I believe that a person would be wise to select the best one of a bunch and not order onlne.
Basically Iltis Oxhead were the goto axe for clearing/limbing soft stuff like alders, until their QC went downhill with mis-aligned heads, poor grind, and they were replaced with other brands by many suppliers in W Canada.
http://www.oldjimbo.com/survival/iltis.html
I put up a warning about this:
"Update: I decided to replace the handle on this axe because it just never seemed quite right. That's hard to explain, but if you use axes enough, you'll get to feel when something just doesn't feel right. I cleaned off the end of the handle and found that it is wood wedged. I drilled out the wedge and around the tube like wedge until I could pry it out. It's only 1/2" long. I was then able to remove the head with very little trouble - which is not a good sign. Part of the problem was that the wooden wedge wasn't thick enough and had bottomed out on the bottom of the slot cut for it. Inside the axe head I found a wooden (veneer) shim at the back. Basically there was not 80% wood contact between the handle and the head. This is surprising to me since I'd soaked the head in linseed oil. I guess I didn't clean off the paint around the head/handle junction enough to allow lots of oil to soak through - maybe the shim was the problem. Anyway I'm still impressed with the axe head, and right now I'm trying it with a much longer handle to see how it balances and uses. If you have such a complete axe, though, you might want to carefully scrape all the paint around the handle/head junction and leave in a bucket of regular (non boiled] linseed oil for a while. Or of course you could re-handle the blade too. It really is a great axe head and it really does ring like a bell - and a nice sound it is too!"
Anyway I got a heavier head from Lee Valley later. Go shopping with a ruler to lay against the sides (or in my day have someone at LV do that) and you are likely to get a good axe (no warping of blade) if everything else has been checked, like alignment. I had to modify the eye of the heavier head to get good alignment.
All that being said, yep you could have a really fine axe with an Iltis. A good filing/grinding job will develop wide cutting bevels which are also acute - and the slope to the ramp to eye is super. So it will cut deep despite the wide cutting edge, can be used to slice tomatoes and onions, and will split well with a baton. I used the light head on a long handle to teach kids splitting on a block, and despite grit on the block, the edge held well. If you are into smacking your axes with metallic objects, then yes the Iltis does have a distinctive ring... What's not to love after a bit of TLC?