hi guys,regarding the cuffband incident georg maier(who was deputy chief of staff for operations of the 6th(ss) panzer army) in his book drama between budapest and vienna goes into detail about the cuff title order. he personally received the teletyped order from the staff duty officer and he handed it to sepp dietrich ,who informed the corp"s commanding generals do not pass on the order they were sworn to strictest confidence, the troops were unaware of the order being issued by their furher. i will quote from maier"s book he writes( i could not believe my eyes.full of rage and indignation,i was barely able to control myself and was on the point of waking the chief of staff gruppenfuhrer kraemer when the door opened and sepp dietrich entered ,i reported,presented the morning situation brief and then handed him the disgraceful teletype.he looked at me searchingly as my "frame of mind" had not escaped him,but he did not say anything. then he read it.he turned slowly away and bent over the map table.he propped himself up with both hands so that i could not see his face.he was deeply shaken and moved, and it took some time before he could pull himself together again.then,after a long pause still bent over the map table,he said in an unusually low almost breaking voice in which the deepest dissappointment and bitterness could be heard" this is the thanks for everything" finnally,he straigthtened up ,looked at me with moist eyes,pointed at his cuff title and said breifly "it stays on". he shook his head again,as if he could not beleive it.after a while he asked me "what do you think?" i spontaneously said something like the following:"i suggest asking fuhrer headquarters whether the cuff titles should also be taken from the thousands of brave soldiers of the waffen ss killed in action between lake balaton and the danube". sepp dietrich looked at me understandingly,pointed at the teletype still lying on the map table and ordered"do not pass the teletype down to corps". tell kraemer later.we"ll talk about it when i get back.i accompanied to the front of the house,shaking his head he got into his staff car and drove off to the front,to his soldiers. i thought this might be of interest to somebody. cheers stevep
