# did every nazi officer have an iron cross? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 12, 2010, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-every-nazi-officer-have-an-iron-cross/528695 "2010-02-12T12:58:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![tu33y](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc348/32.png) [@tu33y](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tu33y)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2010, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-every-nazi-officer-have-an-iron-cross/528695/1 "2010-02-12T12:58:13Z")
in war films and TV shows almost every German Officer during WW2 has an iron cross on his left tunic pocket. i ASSUME it was an award for valour… were they as common in the german army as it appears? ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2010, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-every-nazi-officer-have-an-iron-cross/528695/2 "2010-02-12T13:24:53Z")
_It is estimated that some four and a half million Second Class Iron Crosses were awarded in the Second World War, and 300,000 of the First Class._ From wiki. That be a lot o’ Iron Crosses :). By contrast the Knight’s Cross ( which looks pretty similar ) was the rarer one - only 7,313 total. It is interesting to me that only one man was awarded the absolute highest award - the great ground attack pilot [Hans-Ulrich Rudel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Cross#Iron_Cross), for whom the award was apparently created. Not even a fighter pilot, but quite impressive. Utterly unrepentant Nazi trash ( which probably accounts for his singular honor ), but a pretty stunning record nonetheless, even assuming some stat inflation. ---
**Author:** ![Shakester](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shakester/32/437_2.png) [@Shakester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shakester)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2010, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-every-nazi-officer-have-an-iron-cross/528695/3 "2010-02-12T13:31:38Z")
They weren’t just given out as a standard part of the uniform. Pretty much every German officer over the rank of major would have been a WW1 veteran, and many of them had earned the IC as junior officers or, like Hitler, as enlisted men. ---
**Author:** ![Bartman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/779978/32.png) [@Bartman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bartman)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2010, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-every-nazi-officer-have-an-iron-cross/528695/4 "2010-02-12T17:20:20Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > _It is estimated that some four and a half million Second Class Iron Crosses were awarded in the Second World War, and 300,000 of the First Class._ > > From wiki. That be a lot o’ Iron Crosses :). Plus 4 million 2nd class and 145 thousand first class from WW I. So yes, with over 8 million iron crosses awarded between 1914 and 1945 they were pretty darn common. But they were not quite universal. ---
**Author:** ![Umbriel2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/4af34b/32.png) [@Umbriel2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Umbriel2)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2010, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-every-nazi-officer-have-an-iron-cross/528695/5 "2010-02-12T17:39:29Z")
While the first and second class Iron Crosses (E.K.1 and E.K.2 in German usage) were awarded for valor, they could also be awarded for “other contributions” – The Kriegsmarine apparently awarded them to U-boat commanders who had sunk 50,000 tons of shipping, and the Luftwaffe awarded them to aces with 6 or more kills, for example. As the numbers awarded cited by Tamerlane indicate, I think they were often awarded as a sort of “attaboy” to veteran combat troops and commanders with a record of effective service or leadership, rather than for a single “heroic” incident (although they could be). The Germans were prone to wear their decorations more often than US soldiers. I don’t think a Bronze or Silver Star winner would usually wear even the ribbon on anything but their dress uniform, while Germans might well wear the Iron Cross in combat. I know there was a fabric version of the [German Cross](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Cross) (an intermediate award between the Knight’s Cross and the E.K.1), because the metal/enamel version was kind of heavy and fragile to wear in combat. Soldiers who won the Iron Cross and/or the Pour le Merite (“Blue Max”) in WWI were indeed permitted to wear them in WWII. The WWI E.K.1 looked a bit different, having oak leaves embossed on the front, instead of a swastika and “1939”. I think the ubiquitousness of Iron Crosses in movies is a bit of a Hollywood embellishment, but they weren’t uncommon, and can be seen as a shorthand way of saying that the wearer is a tough veteran rather than a German equivalent of the “90-day wonder”. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2010, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-every-nazi-officer-have-an-iron-cross/528695/6 "2010-02-12T18:04:37Z")
Just a nitpick: not every officer or member of the German Army, the [Wehrmacht](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmacht), was automatically a Nazi, either being an official member of the Nazi Party, or following Nazi ideology. The common soldiers were drafted to first, win glory and new Lebensraum for their people, and later, to protect their families from the Russians (the official propaganda and what a lot of the soldiers believed.) The officers of the Wehrmacht were partly from noble families who regarded serving in the military as their duty or job, often going back several generations. They were not fans at all of the Nazi ideology or Hitler (that’s where the Stauffenberg circle and others came from). Hitler disliked and distrusted those nobles, because he realized they didn’t support him. The officers understood themselves as to be apolitic and not get involved in anything political during the Weimar years, and this carried over into the first years of the 3rd Reich too. Now, of course with the start of the war, more people were needed, and thus, dedicated Nazis became part of both common soldiers and officers. But when Hollywood uses “German officers uniform” as shorthand for “Nazi” it’s mistaken. Using a SS uniform for this would be more correct. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2010, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-every-nazi-officer-have-an-iron-cross/528695/7 "2010-02-12T18:12:57Z")
You’re watching the wrong war movies :). You should look up Peckinpah’s _Cross of Iron_ - an entire movie about one green officer’s mad quest to get his E. Kreuz before the war’s over. One of the few WW2 movies showing the German side of the war, too. ---
**Author:** ![Estilicon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@Estilicon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Estilicon)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2010, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-every-nazi-officer-have-an-iron-cross/528695/8 "2010-02-12T19:05:54Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > The officers understood themselves as to be apolitic and not get involved in anything political during the Weimar years, and this carried over into the first years of the 3rd Reich too. This is not correct. From the very beginning of the Weimar Republic to the last day of the Third Reich the German Army played a role in politics. After the war, of course, they rewrote their past. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2010, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-every-nazi-officer-have-an-iron-cross/528695/9 "2010-02-12T19:30:00Z")
> [@Estilicon](#): > > This is not correct. From the very beginning of the Weimar Republic to the last day of the Third Reich the German Army played a role in politics. What exactly are you referring to with that broad brush? > [@from the above Wikipedia article as quickest source in English](#): > > Due to the constitution of the Weimar Republic no soldier of the Reichswehr was either allowed to become a member of a political party or to vote in an election because there was a strict separation between politics and the armed forces. > > The same applied later to the Wehrmacht. Most of its leadership was politically conservative but after Adolf Hitler gained power he had promised to rebuild Germany’s military strength and thus some officers became invigorated towards the National Socialist movement. In addition, many soldiers had previously been in the Hitler Youth and Reichsarbeitsdienst and had thus been subjected to intensive Nazi indoctrination; as a result, many newly commissioned officers were committed Nazis. In general, the Luftwaffe was heavily Nazi-influenced, as was the navy to a lesser extent; on the other hand, the army (especially amongst the enlisted men) was quite indifferent and even quietly critical of Nazism, although from 1943 onwards the influx of officers and conscripts who had been mainly educated under the Nazis began to strongly dilute this institutional skepticism[4]. Political influence in the military command began to increase later in the war when Hitler’s flawed strategic decisions began showing up as serious defeats for the German Army and tensions mounted between the military and the government. When Hitler appointed unqualified personnel such as Hermann Göring to lead his Air Force failure ensued. He also gave to his commanders impossible orders, such as to shoot all officers and enlisted men who retreated from a front line later in the war. Do you mean that **retired** officers (and victors) like [Hindenburg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_von_Hindenburg)were held in high esteem and thus had influence on the population? Do you mean that as members of the nobility, the officers in general were anti-democratic and pro-monarchistic? Do you mean that there were several right-wing putsches against democratic Weimar - the [Kapp Putsch](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapp_Putsch) was Freikorps, not regular soldiers. The murder of Rathenau is generally ascribed to right-wing extremists, not the Wehrmacht generally. Yes, there was a general right-wing slant in politics during the Weimar time, which manifested itself in police and courts, too - Hitler got only one year of sentence. [Gumbel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Julius_Gumbel)compiled statistics about this in his book “Four years of political murder”. That still doesn’t mean that the Wehrmacht as a closed body acted against the Weimar democracy. > [@](#): > > After the war, of course, they rewrote their past. Well, no. They tried to gloss over the unpleasant aspects - to put the rug over the crimes of the Wehrmacht, and distance themselves from the even more terrible crimes of the SS and the Sonderkommandos behind them. They didn’t falsify the past, and the last decades have rectified the pictures in both sides (the most prominent example, of course, the much-discussed [Wehrmachtsausstellung](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmachtsausstellung)). ---
**Author:** ![furryman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/furryman/32/99_2.png) [@furryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furryman)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2010, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-every-nazi-officer-have-an-iron-cross/528695/10 "2010-02-12T19:36:00Z")
I saw these rather plain looking silver cups that were supposedly given out during the later part of WWII in lieu of the Iron Cross. The German military thought they were giving out too many so they toughened up the requirements for getting an Iron Cross. So, not everybody got one. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2010, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-every-nazi-officer-have-an-iron-cross/528695/11 "2010-02-12T20:54:55Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > Do you mean that there were several right-wing putsches against democratic Weimar - the [Kapp Putsch](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapp_Putsch) was Freikorps, not regular soldiers. Just to nitpick there, your source shows that while the Freikorps were the ones who tried to carry out the Kapp Putsch, it was ordered by General von Luetwitz, and General von Seeckt refused to put it down. Freikorps were also used by General von der Goltz to stop the Communists in Latvia, and it was General von Schleichter who came up with the idea of the Freikorps as a “schwartze Reichswehr” in the first place, to get around the Treaty of Versailles. So the separation between Reichswehr and Freikorps wasn’t all that cut and dry. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2010, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-every-nazi-officer-have-an-iron-cross/528695/12 "2010-02-12T21:02:00Z")
> [@Umbriel2](#): > > …Soldiers who won the Iron Cross and/or the Pour le Merite (“Blue Max”) in WWI were indeed permitted to wear them in WWII… Like this guy, frinstance: [http://www.pzg.biz/goering-pic.jpg](http://www.pzg.biz/goering-pic.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2010, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-every-nazi-officer-have-an-iron-cross/528695/13 "2010-02-12T21:20:48Z")
Goering, admittedly, was a law unto himself when it came to medals. ---
**Author:** ![Umbriel2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/4af34b/32.png) [@Umbriel2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Umbriel2)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2010, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-every-nazi-officer-have-an-iron-cross/528695/14 "2010-02-13T02:05:13Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Goering, admittedly, was a law unto himself when it came to medals. Note the listings for [“Grand Cross”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Cross#Grand_Cross_of_the_Iron_Cross_.281939.29) and [“Star of the Grand Cross”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Cross#Star_of_the_Grand_Cross_of_the_Iron_Cross_.281939.29) on the Wiki page…