What color brown was the original SA/SS brownshirt?

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I write this because I am a professional historian with decades of experience, and one of the major recent biographies of Hitler's First World War experience essentially
demolishes the normal account of his war years, and so forth. There are many new biographies of leading SS personalities, or of early SS units, i.e. the Wiener
Standarten, etc. with perfect archival research, which demolish many received accounts and so forth. That is how history works.

I can suggest some books for you to read, but they are all in German. The Weber biography of Hitler is in English, though.

[dimitrov2012]

[QUOTE=Wilhelm Saris;1712692]In ultimate 1926 the SA-shirt already was noted to be "das Braunhemd"
in orders, known as SA-Befehl (SABE 10 and 12: November 12 and 14, 1926).
A color shade was not mentioned. "

Here's the shirt you cite from just a few months earlier in Weimar 1926 July

SA men? and others wearing the shirt, while Hitler wears a windbreaker jacket (similar to the pre putsch 1923 SA uniform)





"With the introduction of the collar-patches the buttons at the collar (or shoulder)
were to be removed and over this one had to position the patch. If you look well
with the photos shown with the first posts you can also see the buttons at the
shoulder-section. The cut of the collar was not in the right angle and so collar-patches
had to be sewn on in the best way. "

Thanks very much for that Wilhelm! Those shoulder buttons were a distinctive feature of this brownshirt. Your citation is the first written acknowledgement I've ever read specifically mentioning them!

I finally located a photo showing those peculiar buttons being employed, they seem to be securing the collar, not at the neck, but spread wide to the shoulder. How do you see them in this photo?




whats also interesting, that in addition to the shoulder buttons, there were another set of those tiny buttons , below the pocket, basically hidden by the uniform belt. unlike later brownshirts, this shirt had no belt hooks. Its believed the lower buttons were a way to secure the breeches. What do you think?

They can be glimpsed here from this 1927 capture






This has been extremely helpful and enlightening, Wilhelm!

[Wilhelm Saris]

Can't see any of the attachments!

My explanation comes from the first official SA-orders from 1926,
not from some book written after the war.

[dimitrov2012]

Can't see any of the attachments!

My explanation comes from the first official SA-orders from 1926,
not from some book written after the war.

I re edited the post, to make the images visible. Yes, I have no doubt, your sources are definitely from 1926

[dimitrov2012]

I write this because I am a professional historian with decades of experience, and one of the major recent biographies of Hitler's First World War experience essentially
demolishes the normal account of his war years, and so forth. There are many new biographies of leading SS personalities, or of early SS units, i.e. the Wiener
Standarten, etc. with perfect archival research, which demolish many received accounts and so forth. That is how history works.

I can suggest some books for you to read, but they are all in German. The Weber biography of Hitler is in English, though.

That is very enlightening, so much of this has been a learning experience for me.

Would you rate the Sandner itinerary as being accurate?

[dimitrov2012]

The uniforms of the Schutztruppen are well interpreted in this work from my favorite military publisher.Attachment 1048810

I had tried to find similarity between the colonial uniforms and the Lettow Shirt, but couldnt find any design similarity. Even tho the story is the shirts were meant to be shipped to Lettow..maybe they represented a totally new design for his troops.

its unusual array of pearloid buttons and upper sleeve cut just didnt align with any other military uniforms.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

You want to look at this, too, which is connected with the Hauptarchiv source.

Die umfangreiche Sammlung des Müchner Fotografen Friedrich Josef Maria Rehse (1870-1952), der von 1914 bis 1945 vor allem Zeitungsausschnitte, Flugblätter, Plakate und andere Quellen zum 1. und 2. Weltkrieg zusammentrug, wurde 1929 durch die NSDAP erworben und Rehse als Archivar seiner Sammlung eingesetzt. Nach Kriegsende 1945 wurde diese von den USA beschlagnahmt und in die Bestände der Library of Congress eingegliedert. Im Rahmen einer Bücherrückführung wurde der Großteil der Sammlung 1963 in 97 Kisten an Deutschland übergeben, wo sie aufgrund der Größe und der verschiedenartigen Bestände auf unterschiedliche Institutionen aufgeteilt wurde. Ein kleiner Teilbestand an Plakaten gelangte auch nach Wien ins Dokumentationsarchivs des Österreichischen Widerstandes (DÖW), wo diese mit anderen Plakatbeständen vermischt wurde. Die „Sammlung Rehse“ gilt als zentrale Quellensammlung zur Geschichte der NSDAP.

Ziel des im Rahmen des Universitätslehrganges Library and Information Studies an der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek durchgeführten Projektes war es, eine Bestandsaufnahme der im DÖW vorhandenen Plakate aus der „Sammlung Rehse“ durchzuführen und eine Auswahl daraus in der Plakatdatenbank des DÖW zu erfassen. Zugleich sollte nach Möglichkeit ein Abgleich mit dem Bestand anderer Teile der Sammlung im Bayrisches Hauptstaatsarchiv und der Library of Congress vorgenommen und Fragen zur Aufbewahrung und Nutzung geklärt werden sowie eine Rekonstruktion des Weges der Sammlung nach Wien erfolgen. Damit sollten Vorarbeiten geleistet werden, um die erschlossenen Bestände in absehbarer Zeit in eine virtuell zugängliche digitale Sammlung aufzunehmen.
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[Friedrich-Berthold]

It may be that, in reality, the so called Lettow shirts were just sports shirts, and they dreamed up the story to make themselves more war like and manly.

After all, if they dressed in sport shirts (and that is what the button down collar was for, and I know, because I have worn a button down collar for decades...)

that sounds a lot less Wehrverband like than here is my paramilitary bunch of rowdies, and we are dressed like foot ball players.

Lettow Vorbeck became a radical right wing figure at an early date, and the early Nazis were publicity hounds, at pains to distinguish themselves for all the

other un demobilized soldiers knocking the crap out of each other and everyone else in benighted postwar Central Europe. The recent literature on said
point is very strong. No one was better at public relations than Schickelgruber himself, and the NSDAP was pretty insignificant when all of this got going,
and the period of your interest, 1926-7, was the period in which Weimar Germany did its best.

Do bear with my skepticism, but everything has to be treated with a grain of salt.

I read all the breathy crap about the uniform in UM and such, and the uniform was an important weapon in the Kampfzeit, which
these people were at pains to invest with magical importance and so forth.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Siehe da.

"1920s

Oxford cotton is a breathable and robust basket-weave cloth (panama weave for those with a little extra material knowledge). Pre-1930s, polo players wore oxford cotton shirts during matches – the collars had buttons in order to avoid them flapping around during matches but this is now seen across a whole host of shirt designs."

[Friedrich-Berthold]

This is what van Eekeling says, and I take it with a grain of salt, too.....