Organisational Badges 25,15 & 10yr NSDAP device ribbon bar.

[andrewb]

Hi guys,

I would appreciate your opinions on this 6 place ribbon bar with all 3 NSDAP service devices. Of course it is extremely rare to find all 3 devices on one bar.

Regards,

AB.

[Ulsterman]

I am looking forward to seeing what RR says!

[andrewb]

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[andrewb]

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[Guest Rick Research]

LOVELY bar and one of the handful that IS real. That came from Evil Ricky's Collection and I am happy to say that I have had it in my very own personal paws here at the Schloss for in hand direct observation on 13 August 2003:

It's travelled a long long way from H.P. Lovecraft Country!!!! Let the "It's A Small World After All" singing commence!

As a matter of fact, it is no doubt STILL displayed on the pirate version of my German Ribbon Bars online mega opus and will be again on the authorized version when I get that going (see "Gallery" on other half of GMIC website for as-is in progress) if you allow me to use your MUCH better scans. :cheers:

[andrewb]

Just a few more close pics.

[andrewb]

...

[andrewb]

Hi Rick,

That's good news. I've had the bar for just over a year now. There are some who had doubts with this one because of its rarity. Your welcome to use any of the photos.

Many thanks for the reply.

Regards,

AB.

Edited March 9, 2009 by andrewb

[Guest Rick Research]

Much obliged! Thank you! My OLD Epson scanner wasn't as good as my current one and never thought I'd see that one again!

I just realized that you're in Probationary Member status so can't see the Other Half but have lots and lots of photos in wear, regulations, and close ups--

It's a peach and I hope you hang on to it because chances are that neither you nor I nor anybody else will ever get a SECOND chance at finding a REAL one.

[Stogieman]

Fun to see how far & wide my old collection scattered. I didn't save a lot, the only ribbon bar I have still as one of the handfull of SS rune bars that are real

[Ulsterman]

Yup-

It is insanely rare!

It is almost as rare as a Blood Order....and under-priced when sold I reckon.

The chap who wore this on his party uniform had to have been in in 1925/26/27 and it has to date from the final years of the Third Reich as Germany crumbled into smoke and chaos. I have never even seen any documents or references anywhere (and I have looked!) for LS party medal awarded after 1942!

Not many Nazis only had this series of LS medals and of those, @5- 8% were women.

How many survived the great uniform bonfires of 1945?

Not many at all.. ...and now you have one! A famous one too.

Congratulations.

Edited March 11, 2009 by Ulsterman

[andrewb]

Thanks guys.

I realize how rare it is and how lucky I am to have it. It is in good safe hands.

Hi Stogieman, Here is another that may look familiar to you.

Regards,

AB.

[Robin Lumsden]

That NSDAP bar is a real beauty!

You had to be someone like this to have all three......................

[Guest Rick Research]

Not necessarily, since unlike any other long service award, rank can't be deduced from the Party ones. Could have been a small town Ortsgruppenleiter or some such.

But SA Stabschef Schepmann there is a PERFECT illustration of how the triple Parties were possible with a Treudienst Cross---

only because they CHEATED.

Schepmann lost his teacher's job in the late 1920s for being an obnoxious Nazi. When they took over, he was--although never returned to the CIVIL government service-- "restored" in seniority and pension rights (until 1945 ) and so "double dipped" as if he'd been chalking blackboard lessons all along.

The W?rttemberg veteran was very possibly the same sort of fellow and might even have held a REAL government job while a uniformed Nazi Party functionary all along.

I keep hoping-- as Forever Lost items are turned up by our busy Research Gnomes-- that a list of NSDAP 25 recipients will turn up sometime, somewhere. So much paperwork has simply never been LOOKED at in all these long decades!

[andrewb]

Thanks Robin and nice photo.

Rick,

Very interesting info. Thank you. Do you also have a photo of one in wear? It would be nice to see another.

Regards,

AB.

[Guest Rick Research]

Only in my dreams. Wish I knew how FEW of these there actually were.

There were roughly 22,000 Golden Party Badge recipients out of the 100,000 eligible. The GPB went to simple dues paying Nazis who did not need to have ever held "full time" Party office-- as the long service crosses required. So what miniscule proportion of that 22,000 qualified?

From the GPB numbers for all the recipients in Gau Hessen-Nassau, I'd say the only people who could have received a "25" had to have joined by 30 January 1926. That brings potential wearers down to those with Party numbers roughly below 28,000.

Out of the 22,000 total dues payers numbered 1 to 99,999.

So less than a third of that GPB total 22,000 would have been possible--

say maximum possible about 7,000 theoretically-- but of course the vast majority of those were NOT "Amtswalter" Party office holders, just dues payers.

1,000 pionieer uniform wearing "career" Nazis? Maybe 2,000? It would not surprise me some day to find out that there were only NSDAP 25 holders in the HUNDREDS. :catjava:

[Ulsterman]

Yeah- I estimate @ 1,500-2,000 TOPS with this combo!

Enlisted WW1 Wurtembergers who ended up as civil officials-maybe a score at most.

Many of the early NSDAP were Bavarians (30%). Fewer than 50% of the party members were veterans in those days too!

15% of the early party's loyalists was female by the NSDAP Chancellery memos and in addition, while many were young (in 1933 40% were between the ages of 21 and 30), there was "wastage" over time: death, resignations, purging (esp. 1934-35), emigration...... whatever.

NSDAP memos in the late 1930s refer to this as @20% cadre loss and that was before the bombings and war began.

By December, 1925 (almost the cut off date for the 25 year medal) the NSDAP had issued membership cards up to #27,117.

By December 1926, they had issued party card #49,750....but estimated it had only 35,000 active party members.

By July, 1928 Party# 92,345 was issued....to a man who got the bronze and silver LS in 1940.

The NSDAP was however, heavily over-officered and there clearly were many "part-time office holders" who were older members. There was fudging, but Hess's clarification letter of 1935 made it very clear that the NSDAP was not a part-time "hangers-on" association. The party was professionalized and those who didn't have the education/skills were purged/demoted/retired/pushed off into other assignments (DAF).

I suspect part-timers qualified for the medals, but can not prove it. Cadre status was determined at the Gau level although the paycheck originated in Berlin. many NSDAP cadres also simultaneously held lucrative civil government jobs-Mayor, Vice Mayor, Treasurer, provincial chamber of commerce Director etc. etc..

As an indication though, in 1940, the NSDAP internal census found that only 4% of its party cadres (@450,000 people) were "Altkampfer", that is, members who were in before Jan. 1933......and of those, the men who were really hard-core, wilderness years members: probably fewer than 1% (4,200). An additional number died in 1939-44. Like Rick said, maybe only HUNDREDS of 25 LS medal owners at best. I guesstimate @1,200, but that is just a guess.

It is still a minuscule number of people.

The people who had all three NSDAP LS medals held serious civil power of some sort in the Third Reich.

One unanswered question is how membership/leadership of affiliated organizations counted towards awards. H&S state that service in affiliated organizations counted, as did "honorary" service.

Many NSDAP officials were members of the SA or DAF/NSKK etc. before they were party members because it was cheaper. Also, I still do not know if females were cadres. Certainly they were officers in party organizations, but party officership is unknown-doubtful though given Nazi ideology.

If I remember correctly, the cut off date for awards was in October prior to the award year. Recipients were determined at the Gau level and awards were handed out in Jan. (Jamie Cross article in the MA) with Urkunden issued later-usually in April or even later.

It would be interesting to see any awarded for 1945, but I doubt they were.

Service in the Austrian party apparently did not count towards the medals.

Edited March 11, 2009 by Ulsterman

[Robin Lumsden]

Please remember......................

These crosses were awarded not only for long service in the NSDAP itself, but also for long service in the uniformed organisations affiliated to the NSDAP, i.e. the SA, SS, NSKK etc. etc.

There was no need to be an NSDAP member to hold membership of the SS, for example. Most SS men were NSDAP members, but not all of them were.

So a long serving SS man (1920s-1945) could qualify for these 3 crosses without ever having held NSDAP membership at all.

Unlikely, I'll grant you. But theoretically possible.

[Guest Rick Research]

I don't think that is correct.

I have yet to encounter a non-Party member with any of these NSDAP long service crosses. As I recall from reading the German requirements, they were not eligible unless they had been BOTH a Party member AND a "fulltime" (and that was very very often a retroactive cheat) Party functionary. This DUAL requirement (as opposed to simply being a dues paying ordinary member for the Gold Party Badge) is what limited these crosses so that we rarely find anyting but 10s. If anyone has Doehle from a 1940+ edition listing requirements in the original German for these NSDAP long service awards, I'd welcome seeing that. I haven't had access to the Reichsgesetzbl?tter for 30 years and as we all know, English "translations" tend to simply repeat each other rather than getting to the original source.

There were plenty of senior SS officers, for instance, who slithered in after 1933 and ended up with oakleaves all over their collar patches-- but they did NOT get any Party long service awards at all, ever. Even the General (Allgemeine) SS did not qualify for the specifically SS-VT/Totenkopf/Junkerschule "SS" long service awards, only the NSDAP ones. Oddly enough, the SS-VT, Totenkopf, and Junkerschule personnel however were eligible for BOTH the "SS" awards AND the NSDAPS--

but apparently the "SS" awards continued later into the war at lower years of required service than the Party awards did. Have never found a suspension date, yet obviously at some point in the war, awards DID... just cease.

I am currently reworking the 901 Gau Hessen-Nassau Gold Party Badge recipients' list tracking down who among them was what and hope to have a statistical survey of this 4% slice ready in a week or so. It really won't be foolproof to extrapolate from a backwater Gau--"Old Fighters" in Bavaria and Berlin probably got into full-time post-1933 Party jobs a lot more often, for instance. But the only other trackable group we have are the roughly 6% of Gold Party Badge holders who Stepehen Lautens has tracked in the SS. Even there, looking at photos of pioneer Old Fighter members who LATER joined the Allgemeine SS-- they did not hold the 25 NSDAP Cross.

My best gut feeling is that there cannot have ever been more than high-hundreds of NSDAP 25 Years Service Cross members.

[Robin Lumsden]

Better picture of Schepmann's bar.

I've seen another photo of a bar like this being worn, but I can't remember where. :banger:

[Ulsterman]

Yeah-this is a mystery with many loose ends.

I have assumed that calender years of service/membership counted towards earning the LS medals, not months. As I recall RR stated that Altkampferzeit time counted double.

Even with a calender year accounting, the earliest the 25 year crosses could have been handed out is 1941.

I have a rather comprehensive NSDAP Party #/entrance date compilation from disparate sources as well as year end #s.

So party membership dates can determine total potential persons/cadres eligible for the medal.

I note that many "famous" Nazi bars have only two NSDAP LS medals on them-including the (in)famous Himmler bar so often seen in books.

Please correct me if I am wrong here:

1925=2 years

1926=2 years

1927=2 years

1928=2 years

1929=2 years

1930=2 years

1931=2 years

1932=2 years

1933=1 year (I had originally supposed credit for two years, but the evidence doesn't seem to show this)

1934=1 year

1935=1 year

1936=1 year

1937=1 year

1938=1 year

1939=1 year (awards created)

1940= 1 year (Initial bronze and silver medals handed out for party members to 1928:confirmed by documents)

1941=1 year ( "class of 1929 medals awarded:with cut off eligibility dates as of Oct. 1941: confirmed by documents)

1942=1 year (class of 1925 awards of 25 year cross:Last year of documentary evidence that LS awards were made)

1943=1 year- I suspect that Hitler suspended the crosses in January, 1943 ("Verlust am Ehrenzeichen" p.116 in VB)

1944=1 year

In reviewing some SS files of Miller I see that even older NSDAP members from 1928/29 did not get the 25 year cross, or at least it wasn't in their files.

I also note that Austrians didn't get LS medals either.

Edited March 12, 2010 by Ulsterman

[Guest Rick Research]

I suspect awards were suspended after 1942.

The counting and double counting closed every previous year with eligibility as of 31 October. These were processed and awards were bestowed en masse nationally only once a year, on 30 January to commemorate coming to power in 1933. The first awards were thus 30 January 1940.

Closest I can come to the the W?rttemberger "25" and Schepmann's bar is a Mere 15er--

There would have been a rush of double 15s-with-10s being awarded in 1940 (or 10s then and almost immediate double-counted 15s in 1941 and ... ???) but THEN a vast yawning void for the 25s.

[Ulsterman]

You know, it is now official; I am senile. We discussed this at length and in detail- twice- a mere 7 years ago!

I did learn something new though-awards are confirmed as of Jan. 1942 both by documents and newspaper accounts. But nobody has seen a NSDAP LS document anywhere I can find after that date (as you said above).

Apparently the party allowed the 25 year cross to party cadres killed either in bombing raids or in military service as honor awards. This was decreed in April, 1944.

Also interesting to trace the history and price of this ribbon bar. Started at Weitzes' in 2002, landed upon your kitchen table via Stogieman in 2003 and has now ended up with Andrew. The bar is taking on a history in and of itself.

Edited March 11, 2009 by Ulsterman

[Guest Rick Research]

Yup, it's a smaaall smaaaall world. Certificates "Item X Once Miraculously Touched By Ricky" available for only....

Since bestowals of the civil service Treudienst crosses are KNOWN to have been suspended as of 30 January 1943, I suspect that may have been the last award date for all the remaining non-Wehrmacht long service awards-- just have never been able to establish period documentation for that. MUST all have been posted in the same Reichsgesetzblatt!!!

IF that was the final cutoff date, that would again SEVERELY restrict the number of NSDAP 25s that were ever possible-- thus further explaining why REAL ones are so incredibly rare.

[Colin Davie]

Started at Weitzes' in 2002,