"Automatic" Iron Cross
On 1 June 1940, Hitler decreed that any recipient of the Wound Badge in Silver or Gold be automatically awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class if that individual did not already have that decoration. This pluralism meant that, for example, a sailor who lost a hand or foot in action while serving on an E-boat at the Kuban bridgehead would receive not only the Wound Badge in Silver, but also the Fast Attack Craft War Badge, the Kuban Shield, and the Iron Cross 2nd Class, purely on account of the wound sustained.
Read more about this topic: Wound Badge
Famous quotes containing the words automatic, iron and/or cross:
“The ruin of the human heart is self-interest, which the American merchant calls self-service. We have become a self- service populace, and all our specious comforts—the automatic elevator, the escalator, the cafeteria—are depriving us of volition and moral and physical energy.”
—Edward Dahlberg (1900–1977)
“Should there be maniacs who raise the idea, they will encounter an iron fist which will leave no trace of such attempts.”
—Yitzhak Shamir (b. 1915)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)