Helmut Wick’s Knight’s Cross Award Document
My attention was drawn to the recent post on your excellent Iron Cross Facebook page in relation to Major Helmut Wick. It reminded me that I had the privilege to be shown - and to be able to photograph – the original award document to Wick for his Knight’s Cross many years ago. Additionally, I managed to pick up an original copy of the Berliner Zeitung a while ago which carried an evocative image of Helmut Wick in its front cover. Coincidentally, this is the same image used in the Facebook post which attracted my attention.
The story behind the award document, and how it came into the hands of a British collector, is an interesting one.
Apparently, a number of these award documents were taken as trophies by British or Allied soldiers from an abandoned government or military office complex in Berlin at the end of the war during May 1945. In later years, many of these have surfaced in the militaria collecting fraternity around the world. Among them, Helmut Wick’s.*
Although I do not know where this fascinating item is currently, it is certainly an important piece of military history and ties directly to one of the Luftwaffe’s leading aces. However, it would seem likely that the document itself never actually reached Helmut Wick before his death in action over the English Channel in November 1940. With 56 ‘kills’ at the time of his death, it is tempting to speculate whether Wick would have become the ‘ace of all aces’ had he survived the war – or even lived beyond 1940.
As to the document, though, it is resplendent in a red leather cover with a gold blocked national emblem, the parchment personally signed by Adolf Hitler. It is probably the only surviving object directly connected to Wick’s Ritterkreuz, apart from an Oak Leaf stick-pin which is currently in the hands of Wick’s family, along with his Iron Cross 1st Class. It must be assumed that the Knight’s Cross itself went with Helmut Wick into the cold waters of the English Channel on 28 November 1940.
Thank you again for such a wonderfully absorbing magazine (which I only discovered through your Facebook page) and which I am pleased to say I now subscribe to. That back issues are getting hard to acquire does rather point to its popularity and understandable collectors’ value. John Walters, Northumberland (by email) *Note: It is certainly correct to say that a number of these award documents were ‘liberated’ by Allied soldiers. A case in point is the award document to Günter Halm of the Afrika Korps who died in 2017. His award document turned up from the same original source but had never been issued to him. Robin Schäfer, Consultant Editor (Historical)
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