"D" RZM/SS Tagged Party Arm Bands?

[Friedrich-Berthold]

The dingbat site often shudders to a halt and a deafening silence falls over the screen when one has really to analyze the riddles and enigmas of the past. Thanks to Bob Coleman for his wisdom and experience and Mr. JHAM for his fine role here.

[DerKerl]

here you go

[BOB COLEMAN]

here you go

Typical of the later one found. About ten years ago, a table holder had eight of these he had recently purchased from a veteran. Unfortunately, the veteran had no memory as to where he obtained them

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Yes, those are exactly the things both Bob and I mean. They are of the epoch, but as to why they have an RZM/SS tag is a mystery with competing theories. I do not for a second believe that such is an overcoat brassard, and, as Bob indicates, perhaps it was used by some SS auxillary formation. Or the firm ran out of RZM tags of the blue type and used the SS ones, since the black uniform was phased out and the tags remained or whatever. Who knows? PS, I have never seen one of these brassards devoid of the mythic black stripes on a real black SS uniform. Never. I would never say such was never used, but I have seen none in forty five odd years of looking. Nor would I say that what I have seen is surely the whole gamut of things, but now that the years are piling up with this Wundertuete, I am more prone to generalize. That is, the panoply of things passes by us each day and my photo files allow a kind of theory, but only a theory.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

The SS brassard in situ.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I have a pair of SS long pants where the tailor made an RZM tag with a piece of cloth and used his license stamp intended for paper, and sewed it all into the lange Hose. I have had said pants for more than forty years.
The RZM furnished the tags and they were closely regulated, but the exceptions with all of this are legion.

[DerKerl]

Typical of the later one found. About ten years ago, a table holder had eight of these he had recently purchased from a veteran. Unfortunately, the veteran had no memory as to where he obtained them

If those were all from the same maker they could of been picked up at the maker (The reasons for making could be endless.) or from ss stores. Mine being from several makers leads me to believe that they had some purpose for the ss so they reordered several times and got them from several different makers over time and placed them in stores? Were t he previous stash all from the same maker? Doug

[Friedrich-Berthold]

German towns had shops that sold party regalia that were plundered at war's end and, one cannot over look the quartermaster depots of the SS, especially in Dachau, and on and on. Or these things were found otherwise, but they were surely found in heaps.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

What we own today came from such places, as well as from the heaps and heaps of uniforms turned in by the wives of their owners in the US occupation, and, most significant, in the emptying out of West Germany by GIs also in the epoch after 1945 when we Americans scarfed up these things while all Germans considered them to be total junk and to be destroyed as quickly as possible. And much of it was just burned, buried, and pulverized. It was always controversial.

[BOB COLEMAN]

If those were all from the same maker they could of been picked up at the maker (The reasons for making could be endless.) or from ss stores. Mine being from several makers leads me to believe that they had some purpose for the ss so they reordered several times and got them from several different makers over time and placed them in stores? Were t he previous stash all from the same maker? Doug

Who knows? As these were made over an extended period of time, undoubtedly they have some connection to the SS. Too many of the examples with the later paper tags exist for it to be any accidental misapplication of the proper tax label.