Description
This is an extremely rare original Danish world war 2 period Gestapo HIPO Corps (HIPO-korpset) visor cap insignia set.
Both the cockarde and the wreath with button are in very good condition. Im not aware of another set in existence on the collectorsmarket!
After the war the former HIPO members were activly prosecuted, the reputation of the HIPO-korpset was during the last year of the war incredibly bad, of course due to the dispicable bahavior of many of its members in hunting down Danish resistence members and torturing them. Many HIPO members were sentenced to death and even executed. This explains why the insignia of the HIPO-korpset is so very rare to find. At the end of the war one did not want to be caught wearing them and many insignia were quickly destroyed by the owners themselves before getting caught with them!
A bit more background:
The HIPO Corps (Danish: HIPO-korpset) was a Danish auxiliary police corps, established by the German Gestapo on 19 September 1944, when the Danish civil police force was disbanded and most of its officers were arrested and deported to concentration camps in Germany. The majority of HIPO members were recruited from the ranks of Danish Nazi collaborators. The word HIPO is an abbreviation of the German word Hilfspolizei (“auxiliary police”).
The purpose of HIPO was to assist the Gestapo as an auxiliary police unit. HIPO was organized under, and along quite similar lines to, the Gestapo. Some men were uniformed in order to be visible awhile others worked secretly in plain clothes. The uniformed men wore a black uniform with Danish police insignia. HIPO, like the Gestapo, had their own informers. The major difference was that most of the Gestapo were Germans working in an occupied country, while the HIPO Corps consisted entirely of Danes working for the German occupiers.
During the last winter of the war a number of HIPO members were tortured and killed. In retaliation and as a warning, the corps terrorized the civil population and blew up houses, factories, and even the Tivoli Gardens.
The Lorenzen Group, also known as section 9c, was an armed paramilitary group of Danes subordinate to the HIPO Corps.
After the war, service in the HIPO corps was one of the crimes of collaborationism that retroactively became capital offenses. Some two to three hundred HIPO members were prosecuted under these laws. About a dozen were executed between 1946 and 1950. A somewhat larger number received death sentences that were later reduced to long prison terms or parole.
This is an extremely rare, possibly even unique set of insignia. Prefereably we’d like to see this go to a museum or specialised collection.