The award as presented to Ladies~ Presidential Medal for Freedom. with Bow, miniature and eagle rosette.

Reverse aspects of the star and the two varietie~ of the Award.

B~OK REVIEW, b~ Ivo Suetens, O~A No. 1~76

Borgerhout, Belgium

Shelby C. Ross, Jr. Collector’s Guide to the Military Badges, Medals

and Decorations of the Third Reich. ~Daly City, CaI~c.1969. (6)-58p.

Fully illustrated. Paper bound.

~’nis new book on the German decorations and medals of the period

1933-1945 is a nice, clean edition, printed in off-set with many good

black and white illustrations, showing every badge, decoration and

nodal in actual size.

The use of catalog numbers, which the author informs us is new,

is not an innovation at all. We saw it used before, and much ~ore

efficiently, in the work, s of Dr. Klietmann where the numbering fol-

lows a fixed schedule, based on a system of cataloguing all orders,

medals and decorations of the world. His work Deutsche Au~zeichnunKen, follows this system too. It seems to us that the author of this

"ollector’s guide" might have used the Klietmann system to simplify

research; but this re~rk is of small importance.

In spite of the well gotten up presentation of the

Guide" this book is not an "honest" publication. If the author*s

stated intention is to simplify buying, selling and the correspondance

between collectors and dealers, I do not see how he can achieve this

result where the vast majority of the ite~ illustrated in the book are

forgeries! That the illustrations are of facsimiles and not authentic

medals, is never stated in the text. Is the author not able to distin-

guish authentic pieces from forKeries? For instance, the SS sleevebands

on pages 32 and 55, none are authentic and twelve of them shown were

never issued to the Waffen-SSo Besides this, others show incorrect

spelling, such as _VIKING in~ead of ¢orrectly~IKING! The l~on~ Flight

or Wa~ Flight bars on pages 24 and 25 are forgeries. The Ground Close

Combat Bar was never eumufactured during the war, and the badge shown

is the currently authorized one worn in the Bundesweh~. It would take

¯ too long and lead too far to enu~rate all the forgeries ilium%rated.

Many of thes~ badges never existed as real distinctions. The Lorient

Shield, %he W~Tsh~w Shield, the Naval Close Combat Badge, etc. are all

post-war w~nufactures, and the first two named were never officially

authorised, as is the same case as the U-Boat Close Combat in Gol~o As

for the Lappland Shield, a very small number were distributed, and the

specimen illustrated is a well-made fake. Should Mr. Ross so desire,

can tell him the sanufacturer of this one° Returning to the sleevebands,

the band ’~er l~ihrer" and all those that follow, (RS-5-1 to RS-5-37) are not honorary distinctions but are only unit emblems, even as

AFRIK~KORPS, the so-called first type of the ~frikabando These are details

that have been known for years by every serious collector and those with

any knowledge of military organization in the Third Reich. For what reason

is this nonsense still ~itten I ask?

Although the text pa~ of the book is very limited, it too contain~

many errors and o~issions. If as the book states, it is to be a guide,

then the information given should be accurate. But if we go to the t~uuble

to make a small anthology, then page by page there are onission~, errors,

and what is worse, fictitious details. An example is the spurious, Wound

Badge for Spain in GOI~)o It is incorrect to say that all black 1939 Wound

Badges were stamped from thim metal. I hav~ personally seen during the

war many s~oh badges in solid metal. The author did not s~y that the 1944

Hitler Wound Badge was cast in solid silver. It is untrue that Ger~

Weh~macht personnel were forbidden to wear the German-Italian A~rika

medal (RM-15) after the defeat in Africa in 1942° The oz~ier prohibiting

wear of ALL Italian insignia of orders and medals was issued in February

1944 and the reasons were ex~plained, regarding the so-called German-

Italian Africa medal, by an executive decision of the OoKoW. of March

15, 1944o As this medal is not German, but Italian, by rights it does

not belong in this book. No bibliography is given, so therefore the

author suggests that his book is by inference the only authority on the

matter of Third Reich awards. All in all, it is a very confusing and

mis~-uiding "collector’s guide"° Beware of it!