April 7, 2010

• This dagger that I have

   

  My father was a 50 cal.machinegunner assigned to the "Rainbow Division" of the 42nd Infantry during WW2. In April of 1945 the 42nd liberated Dachau prison camp and Dad's squadron commander took him and two other machinegunners thru the back gate to set up emplacements.

  

  The back gate at Dachau, taken by my Dad. 

  Since the Nazi SS Officers and guards knew the American Army was only a day away, most had already fled leaving just a handful of enlisted personnel behind and they quickly surrendered.

  Most of the activity that day was taking place at the front gate, so Dad took a walk around checking things out and found an abandoned staff car a couple hundred feet from the gate. On looking inside he found a Nazi SS banner and an officers dress dagger. He wrapped the dagger in the banner, stuck them in his knapsack and carried them the rest of his time in Europe, and eventually back home when he returned.

  For 50 years the pair were kept in my mothers cedar chest and were passed to me when my father died in 1995. I've done a lot of research on Google and at Johnsons Reference Library and found that this is not an SS officers dagger, it is a 2nd Model Luftwaffe (air force) officers dagger.

  

  Daggers like this one with the double etched Emil Voos blades were only issued to the highest ranking Luftwaffe officers.

  

   

  

  But Dachau was ran by the Army, and they had their own very distinctive edged weapons issued to them! Why would an Air Force officers dagger be in one of the staff cars they tried to escape in???

  

  Well, it was back to Google and the answer turned out to be pretty simple. There was a Luftwaffe officer at Dachau when the Americans arrived. And not just any officer, it was the commander of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goering!

  When Hitler went into the bunker towards the end and said that all was lost, the war was over, Goering declared himself Fuhrer!

  Upon hearing this, Hitler had him placed under house arrest at Dachau, which was near Goerings home in Bavaria.

  Earlier in the war Goering had been instrumental in the founding of the SS and was held in very high regard by the commandant and SS guards at at Dachau. Needless to say, house arrest rules for him were almost none-he dined with the officers, slept in their quarters, and was even allowed to carry small arms to protect himself from the real prisoners at the camp.

  The night before the Americans arrived, Goering and the SS officers fled the camp altho he was later recaptured by American forces and eventually sentenced to death after the war.

  But, the night that they were scrambling for their lives, did the staff car run out of gas? In their haste to find something else to escape in, did Goering overlook his dagger lying in the backseat??

  

  Such a small thing would have meant nothing when you're in fear for your life!!

  Any "serious" collectors of "The Edged Weapons of The Third Reich" interested???

   

   

  • 10:53 am
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