Red cross/ social welfare

[Billy G]

I think you guys have it backwards, Red Cross is supposed to have the rectangular scabbard holes and Social Welfare is supposed to have round holes.

They’re nice daggers and well made, often found in nice condition. I like the knot on Kreta’s DRK dagger with the red flecked cord. I have two such knots albeit with flecking on the stem too but they came on Fire Official daggers and I left them where they were.

[Larry C]

I felt challenged by Bills reply above and had to dig for myself to see if I could find a period photo of a DRK leader wearing one of these daggers.
I found a photo in Tom Johnsons references Volume 1 ...yet using Toms quick reference there was no listing for a Social Welfare dagger.
So I would say that the Social Welfare daggers were not yet documented or I missed seeing it in his later references 7 and 8.
Below are 2 photos of a DRK dagger in wear ...and judging by the upper scabbard eyelet ....it appears to be rectangular.

[Larry C]

Thankyou Kirk for posting that Wittmann link and explains alot as Tom even admittingly stating that its a variation.
This explains why I could not find any Social Welfare examples in Johnsons references.

I do see Social Welfare awards and medals throughout the forum and the connection Wittmann made was because of the Cross marking on the medals and creating the Social welfare dagger?

Just like any other Political or Military branch daggers also have variations yet all still belong to their own branch.
Those Social welfare hangers ....where did they come from as Tom stated they too also appeared all of a sudden.

Back to Gerds posted examples ...are these both just Redcross daggers with variant scabbard eyelets.?
Heer dagger scabbard bands have quite a few oak leaf variants but are all still Heer.

Interesting topic now .

Regards Larry

So the Social Welfare coined term was just made up as was the Luftwaffe funeral dagger ?

[Mazlin]

Who would have thought...
Guess that settles it then.
M.E.E that is an amazing piece of documentation.Well done.

[Rossi]

Ok I would like to add some observational information to this to see if that makes things better or worse.

I have currently recorded 160 leaders daggers from the internet, and compiled them into a spread sheet because I was interested in the differences. With leaders there are 2 styles of eagles one that is often considered PDL and one that is considered Klaas. Both of these eagles can be found with scabbards with both round and square/rectangle hanger bands, both of these also have distinctly different hanger bands and screws so this means that both (I use that term loosely and I will explain in the end) companies made square hole and round hole scabbards.

So 42 of the 160 have round holes, of these round holed ones 38 of them have the PDL style eagle, and 4 of them have a Klaas style eagle. Of the 38 all but 2 of them have the same style of hanger band and hole placement and 2 have a different style. Of the 4 Klaas the all have the a different hanger band hole than the above 38 and used different screws (the same found on rectangle Klaas scabbards)

118 of the 160 have a rectangle hole, of these rectangle holed ones 22 of them have the PDL style eagle, 95 have the Klaas style eagle and one has the Klaas style eagle but a Krebs marked blade. Of these 22 PDL style 20 of them have a distinctly different rectangle hanger band than those with of the Klaas style eagle, 2 of them have the hanger band style found on the Klaas eagle so it could be miss matched or other. Of the 95 all seemed to have the same hanger bands that are different than the 20 mentioned above. Lastly the Krebs marked blade has a Klaas style eagle but a different style of square hanger band than both the PDL or the Klaas style eagle.

So with that wall of text out of the way I will add a bunch of caveats. In the above I have been saying Klaas and PDL style but in reality in my sheets I call them big cross and small cross since there is no way to be 100% as to who made them outside of using em hewers that are marked and hoping that others didn't copy the style of eagle. With that said it has now become obvious that the big cross (Klaas style) eagle was also used by Krebs and there is some thoughts that they might have also been use by Aesculap but there are no marked blades of these either, but there is a very small number (3) of the rectangle scabbards that use a 3 screw scabbard and in the past there was some rumours these might have been Aesculap.
There are other differences including screws used but I hadn't started recording this information until around 1/3 of my current research so I can not claim that it will be the same but from the 1/3 you do start to see similarity of screws used between makers, and sometimes there are combinations that are just different. I also record what sellers/owners called these blades (ie Social Welfare or Red Cross) and if there were hangers what hangers were with each but that isn't really useful info for what I am recording.
With all this information I have done my best to record from the pictures that I can find from the retailers and the owners but sometimes the pictures are just too poor and then the data would be left out if I couldn't tell.

Anyways as stated I am not sure if the information is useful at all but Small Cross are found to have made both rectangle and round holed scabbards and Big Cross also made both rectangle and round hole scabbards and both are distinctly different.

I would also like to point out that there hasn't been any examples of the 3rd eagle style that has been associated with Klaas that have been found on EM's found on leaders.

Love this and appreciate the effort you put into this. Student of the hobby and love the detail you provide here! Well done blade brother.

[Rossi]

It’s a great topic gents and I for one have always wanted to know all these years. Appreciate den70, M.E.E and Larry for the details. Bruce wrote this in this link: Social Welfare Officer

Wish the man getting treatment in the field with the oxygen mask could tell us more

[Larry C]

Hi Den...decide which post numbers you want moved and I will create a separate thread for them.

Best Larry

[den70]

Larry, I think it’s worth putting the following posts No. 13, 15, 19, 21, 22 into a separate topic

[Larry C]

Hi Den..I will physically move the posts including #18 as well as it is related and I will clean up Kretas thread here.

Posts moved here > Red Cross and Social Welfare Daggers details and related organization

Den...let me know if you want the thread title renamed for a more detailed clarification.

Regards Larry