hucks216

Not knowing Canadian areas etc I'm assuming Red Deer isn't far from you in which case that is another pointer that it belongs to you otherwise what would the odds be that a SB that you bought and which got lost in the mail has rocked up just down the road instead of somewhere like Toronto or Vancouver?

That is a coincidence - have you contacted them?

Generalmajor Erwin Max Clemens Heinrich Ernst Harry Vierow
Born: 15 May 1890
Died: 01 Feb 1982

Highest rank reached: General der Infanterie

Chef des Generalstabes XI.Armeekorps
Kdr 96.Inf.Division
Kdr 9.Inf.Division
Kdr LV.Armeekorps
Führer XX.Armeekorps
Militärbefehlshaber Nordwest-Frankreich
Kdr Generalkommandos Somme

RK: 15 Nov 1941

Generalmajor Arno Ernst Max von Lenski
Born: 20 Jul 1893
Died: 04 Oct 1986

Highest rank reached: Generalleutnant (Postwar - Generalmajor NVA)

Kdr Aufkl.Abt 33
Ehrenrichter am Volksgerichtshof Berlin
Kdr Kavallerieschule Krampnitz
Führer 2.Schützen-Brigade
Führer 11.Schützen-Brigade
Kdr Schule für Schnelle Truppen Krampnitz
Führer 2.Pz.Division
Kdr 24.Pz.Division

Captured at Stalingrad
Nationalkomitee Freies Deutschland und Bund deutscher Offiziere

DKiG: 21 Jan 1943
 

Generalmajor Walter Melzer
Born: 07 Oct 1894
Died: 23 Jun 1961

Highest rank reached: General der Infanterie

Kdr Inf.Rgt 151
Kdr Inf.Rgt 694
Kdr 252.Infanterie-Div
Kdr XXIII.Armeekorps

RK: 21 Aug 1941
EL: 23 Aug 1944
DKiG: 11 Feb 1943

Thanks for the service history of your uncle on the other thread. It looks like he was serving with 2.Minensuchflottille when the above photo was taken. The two paravanes seen in the photo would add weight to this.

Is there any chance you can scan in the part of the photo indicated below at a higher resolution? It might be possible to narrow down the ship if we can read the two cap tallies. It looks like it ends with '...flottille'.

There are no awards being worn so possibly pre-WW2.

Nice to see the photos and the citation together.

Do you have anything else relating to that sailor (Schlummer)? If not here are some more details:

Name: Willi Schlummer

Date of Birth: 25th Oct 1913 in Obergrüne

Died: 12th Oct 1945 in Indonesia

Crew of 1937b

Highest rank: Oberleutnant zur See (1st Jan 1943)

Also served on: MS Bogota, Schiff 10 'Thor'

The above information and some photos of him and his grave are here:

Schlummer, Willi

Update: Just seen your photo of your uncle's grave in Indonesia on another thread so you are obviously aware of his details.

I would say it is a good bet. Due to their locations a lot of the camps evacuated their inmates to places like Flossenburg and Mauthausen as the Allies pushed forward and as Flossenburg isn't that far from the Czech western border it isn't surprising to see so many from that camp represented. By looking at the others you can see where their careers took them - Simon Fischer for example served in Infanterie-Regiment 289 at the start of the war and in mid-1944 he was at Auschwitz-Birkenau and then ended up in Flossenburg.

That is some resource. There are plenty of SS Artillery related WP on the market that were stolen from the Czechoslovakian archives a few decades ago and there were quite a few other SS units based in the country so not surprising to see so many such examples although by the looks of it they are for KZ guards.

Pity that some have been removed from photo albums.

I would say it's a slim chance, especially with such a common surname, if that is the only information available.

Looks like he is wearing a wrapper in the photo so possibly panzer or panzerjäger which I would think rules out Der Führer and it does look like a LAH on the shoulder board. 

As for the action that saw him being wounded it may well prove impossible to tell. LSSAH were in Austria from April 1945 so it could of been any time from then onwards.

Try contacting WASt and ask if they have his service record or hire a researcher to look through the SS enlisted men's files at NARA to see if his records are there (Series A3343)

I look forward to any updates.

It is possible, although far from certain, that the soldiers buried next to him just might be those who were with him when he died. At the Ysselsteyn cemetery in The Netherlands Generalmajor Friedrich Kussin is buried next to the two soldiers who were also in his car when they were ambushed by British paratroopers so there is a slim chance that this could be the same for Müller.

Interesting item and good to see that it is direct from the family so you have a good provenance with it.

It would seem that 8th September 1944 wasn't a good day to be a Müller as loads were killed on that day with that surname! However, I might have found him in the Volksbund database as he holds the rank and is buried in Belgium:

Major Ferdinand Müller

Born: 7th October 1899

Died: 8th September 1944

Buried: Lommel Block 39, Grave 435

Interesting image. These tended to be part of photo packs that soldiers could buy and I also think they were sometimes compiled in book form as a sort of divisional history for a particular campaign.

On 9/8/2017 at 17:57, SemperParatus said:

Well that's annoying. However I believe if you click on the thumbnails it will bring you to the photos.

It doesn't work like that anymore I don't think. Photobucket now require a payment of $400 a year for people to host images to a website using Photobucket.

I have often wondered how the death or injury of a soldier was reported along the chain of command all the way back to the family. From the moment a soldier was killed who was informed and how was it reported? 

There was a brief discussion about this on AHF and it seems that the first the family would know about someone being killed would be when they received a letter from the man's Company Commander - no priest or political representative turning up to inform them, no telegram from a central issuing authority that coordinated such things (think of the Mel Gibson film We Were Soldiers where the taxi driver delivers the telegrams) but the postman delivering a letter straight from the front. I suppose with the losses being sustained such local people couldn't be spared for the time it would take to get around to see everyone but I am surprised that there did't seem to be some sort of central authority in each district (Wehrkreis) responsible for breaking the news. Such Wehrkreis level units did perform admin tasks with regards to the deceased soldier whereby they would forward on the man's Wehrpass and any associated paperwork to the family but this could be weeks or months afterwards.

So, can anyone shed any light on how the man's unit reported the death and the chain that information followed from Division upwards to whatever authority and then down the chain to the family? Loss lists for units do exist so the men were reported officially but to who, and then who did the next link in the chain report it to?

This example for a Johann Merkle from Pionier-Kp 707 seems to show the report was passed to the Ersatz Unit in Ingolstadt but would it of been passed up to Korps level, then Army Group level for them to send back to the Ersatz unit or would it of bypassed them all and gone straight back to the home based depot?

At the other, family, end the following items would seem to be the course of how they would receive news of the man's death and subsequent arrangements but a letter from the Company Commander being the first news just seems to bypass official channels, if such channels existed, although I have no doubt that it is how a lot of families found out about the death of a loved one.

First, the letter from the Kompanie-Chef reporting the death..

This was then followed a whole 5 months later by the sending via the local Wehrmeldeamt of the man's Wehrpass to his family (so where did they get the authority from to know to do this?):

This was followed by his Death Certificate and related paperwork 6 months after his death:

And if possible the unit would send a photo of his field grave:

For completeness, here is his entry in the Volksbund and a photo of his grave today.

Without a rank, name and what service he was in I think this might be impossible to find out. The name in the bottom corner may be the person who drew it and not the person the picture is of. But even if the name shown is the man in the picture he might just of been one of the many thousands of unknown troops who served and left no footprint in history outside of their families. 

However, there is a Karl Wrobel listed in the Volksbund as dying in a Russian PoW camp in 1947. The dates on the reverse of the portrait might just relate to the spell in a particular camp before he was moved elsewhere. These are the details for that man:

Nachname: Wrobel

Vorname: Karl

Dienstgrad: Volkssturmmann

Geburtsdatum: 06.06.1908

Geburtsort:Forellengrund

Todes-/Vermisstendatum: 27.08.1947

Todes-/Vermisstenort: In d. Kgf. in Wysokij

Karl Wrobel ist vermutlich als unbekannter Soldat auf die Kriegsgräberstätte Charkow überführt worden.

Grablage: wahrscheinlich unter den Unbekannten

Hauptmann Helmuth Schwing

Born: 23 May 1908

Died: 21 Apr 1992

Highest rank reached: Oberstleutnant. Served in Bundeswehr until 1964.

Chef 3./Pi.Btl 62

Chef 2./Pi.Btl 62

Kdr Sturm-Pi.Btl 43

Pi.Btl Grossdeutschland

Ub.Kdo Heeresgruppe A

Kdr Pz.Pi.Btl 39

OKH Sonderstab III

RK: 30 Dec 1943

Can't find anything out about him as such but he does not appear in the 1941 Kriegsmarine Rangsliste.

And he isn't listed in Hitlers Marine im Landkriegseinsatz 1939-45.

Major Rudolf Hünermann

Born: 15 Aug 1895

Died: 27 Dec 1955

Highest rank reached: Generalleutnant

Chef St. Wehrwirtsch. und Rüstungsamt

Chef Wehrwirtsch. St. West

OFK 894

Korück 19.Armee

Dr Wilhelm Stuckart

Born: 16 Nov 1902

Died: 15 Nov 1953

Reich Ministry of Interior, Division I

Chairman Reich Committee for the Protection of German Blood (Co-author of The Nuremburg Laws)

Attendee at The Wansee Conference

Interior Minister in Doenitz's Flensberg Government

Arrested for war crimes, he was sentenced to time served in April 1949.