Jakob Grimminger - the bearer of the Nazi Blood Flag - part two of two

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Jakob Grimminger was possibly one of the most famous people in the Third Reich, famous because as the bearer of the National Socialist blood flag, he appears in many photographs with Hitler – so did a lot of people you may think. However, something that no-one else did other than Hitler, he appeared on a stamp. He appeared on the 12 + 38pf stamps, first day of issue 20 April 1945. Hang on, how is that possible, as the stamps were printed in Vienna and Vienna was captured on 13 April 1945? I appreciate that stamps are distributed before the first day of issue but given that the Soviets were close to Vienna at the beginning of the month and the battle for the city began on 6 April 1945, then the bureaucracy of the Third Reich must have continued to have been unburdened with the cares of war.
Jakob Grimminger was born on 25 April 1892 in Oberhausen, today a district of Augsburg, the son of a foreman Josef Grimminger and his wife Wilhelmine, née Gruber. He was brought up as a Protestant in an overwhelming Catholic area – in fact, of the early Nazis he was one of very few Protestants. After completing elementary school, he was trained as a model carpenter and so I bet he would be very pleased to see today that one can buy models of him .
He was 22 when WW1 started. From 1914 to 1917 he was employed as an aircraft mechanic in France and Belgium. This job would have been relatively secure, not particularly dangerous, comparatively speaking, as bombing airfields was not a regular feature in WW1 and I suspect that there were not many aircraft mechanics. Nonetheless he clearly wanted to do his bit, so he volunteered for the infantry and was sent with German expeditionary troops to the Ottoman Empire.
By the time Grimminger arrived in the Middle East, the Ottoman Empire was facing defeat. Grimminger was part of the increased military support sent to keep the Ottomans in the war. The German troops were actually supposed to help recapture Baghdad from the British, but in October 1917 this goal was abandoned. The soldiers were moved to Palestine to secure the front in order to stop the British advance there. They had not only to face the regular British army but also Arab militias led by Thomas Edward Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) which carried out ambushes, particularly against the Hejaz Railway, in order to prevent troop movements and logistics.
In September 1917 the Sinai front collapsed. Jerusalem was evacuated by the Ottoman troops on 9 December 1917 and the following days, and the German high command also left its headquarters on the Mount of Olives in the Auguste Viktoria Hospital and withdrew to Nazareth . The headquarters was there until September 1918.
By the summer of 1918, ther were around 16,000 German soldiers in Palestine. From September 1918, the German and Ottoman troops were in full retreat.
During the military collapse of the Ottoman Empire, numerous smaller German units in the Asia Corps had to fend for themselves in order to save their lives. Their skill and bravery got the admiration of their opponent Thomas E. Lawrence who wrote :
“Here for the first time I became proud of the enemy who had killed my brothers. They were two thousand miles from home, without hope in strange, unknown lands, in a situation desperate enough to break even the strongest nerves. Nevertheless, their squads held tightly together, ordered in ranks, and sailed through the wildly surging sea of Turks and Arabs like ironclads, silent and with their heads held high. If they were attacked, they stopped, took up a fighting position and gave well-aimed fire. There was no rush, no shouting, no uncertainty. They were magnificent. ”
The conditions were very difficult. Even the commander of the Asia Corps, Colonel Gustav von Oppen caught cholera and died from it.
On 30 October 1918, Turkey capitulated and concluded the Armistice of Mudros (on Lemnos ) on 31 October 1918, which guaranteed safe conduct for the German and Austro-Hungarian troops on its territory. After the surrender, the German Asia Corps was transported to Constantinople on the Anatolian Railway and interned there in POW camps. They were released in the Spring of 1919.
During his time in the Middle East, Grimminger won both the Ottoman Medal known as the Iron Crescent and the Iron Cross Second Class.
After the war, Grimminger returned to his parents’ home in Munich at Weisskopfstrasse 17. He got a job with Maschinenfabrik FF Kustermann GmbH machine factory in Munich. We know that he was working there at the time he joined the Nazi Party thanks to a letter confirming employment which is in the German federal archives in Koblenz.