing online? I thought you were at the show in Gunzenhausen??????

I have hundreds of variations of EK doc... there are plenty of print styles that are really "rare" but this one has to take the cake... The clasp to the 1870/71 EK awarded in WW1. There were no docs for these, there was an approval list and the unit made a confirmation doc for the awardee... so dont get thrown by the "Abschrift" on this,it is an "Abschrift" of text taken from a Kriegsministerium notice and should be seen as the mans "certificate" or preliminary award doc. Niemans book mentions there were no award docs, just confirmation documents. Notice how some lucky bastard picked this up for EUR15 at some stage..... Niemann has them (Albeit a much nicer one) at about EUR1000