Article about: This image appeared on another website, and there it failed to elicit much comment beyond what seems to be the norm at said place (Hollywood stars, retro TV shows and cap peaks...) Of course
This image appeared on another website, and there it failed to elicit much comment beyond what seems to be the norm at said place (Hollywood stars, retro TV shows and cap peaks...)
Of course, this 108 Sta. of the Allgem. SS was the Prager Standarte, (i.e. Praha/Prague) raised in July of 1939. I assumed it blundered on until the spring of 1945. As you all know, the order of battle of the Allgem. SS in the Protektorat was fairly robust. Do look in the relevant primary documents to see the speed and intensity with which units were organized there in the wake of the double whammy wielded against the CSR in September 1938 and March 1939.
The piece here is missing its collar piping. My wild guess would be this is an authentic uniform (maybe ex Barrandov studios?) that had the collar insignia added, just from the appearance of the thing. The Kampfbinde is also missing. I do not think the sword belongs with it, either. However, from the look of the tunic itself it was stripped and re-embellished, I think. Such is hardly surprising and part of the history of this regalia in a part of Europe deeply marked by the SS.
Elsewhere I have posted a uniform from Saaz ( I am sorry to my Czech colleagues for this failure also to know the proper name of said town near Kalrsbad in the hops region of Bohemia) which survived the war mostly intact. When I saw the Heydrich assassination exhibit from the Czech Army Museum in Bratislava/Pressburg/Poszony, the vitrines contained a black uniform from Halle an der Salle with an honor cuff title, which the Czechs must have somehow gotten from the DDR in some act of Warsaw Pact solidarity. Maybe all the Prague black uniforms got recycled, or destroyed, or are in collections we cannot see somehow. We thank our Czech friends for showing us this interesting piece.
Happy collecting and long live our little website.
Postscript: The keys illustrated are to "a jail in Amberg." I shall have to look into that one. The label also describes the officer's sword, I guess.
Last edited by Friedrich-Berthold; 07-30-2008 at 02:53 AM.
This thread was also amputated by gremlins in the internet. I kindly ask that the able hands at the helm here put it back to where it was ca. 20 hrs. CET.
This thread was also amputated by gremlins in the internet. I kindly ask that the able hands at the helm here put it back to where it was ca. 20 hrs. CET.
Thank you again to our Czech friends. As I wrote before, a wholly original, correct shoulder cord. The Kragenspiegel is probably re-attached, but it, too, is real, if somewhat worse for wear. This uniform puts me in mind of those I saw from ex-Russian sources liberated by a flamboyant US dealer in the collapse of the USSR. However, who knows what sort of things were also on hand in the Protektorat and in Praha in the spring of 1945?
In any case, thank you for posting this. I posted some of the Saaz/Karlsbad Sta. uniform I was able to examine. It is in another of my posts, so I shall not duplicate my effort here.
I am especially interested in all SS units stationed in territory of the present day Czech and Slovak Republics by dint of personal connections.
The Czech Ministry of Defense has done a well illustrated work on the Operation Anthropoid, which is a part of the tradition of the reconstituted Czech armed forces as they have emerged from the Velvet Revolution.
Hence I thought it amusing that the Czech cousins sent the Heydrich stuff to a museum in Bratislava maybe to underscore the differences between Slovakia and Czechia in the era 1938-1944, but I am an outsider afterall.
However, this is a theme best addressed elsewhere in this site as concerns interpretations of contemporary history, especially in central and eastern Europe where these matters are controversial in the extreme.
Contemporary history is generally controversial, so I mean no criticism of our Czech and Slovak friends. In my native country these things are as weaponized as anywhere else, actually.
Our friend for Elsass/Alsace showed us another facet of those peoples who threw in their lot with Hitler as his Reich expanded in the years 1938-1940. Evidence of them is rare in this world.
Prager Sta. der. Allgem. SS
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by Friedrich-Berthold
Saaz Standarte
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