SMGQ-0284 Ernst Barkmann Knights cross winner Signature x2

An original post war signature on a semi glossy portrait reprint. About 5.5″ x 3.5″ .  Additional information and second signature on back of the picture. Two adhesive dots from previously being in a photo album.

Barkmann joined the Nazi Party on 1 September 1938 and served in the Reich Labour Service from November 1938 to March 1939. After this he joined the SS on 1 April 1939,^[2] and served during the occupation of Poland. He was posted for a time as an instructor of SS volunteers in the Netherlands.^[3] In winter 1942/43 he was posted to the SS Division Das Reich on the Eastern Front, with which he took part in the Third Battle of Kharkov.^[3]

In February 1944, Das Reich was ordered to France to form a part of the 5th Panzer Army, the armored reserve for the expected Allied invasion. Following Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of June 1944, the division reached the front in early July and fought against the American forces near Saint-Lô. Barkmann was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross.^[1] Barkmann participated in the Ardennes Offensive in December 1944 and the fighting on the Eastern Front in the spring of 1945.

Barkmann and his crew were credited with the destruction of at least 82 Soviet, British and US tanks, 136 miscellaneous armored fighting vehicles and 43 anti-tank guns,^[4] but Barkmann’s reputed actions in Normandy were challenged by the military historian Steven Zaloga, who asserts that he analyzed the Allied war records, and was unable to locate the losses claimed by Barkmann. He attributed the narrative of Barkmann’s Corner to the “propaganda efforts of the Waffen-SS”.^[5]