Info needed : SS concentration camp skull K collar tabs totenkop

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Un used SS insignia was recycled even prior to 1945, and destroyed wholesale thereafter because membership in said organization, especially anyone connected with the camp system, was grounds for arrest and prosecution.

Also, the rise of a world wide militaria market through the internet has placed huge pressure on the small supply of extant real SS regalia that was surely not too bountiful even 15 years ago, such as it was.


An image from an earlier period of generalized violence in Europe.

When you consider that the Wehrmacht had around 16 million souls, then the size of the SSTV in its brief existence was really quite small. Hand embroidered insignia, too, was costly even in the former period.

Finally, if you look at the table of organization of the camps in the years prior to 1939, these staffs were also quite small.

All things to consider when one searches for such objects. Such a search is not for the light of heart or the ill prepared.

[stonemint]

The man in question is Ziereis, behind whom is Eigruber in NSDAP Adjustierung.

I am not sure what you mean by "textbook." Read the excerpts from the SS Befehlsblatt I posted elsewhere apropos this empty word.

There is an excellent book in German about an inmate who became the Mauthhausen camp photographer, or an aid to same. I shall post the title elsewhere. There are many good books, too, on Nazi life in Oberoesterreich.

While in Vienna this winter, I bought an excellent volume on the Niebelungenwerke in St. Valentin to the east of Linz. There was made heavy armor. Muathausen was the center of a huge complex of additional camps focused on the industrial production in the Linz area. Linz is the second city of Austria and home of the man, himself, more or less.

The SSTV collar patches are almost as much an abyss of disappointment and regret as are the silly cap badges, in fact.

F-B: By textbook I mean that most SS-KZ officers seem to have the best of everything, and their uniforms are immaculate, and high-quality. You rarely see them wearing Heer issue sleeve eagles, etc.

See this pic, for example:

[stonemint]

Another--this time in a visor cap:

[Friedrich-Berthold]

These photos were for their personnel file, that is, for the inspection of same by Himmler. Those serving in the early part of the war in Upper Austria would not have had much trouble finding the necessary uniform items versus those at the front, at the end of a long supply line. Thus, they got dressed up in their best uniforms as part of the evaluation process which was a central part of their officer roles.

At the risk of being didactic, I do not like the term "textbook" on these sites because it worsens an already extreme tendency among those unfamiliar with life in Germany in the early and mid 20th century to imagine that everything was perfect as in a handful of press pictures or especially in the secondary reference works. If you read all the documents I have knocked myself out to post, then you will see that, in fact, there was little text book at all. There were shifting regulations in a dizzying and in fact incomprehensible manner, and the attempt by the bureaucracy to enforce conformity on people who did not, in fact, conform.

The Uniformenmarkt extracts I posted also really totally debunk the ideas that operate especially on the other website as concerns certainty, which is imposed by others (but not by me) on something that remains rather uncertain. Look at what I just posted here from the SS Befehlsblaetter from 1938. In fact, the SS even in the year 1938 strikes me from reading the orders to be a pretty messed up place, with dozens losing their ID cards each month, also losing their little civilian Stecknadel, to say nothing of the dozens of people chucked out, degraded, and otherwise demoted on a conveyor belt.....

There is an attempt to bring order to something that defied same, even though in the pictures we see it seems to be something that it likely was not in real life.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Also, Mr. Chris, you or someone else posed the question on the other site why the Waffen SS personages were present at Mauthausen. Do read the book of Robert Koehl on the SS as a whole, as well as the historical works on the evolution of the SA. Also read Hannah Arendt on the origins of totalitarianism, in which she points out that the communists and the Nazis were forever creating new organizations to fulfill the roles and missions of absolute and total ideological control and organized violence. This process in the SA and SS led to a balkanization, that is, to a splittering of parts into competing and fractious sub organizations, i.e. think of how the SS was used against the SA in 1934. This was always on Himmler's mind and he was at pains to keep the whole of the SS intact, and focused on its special concept of power and conflict within an internal and external foe, who remained really a single entity. Thus, to instill the SS ethos even in those who imagined themselves more regular soldiers than political soldiers, Himmler had to hold all the bits of the SS together even when it grew into a pretty heterogeneous organization. In Mauthhausen the whole thing came together in its totality, as was remarked by one poster on the Axis history forum.

The works of Bernd Wegner speak to this issue, as well, and some of them are in English, even.....

Also, read these pages here and take in what the imply as concerns the everyday life in the SS. There seems to be a lot of screw ups, including lost caps, to say nothing of the lost insignia, i.d. cards, and those who were being chucked out for cause.

[blackheart0866]

Probably one of the best Allgemeine SS tunics i think i have ever saw was at the Museum down at Ft. Benning, Ga.

here is a pic of it, I was told a year or so ago, that they was planning on re-doing the museum, and was considering on taking out some pieces, and selling some off to raise funds for new projects, be really nice, as the collection they have, that no one sees is really nice.

Here are the pics, and i included a pic of Audie Murphys dress uniform, just for show...

[Friedrich-Berthold]

These are not in a museum yet, but are in my virtual museum.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

some hats, after all...

foetid woolens. Someone lost one of these at the Reichsparteitag in 1938 named Gottschalk. Read what I posted above.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

As per Brian's request. These are not SS Totenkopfverbaende, and they are proud of themselves for what they are: authentic Allgemeine SS uniforms, however humdrum, but still not fantasy creations of some crazed faker or the misleading object of dreams as had in many other locales.

These images appear many, many times in my other threads, in fact.

[blackheart0866]

Could not ask for better, then what you have there, thank you, much appreciated.

Brian