You are leaving out all his allowances, which were many, to include his clothing allowance. The sum of his total salary was higher, to be sure. Such salary varied widely by rank. Senior officers were very well compensated.
Re: Intersting black Tuchmütze
You are leaving out all his allowances, which were many, to include his clothing allowance. The sum of his total salary was higher, to be sure. Such salary varied widely by rank. Senior officers were very well compensated.
Re: Intersting black Tuchmütze
Which all ads up to the conclusion that an Officers hat was not too expensive at all? So why go to the trouble of re-banding an NCO cap?
Re: Intersting black Tuchmütze
What you might also consider is that, from 1939 onward, textiles were rationed and severely, so that such objects as this might not have been easily had. The black SS cap was worn well into the war, actually. However, I am fairly confident that the two caps I own were amended in the period, but I cannot speculate about the piece on Shea's site.
In any case, I, for one, experienced a Germany of thrift, and am married to a Slovak, who grew up in the CSSR of a time of scarcity, and for whom thrift is the norm. Even in the UK did such facts apply, as rationing was not given up there in one form or the other until 1957.
The past is a foreign country, as one says.
My purpose here is anything other than to defend a dealer's objects, to be sure.
Re: Intersting black Tuchmütze
Somewhere in the internet is the diary account of an SS doctor in the Generalgouvernement and his trials and tribulations with actually getting something from the Kleiderkasse SS, that is, the purchase of these things was not always as straightforward a proposition as one imagines today in a world of cheap and plentiful consumer items.
Re: Intersting black Tuchmütze
This handbook describes the rigors of the SS clothing economy in wartime in excruciating detail, and it is daunting to say the least.
I can imagine that an Allgemeine SS man who made officer in late 1939 or early 1940 might have had his cap recycled for reasons of clothing rationing, surely.
Re: Intersting black Tuchmütze
The above document is incomplete, but the portions that do describe the rationing of textiles is anything other than the consumer chain of supply we have in our world of the present. Textiles were a sore point in Germany even as early as the Four Year Plan of 1936 because the import of textiles required hard currency, which was in short supply.
Re: Intersting black Tuchmütze
Black SS cap in wear ca. 1942.
Speculation is silly at some level, but I would not discard said examples out of hand because of some anachronistic calculation of cost of living and consumer goods as they exist today.
The world of rationing may yet await us once more....
Re: Intersting black Tuchmütze
It is at all levels really which is why I asked the question at the top of the thread whether any documentation exists to help validate this practice. Just as the SS Dr. in his letters which enlightened us all to the not so efficient delivery service of the SS Kliederkasse...by Friedrich-Berthold
Re: Intersting black Tuchmütze
The evidence of the problems caused by rationing in wartime are legion, actually. Germany began a war footing in its economy well before the war, that is in 1936. This fact is common knowledge, and it is a topic about which I have written two hundred times on this website.
Re: Intersting black Tuchmütze
I cannot recall the title or locale of this diary of an SS doctor, but it is famous and often cited source. He makes constant reference to the things he could or could not buy, and the loot from either the Protektorat and the Generalgouvernement that he sent home to his people. There is a whole new historical monograph of German looting of consumer goods from occupied Europe, a process that began with the systematic theft from Jews via Aryanization in the Reich itself.
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