Earth-brown SS-VT uniform

[Fultz]

Newbie question, please be gentle!

Could someone please post or link to a color photo of the mid-30's earth-brown Totenkopfvb. service uniform? Or provide an HSV/hex code for the shade?

Second, related query: is the repro site Stahladler correct in claiming that the grey SS dienstrock was "light grey" 1934-38, and then changed to feldgrau (as in the famous color shot of Reichsheinie on the sofa)?

[Friedrich-Berthold]

The SSTV wore an earth brown uniform. The other SS units, the earth grey. Field grey began in the ranks of the LAH and spread to the SSVT and the SSTV. The price lists of the Allgem. SS make reference to earth grey, as well.

The Beaver books have images of all these textiles.

Field grey is, in fact, no single color. I have owned many, many different examples in forty four years. I have today several army and SS caps in field grey, and not one of them is the same color as the other.

Beaver asserts that earth grey and earth brown are nearly the same color. In fact, the earth grey in his works for all the world resembles the field uniform of the Bundeswehr of the early 1960s just to complicate matters.

Here is what purports to be an earth grey uniform of the SSVT. But this could also be field grey Drillich or one of the many shades of grey used in cotton uniforms in the Reichswehr.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

This is courtesy of Whamond and is what I deem to be earth brown.
It is also derived from an SA uniform as applied to the SSTV. You can find many examples of these caps in use in SA and NSDAP in essentially the same color.

I owned a cap like this in the early 1970s. Mine was even better, but I sold it. This cap was made by Mueller/Muenchen.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Here is a cap that I believe is likely of the SSVT era, and you can tell what color you think it is....

[Friedrich-Berthold]

a closer look. The mark of time is present, but it is the only cap with the runics (rather diminished) and the visor stamp I have seen in real life. In fact, it is a field grey with a bluish tint, as one finds in many pre-war uniforms and caps.

The way out of this dead end is to collect the fabric sample books that sometimes appear on the collector market. Stezelberger sometimes has them. That is, these are salesman's samples of swatches of cloth in their more or less original color.

The secondary works are quite confusing on this score. There are a handful of collectors who own such items with bona fides, and they can post them. Once the SSVT was more or less accepted by the army as an armed organization, I think field grey became the norm quickly. The first administrative arrangement to this effect came in the course of 1934.

The discussion of organizational processes in the Beaver books is not satisfactory. That is, such does not jibe with what is in good historical literature on the evolution of the branches of the SS in the years 1933-1940.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

1934 SS head dress list---notice nomenclature. Sadly, this source contains no color picture. The Saris/Spronk book contains a discussion of the erdbraun cap I posted above, but I did not memorize contents of same.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

price list ca. 1936 with nomenclature. Oh sh!t...this is the wrong image.

I have some more price list stuff with germane information.

Sorry.

This order is also interesting for other reasons.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

this may be it..... sadly, I cannot enlarge it, but if you squint, you can see the nomenclature. This enclosure which I cannot enlarge is a early 1937 amendment to the 1936 VA SS price list for the Allgem. SS, apparently without reference to VT, TV and concentration camps.

Who has the price lists of this genre for said organizations in the original?

[Fultz]

Thank you so much, Friedrich-Berthold. So it would be fair to say then that Totenkopf erdbraun was effectively the same heathered greeny-brown as SA overcoats, and not that different from so-called "Feldgrau 44?"


Please bear with me here as I try to get all this straight, and correct me where I screw up:

At the end of 1934 or early 1935, the black uniform being impractical for daily wear, Eicke's Inspectorate of Concentration Camps (not yet the SS-TV) issued a service uniform in "erdbraun;" this was cut identically to the black, save that two epaulettes were worn. This was a working uniform only, not to be worn outside the camps.

I *think* that the sleeve-eagle didn't appear immediately. The skull cap-badge was still the jawless Danziger type until 1936. Does anyone know when the Totenkopf collar tabs started? Before 27 March 1936, one assumes- perhaps because the camp staffs and the school at Dachau didn't belong to any Standarte and thus had no number-patches? Was Eicke (who had ambitions to build his own army) playing catch-up to the LSSAH's Sig-runes?

Then by 1937-38 the SS-TV shifted to standard feldgrau uniforms of the VT/Waffen-SS type.

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The caps pictured have interesting mixtures of insignia: the side-cap with embroidered alterer Art eagle, but new-pattern SS skull button (possibly a replacement, whereas the embroiderd eagle was original????). The visor has the reverse- old skull and SS eagle. I guess during the transition period there was a lot of mixing and matching, nicht wahr?

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Here are images of Dachau in 1933 with some non black uniform in wear. Someone knows what color it is, as I do not. I offer this an addendum to your time line. The images of the SSTV in the erdbraun uniform are legion, and I have several, and they tend not to have a sleeve eagle. Someone should digitalize all the Bauer photos, and then we would know more.

The brassard was worn with the grey uniform in the period 1934-5, or the brassard was also not worn in the Stabswache/LAH is also true.

The basis of my understanding of all of this is: a.) Vol IV of Mollo and Vols 1-3 of Beaver, whereby I think the organizational structure of the former easily eclipses the latter, despite all the nice pictures. But the latter has all the colors you seek.