Old fighter Chevron/Armwinkel

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Thank you for this, FB. So the use of the silver and copper wire was a historical nod to the uniforms of the imperial period and the tradition evolved from the SA to the SS with the materials changing?

I would not say "historical nod," it was the same custom. The alu thing was intended to remove the tarnishing and the need to polish and clean the insignia, which darkened as a matter of course....also. There existed a cult of tradition of the old armies in the 1920s and 1930s of which the SA partook, especially if you read the documents in Saris, which are not well reproduced.
The Germans celebrated new, high tech Werkstoffe, as well, as is evident when you read all the Four Year Plan thingies, as I do. The Nazis were "reactionary modernists," in that they celebrated technological progress as a sign of national greatness, and Leichtmetall was associated with aviation. I would not read too much into it, though. There was an ongoing attempt in the 20th century to modernize and rationalize many features of life, to include the uniforms, an expression of the modernizers in the Reichswehr prior to 1933.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

How can anyone really care about such odd things?

[DrCMH]

I understand now. One must keep in mind the advances made in manufacturing at the time and I never considered how it may have related to national greatness. Thank you for your effort regarding our discussion here and also for reminding me that the study of history has many facets.

Kind regards,

CMH

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I understand now. One must keep in mind the advances made in manufacturing at the time and I never considered how it may have related to national greatness. Thank you for your effort regarding our discussion here and also for reminding me that the study of history has many facets.

Kind regards,

CMH

Thanks. As to the history-and-its-facets piece, you are in the minority on this score. The bulk of others defecate on such an idea. Their interest is voyeurism and death cult kitsch or just outright neo Nazism. For this reason, among many, they are damned to failure as collectors.
The SS had elements of this reactionary modernism in spades, in which the odd medieval, anti modern ideas were mixed with social engineering and "science" of a breathtaking type. Racial science, of course, was balderdash, eugenics was seen in other societies as progressive and the wave of the future, to include the United States.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Here is the page from the sample book of P Jenkins to which I referred above.