A Fabulous Quality WW2 Kriegsmarine Deluxe Officers Dagger with Hammered Scabbard & Hanging Straps And One Would Be Unlikely To Find An Example Better Than This Beauty

High quality deluxe hammered scabbard version exactly as was used by numerous Admirals in the German Navy of WW2. A near mint example that could likely not be improved upon. The blade is perfectly plain, that is much scarcer and rarer than the regular etched blade version. The standard scabbard was the lightning bolt type, the deluxe version was hand hammered. The silk and velvet backed straps are mounted with gilded alloy lions head buckles and fittings. A German naval dirk once used by a Kriegsmarine warship and U Boat officer. Original ivorine grip and wire binding, blade in jolly nice condition. The hammered scabbard was initialy first used on the Imperial German Naval Ist pattern dagger of 1902, but was a firm favourite of officers of nobility and status who served in WW2 using this second pattern with the eagle and swastika pommel, and could afford the additional expence. The Kriegsmarine War Navy was the name of the Navy of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It superseded the Imperial German Navy of World War I and the inter-war Reichsmarine. The Kriegsmarine was one of three official branches of the Wehrmacht, the armed forces of Nazi Germany.

The Kriegsmarine grew rapidly during German naval rearmament in the 1930s (the Treaty of Versailles had limited the size of the German navy previously). In January 1939 Plan Z was ordered, calling for the construction of many naval vessels. The ships of the Kriegsmarine fought during the Spanish Civil War and World War II. The Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine (as for all branches of armed forces during the period of absolute Nazi power) was Adolf Hitler, who exercised his authority through the Oberkommando der Marine.

The Kriegsmarine's most famous ships were the U-boats, most of which were constructed after Plan Z was abandoned at the beginning of World War II. Wolfpacks were rapidly assembled groups of submarines which attacked British convoys during the first half of the Battle of the Atlantic but this tactic was largely abandoned in the second half of the war. Along with the U-boats, surface commerce raiders (including auxiliary cruisers) were used to disrupt Allied shipping in the early years of the war, the most famous of these being the heavy cruisers Graf Spee and Admiral Scheer and the battleship Bismarck. However, the adoption of convoy escorts, especially in the Atlantic, greatly reduced the effectiveness of commerce raiders against convoys.

Souvenirs such as these were taken by the magnificent British & Commonwealth and Allied combatants throughout the world. Although the names of those veterans are most sadly often now lost in the mists of time, their heroic excursions with never be forgotten by most of us, as they are also symbolised by these very war trophies, that hundreds of thousands of allied veterans perished for, in order for the survivors to regain world freedom, cruelly stolen by the Axis Powers. Of course not all the world gained such freedoms at the end of 1945, but at least hundreds of millions did, which is a remarkable achievement, magnificently achieved by our finest generation, and by those millions of that generation that sacrificed all.

Code: 21150