Waffen-SS Camouflage Cap

[Demien]

I belive that all started with pulaite observation and if someone dase not agree with someone alse that is his personal desision and he dasent have to be "prosecuted" yust becourse the person who presented questonable objeckt is a respectable colector, we all make mistakes even the long time colector can be wrong !

Personaly i am more than hapy that Mr. Bob Hritz hase yoin ouer forum and i am sure that i can learn a lot from him and admire his stuninng SS colection ar the same time !

I yust have to say what buders me, so that i woud hear his explanation, i have never sade that his camo cap is fake yust that it looks ( from the fotos ) that bevo insignia was post war aplied, but that was yust an onest observation and i hope Mr. Hritz coud exept it and explain to me why it apers so !!!

This forum is growing daily and i am more than happy for that, on the other hand there is nothing new on the WAF, so please let as not ruin that !!!!

Mr, Hritz i truly hope that i didnt ofend you with my remarck and if i did i truly apologise !!!


D

[Bob Hritz]

My apologies to Ostlanddigger and Demien. I ment no insult to either of you and should have chosen to be direct, because of language differences.

I only meant to say that sometimes it is better to listen and research before making a comment. Of course, you both have evry right to comment on anything I post. My second point, when using Carol's pig saying, is that some people will never be convinced and it is impossible to change someone's mind.

I again apologize if an insult was taken and I intend none against any member here. In the future, I will be more direct and not use parables.

Bob Hritz

[ostlanddigger]

Mister Friedrich-Berthold may i ask-my opinion is not opinion??or i have no right for that.i just tried to explain may doubts about that cap in few posts.i am colector too,offcourse not that level what mister Hritz are,but i am.i dont try to ruine this forum,i enjoyd here to be member and share my knowledge.dont try to make me A PUBLIC ENEMY,i am not.once again-i explained my opinion.i did not attack nobody personaly-i have no such sik fantsy.your last posts shows some hiden menace about that some very main person will leave as.QUESTION-is it a result of somebodys right to his own opinion?????thankyou for your time.i,m quit with this cap.

[ostlanddigger]

my appologies mister HRITZ if something went wrong.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Mister Friedrich-Berthold may i ask-my opinion is not opinion??or i have no right for that.i just tried to explain may doubts about that cap in few posts.i am colector too,offcourse not that level what mister Hritz are,but i am.i dont try to ruine this forum,i enjoyd here to be member and share my knowledge.dont try to make me A PUBLIC ENEMY,i am not.once again-i explained my opinion.i did not attack nobody personaly-i have no such sik fantsy.your last posts shows some hiden menace about that some very main person will leave as.QUESTION-is it a result of somebodys right to his own opinion?????thankyou for your time.i,m quit with this cap.

Dear Colleague, I have no intention to make you a public enemy. I do, however, have several years experience with these fora and have seen how they deteriorate. Mr. Hritz and I were having an exchange about that the other day in an email. I also have shared a great deal of hard knowledge and learning, for free, as has Mr. Hritz. My comment as to such people leaving fora is the result of my own experience with other fora. My generalizations reflect my own experience. They were not intended for you, Mr. Ostlanddigger, or anyone else in particular. I am sorry if you took offense. Please accept my cordial apology. But my comments are intended for all for their own reflection and thought. Everyone is entitled to an opinion and everyone has an obligation to express their opinion in the same way they would in a polite circumstance, like in front of your grandmother on a holiday setting at the family table. The latter is not the case on these fora.

The daggers site and the lord of flies site all went down hill fast when bad manners and witch hunting became the norm. Adrian Stevenson is a fine man, whose standards are high and I am sure we are all eager not to disappoint him. Surely colleague, you can agree with me on that point. If you closely study the daggers and lord of the flies site, you will see the phenomenon I describe. Both sites attracted some fine people, and they no longer post. The proprietors here have attracted some fine people, and they are free to go in 10 seconds. This statement contains no threat, it merely describes a reality I have seen in seven or so years.

People would never do vis a vis the kinds of silly tricks they unfurl on websites.

None of us possesses absolute truth. My parents lived through the second world war as young adults. My grand parents as adults, luckily all far from where some of you did. My wife's father served on the Crimea in an Axis allied force. Per saldo, I was not there; I do not know in any absolute sese.

But I do know how to look for evidence of the past, and work towards the truth, as fragile and incomplete as that may be.

I cannot prove anything I say, really, as pertains to this material.

In another thread, I post a lot of material and make some assumptions about material I have observed and handled since about 1966 or so. No one has contradicted me, but I would not assert that what I have written is under girded by my having watched SS bureaucrats organize the clothing of the organization. Or that in any way was I an actual witness to the things I have written. I know the names of the men in the Verwaltungsamt SS who dealt with this material, and, were they alive, who might know; I know where they served; I know they must have left evidence of what they did.


I have not seen them do these things with my own eyes; I only have theories. The rest of us are generally in the same state. I share these theories; people either accept, reject or ignore them. Ideally, someone has significant evidence and offers another theory with some foundation.


Other collectors, however, often act as if they were the foremen of the SS Bekleidungswerke or were the master cap maker in Lubstein or the military official who wrote the specifications in the Heeresbekleidungsamt and published same in a circular for the cap industry. These internet gods often manifest a certainty that masks the fact that no one knows at all.


Think of it. Maybe it is all fake and we are all total fools. It could be. Maybe all this stuff was all made in 1946 for the black market by a lot of women whose husbands were behind barbed wire and these poor women needed to clothe and feed their innocent children. I have spent a lot of time in good old Vienna, where the black market was king. I have heard Wehrmacht veterans who have collected since the 1950s say that the Sieder insignia works went back to work for the British occupiers in July 1945. Are you so certain that the treasure in your vitrine is not just such a summer 1945 wonder? The internet makes this kind of a shadow of a doubt into a dark night of anxiety and fear of course. It also greatly elevates the propagators of such emotions who can wield what they think is power in the spreading of unhappiness, especially when they remain anonymous. This phenomenon is one reason why the popular website now has more fake SS collar patches and stupid fake cap badges than it does authentic, interesting and fresh material. Rather than images of authentic, break the frontiers material, one has endless, circular teen age exchanges and cyber puffery galore. Ohne mich.


We make educated guesses as to things, and this process is fragile and precious. We also rely on the generosity of others. Mistreat this generosity, and see the result. In my fifty five years of life, I cannot easily account for how many hours I have spent learning about all of this. It very may be thirty two entire years, seven days a week, twenty four hours a day---like an endurance race of reading German, life in libraries, archives, looking at NS material; adding up the evidence. I know several collectors and scholars like this, and their bona fides are on the sites or in books. You make or break your reputation with your written word and the thought it reflects.

Dear colleague, I mean no offense, but why should anyone waste their time with Katzenjammer?

much good fortune in your collecting.

[ostlanddigger]

thankyou F-B.my fortune is always with me,right besides!

[240stevek]

This forum is growing daily and i am more than happy for that, on the other hand there is nothing new on the WAF, so please let as not ruin that !!!!


D[/QUOTE]

WORTH REPEATING.

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi Guys, I have been reading this thread which has brought up several points which I would like to address here.

This forum was begun to provide a venue for friendly exchange of ideas and information in a Gentlemanly fashion. I wish this forum to be of a very high standard. Things are really starting to take off now. Already we have had some spectactular items shown and this is a trend I want to see continued. I prefer not to discuss other forums here. "FB" I blush at your kind praise.

We all have to think very carefully before posting any reply. We are an International forum and I realise that English is not the first language of many members here and sometimes misunderstandings can occur because of this. (Actually, I am humbled by how well many of you write in what is a second language!)

Everyone is entitled to their own views and opinions.

Everyone is welcome here from begginers in the hobby to the veteran collector with decades of experience. I am sure we can all learn from one another?

What I would always ask of any member before replying to a thread is to hold themselves to a few simple guidelines. I apply this rule to myself and I think it has held me in good stead in my nine years online in different forums:

Does the item in question confirm to known originals as seen in period photos and in collecting textbooks or online?

How many have you actually seen?

I think this is a very important point; how many of these have you actually held in real life? Photos are fine, but there are many points which cannot come across in this medium.

If you have not seen an item before in any form, please don't add a negative comment. This is unfair to the poster.

Try and give as much detail as you can in any reply.

Collecting items from the Third Reich has always been a minefield. Crooks and fakers abound in all countries. Stories are added to items to make them "real" etc etc. Being cynical is not a bad thing. It will often save you a lot of heartache and money. "Buy the item and not the story" is a good yardstick to collect by. If the item is good it will stand on it's own merits. Then the story that came with it will often prove to be true. It does not add any moneytary value, but then moves into the realm of "provenance".

Cheers, Ade.

[Adrian Stevenson]

I would now like to put that behind us and talk about the cap.

The cap with subdued camo insignia is an incredibly rare item. As already correctly pointed out by Anders, known originals in collections which have been publicly acknowledged can be counted in the fingers of the hand. They are that rare and "rare" is a much over used term in this hobby. I may have some news on another cap coming to light soon. Watch this space. Sorry I cannot say anymore on this issue other than the cap was brought home by a British Veteran.

I would advise all forum members to study these photos kindly made available to us by Bob. They show an original cap with originally applied insignia.

I do not like to talk about "values" of items, as I find talk of money vulgar. But this is a very expensive potential purchase. I am sure Bob will not mind me saying here that he had the choice of this camo cap or a new car. Bob chose the wise decision and bought the cap, being a man after my own heart. A car would merely loose value anyway in the long term.

The caps were only authorised for wear with camo insignia for a very short period of time. Production of this insignia was extreamly limited. I think a quote from the regulations is in order:

"Verordnungsblatt der Waffen SS Nr.23, 1st December 1942" introduced the camo cap with insignia. A mere weeks later on Dec15th, the insignia was ordered to be removed!

Try finding a full set of these subduded insignias for sale today? I would say this is near on impossible, never mind the cost IF you could find said items.

I think the quote from "Ostlandigger" (sorry I don't know your first name?) about his talks with Latvian Waffen SS Veterans in saying they found the insignia to show up in the field to be interesting.

Cheers, Ade.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Dear Sir, thanks for your wise guidance. I do think you meant to write that it is acceptable to be skeptical, and not cynical. The former is a proper attitude about this material or anyone seeking to unravel the riddles of the past, but the cynical response is unwarranted as corrosive of trust. Please forgive me if I became outspoken in my long post, but you are also well familiar with my reasons known to us from some fairly unpleasant experiences in the recent past. I think your guidelines as to how to structure debate and inquiry are excellent ones and in the spirit of such a search for knowledge, I proclaim my eagerness to adhere to them. One can express skepticism in language that entails respect and decorum.

Might I also say that I am well experienced in the rigors of the international environment, multiple languages, and what not---it is my profession. I think there is a kind of injustice that my native language ( really Adrian S.' native language) has become the lingua franca. I have daily experience of the need to aid others in this language in my work. Actually German is a better language to discuss this material, since one can avoid terms that are misleading, especially with the tendency of American collectors to coin terms that the Germans never used to describe these items. These odd terms then decline into an argot that teen agers use to describe each other in their cliques. I realize my protest makes no sense to some, but language is a a part of culture and civilization, and in this connection it must continue to allow people to interpret and describe complexity and shades of meaning. Hence, this undertaking requires special effort and I am sorry for the burden it imposes on some. Maybe we should all learn latin again and post in it.

I am not aware of an easy way to circumvent this task than to have people post in their native language and then translate same. Such a practice might slow things down and allow one to craft one's thoughts carefully and avoid the tit for tat emotionalism that poisons these fora.

Many thanks to all for their kind contributions and especially to the moderator for his gift of time and reflection. We are also grateful to our Baltic friends for their insights, to be sure, even when we might diverge in our assessment of an item for various reasons.