Reichsführung-SS cuff title

[Walter]

Is the text available online?

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Bundesarchiv.

Which, by the way, is the final authority on things of this kind.

We thank colleague Derek for his citations from the original sources, which make our website a beacon in the darkness.

Other members here are encouraged to post primary sources in their number to aid us in our struggle to know more.
The man in the picture is generally silent on these issues.

[Walter]

It's not that I doubt his words, I'm just interested in seeing the order in its entirety.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

It's not that I doubt his words, I'm just interested in seeing the order in its entirety.

Mr. Derek is the most likely source of any of us mortals seeing any of this material on line, as he has done the yeoman work of getting the microforms and copying them.

The Bundesarchiv has many of its finding aids on line, and some of the documents, themselves.

But if you want to see these things, then you have to get thyself to Koblenz or Berlin (Lichterfelde) and bring the broom stick of the wicked witch of the West to the portier, because the people who guard these archives do NOT LIKE amateurs interested in regalia without an institutional affiliation (....like a university professorship...) or a legitimate research project. That is, you just cannot turn up there with some harebrained idea about the documents and then see them.

Which is to say, we need Derek here with his documents, so let us thank him that he shares with us. He is a pillar of this and many other websites.

I can get into these archives, actually, but many of the others who are reading here would have less than no chance to do so.

The alternative is to rely on Schiffer publishing and a narrow circle of people who frequent glamor US militaria faires for the truth, which ist viel zu schade.

Also, those who think that the digitalized and www.ed age has made historical research into the same procedure as the the drive through at Burger King in search of supersize pommes frites do themselves and the rest of us a disservice by failing to recognize how really difficult is historical scholarship prior to Wikipedia and 10,000 websites which are all taking from the same three books.


Denkt daran!

[Friedrich-Berthold]

These SS orders also tended to be exceptionally terse, one or two liners, and Mr. Derek has already posted many examples of other such documents here in their number. If you look at his other posts, you can see them. Such are quite typical.

Here is an excerpt of the Mitteilungsblaetter der RZM as an example of how terse these things really were....

If you have any serious interest in German uniforms of the III. Reich epoch, then the Uniformenmarkt CD is a real god send and vastly of greater value than a shelf of these colored picture books with the handful of glitzy textiles left by accident in a handful of collections in North America.

[Walter]

Also, those who think that the digitalized and www.ed age has made historical research into the same procedure as the the drive through at Burger King in search of supersize pommes frites do themselves and the rest of us a disservice by failing to recognize how really difficult is historical scholarship prior to Wikipedia and 10,000 websites which are all taking from the same three books.

Oh, I'm all for research, which is why I'm interested in the original text, even though I realize it can hardly be found online at present. Still, it doesn't hurt to ask. One can look forward to a bright future when all of that stuff will have become digitalized.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Oh, I'm all for research, which is why I'm interested in the original text, even though I realize it can hardly be found online at present. Still, it doesn't hurt to ask. One can look forward to a bright future when all of that stuff will have become digitalized.

Such a moment is far off and likely will never transpire, granted the decline of the economy, the weakness of governments and the un-interest and diminishing capacity to do real historical scholarship in the educated public, to say nothing of those who have not the slightest idea of how to deal with an original archival document....witness the exchanges on these websites.

Once more, we encourage you reading these lines to contribute to this site by the posting of original material from your research to aid others. The sharing of the burden here should be a fair one and also recognize that a minority are doing all the hard work.

In this aspect, Mr. Derek has done us all many, many favors. And we thank him.

You will also notice that the little set to of two months ago about, precious metals, Werkstoffe and the fetish cap badges resulted in an overwhelming response of silence from some of our users. I wonder why?

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I think I shall ask Adrian S. to make the reading of this work a requirement to pose questions or otherwise participate in this website. I actually spent a semester in the University of Cologne learning some of this stuff in 1974, which is a long time ago and quite far away. My point is simple: even if primary sources appear on these pages, the reading of same is quite different from the reading of a website or the examination of a digitalized photograph.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I would also say this: of greater value would be the correspondence surrounding the orders, i.e. the archival record of the reality of the insignia, regalia, et cetera. versus the idealized form of knowledge in the orders. I say this because of my reading of the Uniformenmarkt, which is a lot about the divide between the rules and reality. This gap consumed a lot of energy associated with the people who made regalia. I mean, in fact, the correspondence that led to the issuance of the order. Mr. Derek at my urging found the document whereby the so called 1936 cap badge was introduced. The new insignia arose in part because of the introduction of the army insignia of 1935, which SS members then wore out of Eigenmaechtigkeit. The order for the badge originated in the later part of 1935. This document was posted by Derek D'Alquen some while back, but is evidence of the value of the primary sources in their CONTEXT versus the fetishizing of orders without the foundation of the deliberations of the bureaucracy.

I mention this fact, too: why do the Allgemeine SS uniforms with the colored cuff titles phased out as of mid 1937 endure despite the order to discard such insignia? I own four of them, in fact. In reality, SS uniforms in the space of a very short period of time (1934-1940) are remarkably un-uniform, when compared to many other military organizations and entities in the past and present, especially in the present. Granted Henry Ford and McDonald's, our world is much more uniform, regulated, and rationalized than was the world of 1938, despite what the History Channel might have you believe about life in the III. Reich.

A final point: because I have lived in military organizations for the better part of 35 years, then I am more familiar with the push and pull of authority trying to impose order on human beings, who tend to chaos and entropy. Clausewitz wrote about genius and friction as essential parts of the nature of war, and much of life in bureaucratic organizations is frictional with human genius offering ways to surmount wrong headed rules and what not.

Since many no longer have any military experience for whatever reason, then this phenomenon is less obvious. Nearly all of our protagonists in the regalia game in the III. Reich had been acculturated in the Wilhelmine military world, with its contrasts of order and chaos. Such a world is very remote to many of us reading these lines today. This world is whence sprang the special mind and psyche of Heini H.

[Walter]

I mention this fact, too: why do the Allgemeine SS uniforms with the colored cuff titles phased out as of mid 1937 endure despite the order to discard such insignia?

One of the reasons might have been that colored cuff titles actually made sense because they conveyed more information. And in the case of the cuff title being discussed, the department chiefs would have probably been reluctant to part with the symbols of their status. Besides, who's to say the orders were never revised?