I have had this M-36 tunic offered to me by a friend and fellow collector as this will possibly be my first tunic and a fairly large investment by me I would like some opinions from the membership please .
Regards Mark k
I have had this M-36 tunic offered to me by a friend and fellow collector as this will possibly be my first tunic and a fairly large investment by me I would like some opinions from the membership please .
Regards Mark k
Last edited by Mark K; 07-24-2011 at 12:57 AM.
Hi Mark, it is a good original tunic. However, the insignia has all been replaced.
You can see the Litzen are rather loose and there is a definate shadow of where the original breast eagle once sat. Look at the upper right wing area. But the insignia used is original.
Replaced insignia is more or less "par for the course" nowadays. As long as this is stated as part of the sale, there is no problem.
Cheers, Ade.
Thank you for your quick response Ade .
Regards Mark K
The biggest "drawback" when dealing with M34/35/36/40/41 tunics are the internal suspenders which are nearly always missing,without the latter none of these tunics can be called "complete",and IIRC regulations were against taking them out even when off duty.
Unfortunately these suspenders are quite hard to find and are quite expensive.
I agree with ade,the tunic's absolutely good but the brustadler and litzen (and IMHO the shoulder buttons too) aren't original to it and quite sloppily applied to boot!
Cheers
Manny
Manny I was waiting for you to wade in on this conversation as always direct and to the point that is why this forum is such a excellent place to ask a question or seek an opinion as there are so many experienced collectors here . I can honestly say that if it were not for members like you an Ade I would never have started collecting German WW2 . As far as I can see collecting authentic unaltered German WW2 is by far one of the most challenging with American civil war being right up there beside it .The market place is full of fakes , forgeries and manipulated items. As to the internal suspender system Why were so many removed and discarded from these uniforms .My second question is what was the purpose of the suspender system in the M-36 through M-41's Feldblouse
Regards Mark K
Hi Mark, the suspenders were there to take the weight of the belt when worn with full field equipment.
I think souvenir hunters in WW2 just discarded them as worthless and uninteresting.
Cheers, Ade.
Hi Mark,
many thanks for your kind words mate!Ade's reply as to why these suspenders are so rare and seldom found inside tunics makes sense,but I've got another theory,i.e. many of these tunics have been worn by POWs and they soon got rid of the suspenders in that they're very uncomfortable,they make the tunic feel like some sort of "loose" straight jacket at the shoulders and stiff on the back.Further...there was no need to support anything heavier than a belt,a brotbeutel containing a handful of personal belongings,a kochgeschirr and a feldflasche...and many POWs retained their Y straps to better distribute the weight of those items,after all the belt+Y straps made for a convenient carrying rig.
When the tunic style changed into the M42 and later M43 and M44 many of the older tunics,i.e, the ones which undergone extensive repair or were worn out were relegated to barracks duties only to be re-distributed later on to "hiwis", second-line and newly-formed units aso.Many of these left over internal suspenders were cut to pieces and used to carry the belt hooks on the M42/43/44 tunics and often used in the construction of web equipment,as reinforcing strips and patches or even as carrying straps on late-war,last ditch backpacks (have several and post a few pictures soon).
As a side note and talking about tunics worn by POWs,many tunics we found without a eagle are like that because the prisoner either had to remove the brustaddler or (at least) hide the swaz,ditto for the headgear.Many POWs removed the eagle altogether while a minority unstitched the swaz and tucked it underneath the eagle.IMHO a tunic without swaz but with litzen should be left like that and no insigna re-applied.,but that's me!
Cheers
Manny
Can someone post a picture of the suspenders please.
As for PoW removing their badges i remember seeing a short film possibly the 'all our yesterdays' programme. On the film was a PoW cage/ processing unit with lines of German troops, thousands: several lines, all approaching desks, the little fold up ones, at which was a British soldier who cut off the eagles and anything else close to hand and threw them into a bucket by the desk. There was a close up of this process. The shot pulled away so that it was taken from oblique above. In this shot you can see other German PoW's, the trusties probably, scurry from desk to desk pick up the buckets and run to 45 gallon oil drums from which flames can be seen and toss the contents into the flames. Dream well tonight.
Very,very intersting Kc...but it sounds more like a propagandistic "Burn...birdie...burn..." !
The soldiers had to unstich the insigna themselves and that was more than a "move" against the swaz and what it represented...it was another way to tell them that it was over!
I posted a tunic with these suspenders a few days ago,but since the thread got browsed many times and got ONE reply I removed the pictures because I didn't want to occupy Ade's bandwidth and my PB album with useless KBs
Thank you for the quick reply to the thread it is as I suspected that there purpose was load bearing But I was unshur . I assume by your reply Manny that the Type of Material that was used is very stiff in nature and this is what contributes to making the suspenders so uncomfortable when they are attached to the feldblouse. With the use of the Y straps on your belt would the suspenders serve any practical purpose or would they then be removed as well . Excellent side note on the removal of swas and badges and this would explain why there are so many out there that have had there breast eagles and other insignia removed the fact that they had to remove them themselves is as was said a psychological tactic that was employed by the Allies .
Regards Mark k
Similar Threads
Bookmarks