Correspondence Grouping Nazi Orders and Medals

The images and text used on this and all other USM web pages are the copyrighted property
of USM Inc. Those images and the text may be used by others ONLY AFTER completion
of a formal international licensing agreement and payment of a licensing fee!

RARE 10 PIECE NAZI GROUPING ORDERS AND MEDALS

RARE CORRESPONDENCE REGARDING RETAIL SALES
OF NAZI ORDERS AND MEDALS TO SS-OBERFÜHRER
DR. DOEHLE AT THE REICHSCHANCELLERY IN BERLIN,
THE REICHSSTATTHALTER IN WIEN, NAZI POLICE,
RZM, ETC. - 1943 & 1944

This rare 10 piece grouping centers around a request to allow retail sales of Nazi orders and medals by a flag manufacturer, Fahnenfabrik Joseph Fleck (formerly the First Austrian Flag Factory), RZM number 23833. The company wished to add Nazi orders and medals to their existing sales assortment of military and paramilitary flags, pictures of Nazi personalities, busts of Adolf Hitler, shooting and honor prizes, Wehrmacht banners, DAF flags, swastika armbands, and enamel and metal signs.

Several things make this grouping so interesting and rare:

1) The Fahnenfabrik Joseph Fleck (Flag Factory Josef Fleck) is still in business today at the same address, but using the pre-Nazi era name again, Erste Österreichische Fahnenfabrik.

2) The company wrote to SS-Oberführer Dr. Heinrich Doehle, Undersecretary in Hitler’s Reichschancellery at Voßstrasse 2 in Berlin with the request. Dr. Doehle initialed the 3 November 1943 letter.

3) The incredible bureaucratic reaction to such a simple request. Dr. Doehle’s office studied the request, checked the facts in the request, then contacted the Vienna Police President’s office (inside the Reichsstatthalter’s Office at Ballhausplatz 2) to inquire if they knew any reason why this request should be denied. The DAF was also contacted regarding the matter. The background of owner Joseph Fleck was checked (he was a native of Munich, born in 1895).

4) The request was made as a result of shrinking supplies and limited availability of materials elsewhere in Germany. The correspondence shows that the main supplier in Hamburg had been bombed out of business, a victim of Bombenterror.

Aside from correspondence from Fahnenfabrik Joseph Fleck to Dr. Doehle at the Berlin Reichschancellery and to and from the Reichsstatthalter’s Office and Police in Vienna (the second largest city in Hitler's Großdeutschland!),

there is also a letter dated 7 March 1944 from a weaving company in Wien to the Reichsstatthalter (the highest civil authority in a Gau) inquiring if their firm could accept an order from the Fleck factory which claimed they had permission to sell Nazi orders and badges. The letterhead of the weaving company, Josef Heitzmann & Sons states that the company had the permission of the “Führer and Reichskanzler at the Reichschancellery to manufacture ribbons for orders and decorations”!

The lot also includes an original business card of the manager of Fahnenfabrik Joseph Fleck, Mr. Arnold Gärtner, as well as a six paragraph Third Reich copy of the law pertaining to the selling of Nazi orders and Honor Badges at retail. No detail was left untouched!

This material would be a splendid addition to any collector of Nazi Party, military or paramilitary uniform, orders, medals or badges, or an author writing on these subjects.

This rare Nazi correspondence is ** SOLD **

This USMBOOKS web page is Copyright © 2020 by USM, Inc., and the text and images on it are fully protected by international copyright law. It is therefore, illegal for anyone to take any of the material found here and use it for their own purposes without our written permission, irrespective of any excuse they may feel they have for doing so.