colored piping on cap, 1943...Sturbannfuehrer Bochmann

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Thanks for the above interventions. Bob Hritz follows the tradition of seekers of truth who are unafraid to state frankly the limits of their knowledge. Such is the mark of an educated person in contrast to the fundamentalist, the dogmatist, the charlatan and the con man.

Anyone who has a professional interest in the past must embrace the majesty of the unknowns and the unknowable.

For instance, where is the correspondence between the SS Verwaltungshaupt people responsible for uniforms and say the firm of Mueller in Munich, who made the Proben for these black caps, i.e. the patterns? Can I see this document? What would it tell us?

Does this document event exist now or did it ever exist?


In the past eight or so years, I have posed these questions, only to solicit in a couple of instances an answer. The rest of the time has been the kind of silence that seekers of life on other planets must register in search of alien radio waves. This statement is not meant as a criticism of those who post here, but of others elsewhere who are the demigods of regalia with command of the total truth in the sense of Plato and the cave.

I imagine I shall never find an answer, and surely not on certain military regalia websites, though this site is developing well as is the Axis History Forum.


The internet and the appearance of instant information with apparent authority only reinforces the phenomenon of the instant expert decried by Bob Hritz. I mean, Wikipedia is all well and good, but there are a lot of errors in many articles in which you and I have some knowledge. The editorial process has its merits, i.e. someone asking someone else whom his or her peers deem to be invested of knowledge to comment, correct or even reject an idea, finding, a documentary discovery.

One has in many cases with these fora those who smash icons first and foremost, which surely has its place as a kind of human endeavor. But I do suggest that in the process, quite a bit is lost and truth is not served, thereby.

Mr Hritz and others here take the little bits of what was once a whole, a complete thing and put the broken parts into a kind of mosaic, which is very incomplete and confusing in its shape.

We thank him and others here for their generosity in doing so.

The many happy faces of happy head dress greet us across the abyss.

[7againstthebes]

Hello, I am new to the forum though I have lurked for some time. I have collected for 23 years starting first with German items focused on the SS back when it was more affordable than today.

I wanted to share a cap manufactured in Napoli, Italy during the war by a company that is still in the business of making military caps today. The owners name was unfortunately cut out, not uncommon even in items I've found at flohmarkts in Germany and I added what I could afford at the time, reproduction replacement insignia.

While this is a private purchase cap the choice of colored piping shows this preference late in the war towards the branch of affiliation.