Third Party Press

Xmas ornaments from Hilter's tree

M45

Well-known member
From my early days of collecting, I had left these at my mom's house decades ago. She was deep cleaning the house, "do you want these or should I get rid of them?" :)

I got these direct from a Vet at a local swap meet in about 1977. He said he was rummaging through a damaged house and found these in the attic. The cigar box is the same one he had them in.
 

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Nice.
 

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Micro Jo did a whole piece on Nazi ornaments, banned now from YouTube.

 
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Micro Jo did a whole piece on Nazi ornaments, banned now from YouTube.

I remember that clip.:LOL:
 
Were these ornaments among those shown in the videos? They look kind of tacky.
I thinks so, but I can't see it anymore on my computer, Micro Jo's content isn't available on Bitchute in Belgium (I don't use VPN).
 
In Nazi-Germany it was illegal for German companies to produce kitch products with a swastika and other nazi symbols.
 
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In Nazi-Germany it was illegal for German companies to produce kitch products with swastika and other nazi symbols.
Nazi ornaments were not among those my mother and aunt gave to me. I suspect that like so many “vet bring-backs“, the pictured ornaments are fantasy items. Which begs the question; who would waste time making such things? Hitlers personal silverware would sell much better!
 
Nazi ornaments were not among those my mother and aunt gave to me. I suspect that like so many “vet bring-backs“, the pictured ornaments are fantasy items. Which begs the question; who would waste time making such things? Hitlers personal silverware would sell much better!
I often wonder about that too, who makes this crap and why.
Other good example are those enamel signs, naive wood carvings and that toilet paper.
Containers full of all kinds of fake art and collectables arrive everyday in our harbours from the far east, it seems to be a lucrative business otherwise they wouldn't be doing it.
In this case my best guess is that they need stuff to fill up tables at militaria shows.
But just like with drugs you not only need dealers but also buyers to keep the business alive, if people would simply stop buying cocaine there would be no need to smuggle it in to Europe or the USA from South America.
In this case it is the uneducated collector that walks around on the militaria shows and believes the BS that Walter K blows up his a$$ that keeps this stream of fakes flowing.
 
Nazi ornaments were not among those my mother and aunt gave to me. I suspect that like so many “vet bring-backs“, the pictured ornaments are fantasy items. Which begs the question; who would waste time making such things? Hitlers personal silverware would sell much better!

I bought this one from the grandson of a WW2 private. He told me his grandfather had found it after the war, hidden behind machinery at the Mauser factory. It feels a little bit sticky, I hope it's just old cutting oil...
wehrmacht_sign.jpg
 
I often wonder about that too, who makes this crap and why.
Other good example are those enamel signs, naive wood carvings and that toilet paper.
Containers full of all kinds of fake art and collectables arrive everyday in our harbours from the far east, it seems to be a lucrative business otherwise they wouldn't be doing it.
In this case my best guess is that they need stuff to fill up tables at militaria shows.
But just like with drugs you not only need dealers but also buyers to keep the business alive, if people would simply stop buying cocaine there would be no need to smuggle it in to Europe or the USA from South America.
In this case it is the uneducated collector that walks around on the militaria shows and believes the BS that Walter K blows up his a$$ that keeps this stream of fakes flowing.
If it it truly as fake, I wouldn’t disagree, but when I saw the ornament, I was immediately reminded of ornaments I grew up with, purchased by my parents in the early 1950s in Germany, and rather cherished by us as children because they were unique & interesting. The swastika ornament is shaped just like a basket of fruit ornament I remember. If real, tacky yes, but personally I could see it being real……
 
If it it truly as fake, I wouldn’t disagree, but when I saw the ornament, I was immediately reminded of ornaments I grew up with, purchased by my parents in the early 1950s in Germany, and rather cherished by us as children because they were unique & interesting. The swastika ornament is shaped just like a basket of fruit ornament I remember. If real, tacky yes, but personally I could see it being real……
So we have someone who actually grew up in Germany nearly 70 years ago remembering something similar.

Christmas in the Nazi regime​

Nazi ideologists claimed that the Christian elements of the holiday had been superimposed upon ancient Germanic traditions.[7] They argued that Christmas Eve originally had nothing to do with the birth of Jesus Christ, but instead celebrated the winter solstice and the 'rebirth of the sun',[7] that the swastika was an ancient symbol of the sun, and that Santa Claus was a Christian reinvention of the Germanic god Odin. Accordingly, holiday posters were made to depict Odin as the "Christmas or Solstice man", riding a white charger, sporting a thick grey beard and wearing a slouch hat, carrying a sack full of gifts. The traditional crèche was replaced by a garden containing wooden toy deer and rabbits; Mary and Jesus were depicted as a blonde mother and child.[7]

The Christmas tree was also changed. The traditional names of the tree, Christbaum or Weihnachtsbaum, was renamed in the press as a fir tree, light tree or Jul tree. The star on the top of the tree was sometimes replaced with a swastika, a Germanic sun wheel or a sig rune, and swastika-shaped tree lights.[7][8][9] During the height of the movement, an attempt was made to remove the association of the coming of Jesus and replace it with the coming of Hitler, referred to as the "Saviour Führer".[7] (my emphasis)


So we have swastikas, sig runes, and Germanic sun wheels on Nazi Xmas trees. Also notice the age patina on the steel hook and cap parts.
 
Really not much substance in that last UToob video. He just googled 'nazi Christmas ornaments'. I found the same when I did it. Loaded with apparent fakes.

You will get the same type of results when you google "German Camouflage helmets" or German M36/37 helmets or German B/II prototype helmets.

Far more fakes than originals of those, but that does not mean originals do not exist.

The Nazis encouraged the transition of Xmas from a Christian holiday to a Germanic Winter Solstice holiday, and this included tree decorations with nazi approved symbols (swaztikas, sun-wheels, sig runes).

I think that Nazi xmas ornaments in general are not fantasy pieces (they certainly existed), but the cartoonish Hitler-head ornament is probably total fantasy. That is something I would think would not be tolerated.
 

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While I agree the video above is a bit scant on detail, the main point is that there is no credible period evidence that Nazi Christmas ornaments were ever really a thing. Sure, there probably were some true believing maidens of the Third Reich who made some tacky folk art swastika ornaments, but no one has ever been able to locate any evidence that these were ‘manufactured’ in any meaningful sense of the word.

Meanwhile we know that fraudsters have been slapping swastikas on anything and selling them off pretty well since the end of the war. Just seems much more likely these are all fantasy items than the real deal.
 

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