A-SS Cufftitle III/21!

[Dimas]

The most part of pre RZM made insignia could be vary, they could be made at the same embroiderer even using the embroidery templates as used for Reichswehr or Imperial shoulderstraps

[Friedrich-Berthold]

You mean "non- or un- RZM" as the RZM was surely in operation when the regalia in this book was made and worn. Do consult the UM articles I added on this issue around the Berliner Zeugmeister Assmann. This idea of "pre RZM" is a serious error. The issue is when did SS insignia become standardized and subordinated to the hierarchy of RFSS regulations we know and love. The Wim Saris documents on the world war relics site make all of this more tangible than not. He included the relevant SA regulations, as well, for this regalia of which we write arose while the SS was still a part of the SA.

The SS never wholly succeeded in making its uniforms very uniform, really, and if they did, they only did so for a brief while. Such a generalization applies when reading the SS Befehlsblaetter as well as looking at extant black uniforms with obsolete badges that became thus in the era 1934-1937 or so. More of these have survived than I would have thought possible, and I wonder why. I own at least three such Monturen. I guess the lack of uniformity especially applied to part timers versus those in garrisoned and barracked units with a more rigorous quartermaster system. The anachronism of imposing the dull and dreary sameness on the past is proven false every time, especially with this Magdeburg book, whose date is circa 1933 or 1934 is it not? I cannot recall its publication date.

[d'alquen]

Thank you HPL for posting the image.
There was a brief period in 1933 when both assignment numbers were also featured on the collar patch. I have attached an image of an SS man wearing that insignia.
I am afraid I am forced to take exception to the assertion above that "Such goes to prove that the Mollo and Angolia books are really obsolete". Whilst I care little for Angolia's book except for the excellent photographic coverage, Mollo's seven volumes still represent the most comprehensive, well researched and accurate study of the uniforms and insignia of SS.
I have, over the years, researched thousands of period documents pertaining to this area of militaria and it is a rare occurrence indeed when I find an order or regulation that was not included and carefully footnoted in Mollo's books.
In fact, when I am checking particular details about SS regalia, a search through Mollo's books will render valid information far quicker and more reliably than the rambling and often irrelevant posts that make up much of the thread system of the internet.
d'alquen

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Thanks for the further material.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

As regards the issue of books versus this peculiar new medium, let no doubt adhere to the fact that I prefer books. I write them for a living, as some of you know, and think that one needs linear knowledge to make sense of this stuff. My only point as concerns the above, that since the end of the cold war, a large amount of original archival material related to the SS has appeared which has great bearing on cutting edge research. This is a simple fact. The Mollo books have the signal virtue that they include the organizational evolution of the SS as a whole along with the uniform, which is not the case with the more recent popular works. Each person is free to make their own bibliographical choices, especially if they themselves do primary research, which is really the exception in these spaces. But also true is this fact: a new generation of historians can look at the same records and perhaps derive different conclusions. Finally, younger students of the past at home with this medium approach the past differently than do those of us from the 20th century, those of us who grew up with libraries and a life lived near them or in them. Their expectations vary from my own, and their method of acquiring knowledge plainly differ from mine, but we are not writing and publishing private texts to be consumed by a limited number of people. Rather, we engage the chaos of this medium on its own terms and with the expectations of its readers. If some of this is less concise than either you or I might wish, such a thing is a sign of the times.