German SS Hats - Pics

[scotrace]

I live nearby a very large antique mall. I get my haircut across the street from it and walk through after the haircut every two weeks. Tonight I spotted several hats I thought the group might find interesting.
These looked too nice, might be reproductions.

Quite a few odds and ends. Helmets, berets, etc.​

 

[PADDY]

Former East German army surplus...

Since the demise of the Iron Curtain, fall of the Berlin Wall..etc, there has been a deluge of former uniforms from the Eastern Bloc countries, Germany included. You'll find that most of the post-war east German uniforms were based on the 1939-45 German uniforms. So it is very easy to turn a modern made East German uniform into a lookalike WWII uniform, by adding the appropriate insignia.

 

[The Wingnut]

There's a saying in the hobby, 'If you didn't pull it off of a dead German, it's a fake.'

As Paddy said, those are likely East German. The SS cap looks like a standard army officer's cap with a totenkopf added - real SS schirmutze are black overall. The one underneath it looks like an unaltered military police cap, possibly Luftwaffe judging from the device. They make decent fakes as long as they're not examined too closely, and especially if you don't look at the liner.

 

[BellyTank]

Black/Grey...

The SS schirmutzen weren't all black, that was the early war Allgemeine SS-
the political and administrative side- some of them were varying shades of grey too- the black disappeared. The Waffen SS, the SS army had field grey caps.

Scotrace, plenty of original stuff around, a lot in collections, a lot would have been destroyed. There's still a lot in Germany but officially, anything 'owned' should have been de-nazified- swastikas ground off or otherwise removed.
It would be easy to take a ring off and put it in a safe place- still a lot of stuff in attics and closets over there.
Have a look on eBay.com and eBay.de you see different types of offerings.

B
T

 

[PADDY]

SS collectibles...etc

If I'm not mistaken, that grey cap in the pic, is a mock-up of a Waffen-SS dress cap. Of course there will be plenty of SS things around in lofts, trunks..etc. There were 1000s upon 1000s of volunteers for the SS, they even had moslem battallions and cossack battallions and even a GB Bn..!! that had Brits serving in it. The fact that Germany and Italy lost the war in Europe and Africa, and there was a post-war program of de-nazification, doesn't mean that those who were indoctrinated to believe in Hitler, stopped believing after the war.
As I read somewhere, "HOW does someone who commits atrocities and barbarism in the name of their country and people, believing that they were doing the right thing (however they convinced themselves), then turn around and tell themselves that it was all a sham?" They don't! they bury it inside them. But it's still there. As are the old uniforms up in the attics and down in the cellars, buried, but not forgotten. And as BT says, they pop up every so often in collections, museums and markets.

 

[BellyTank]

I was talking about the law regarding de-nazification and eBay's rules.
The items have been de-nazified but who knows about individual people and their attitudes.... the problem is with the following generations.

B
T

 

[scotrace]

Good Book

If you can find a copy:

What Did You Do In The War, Daddy?: Growing Up German"
The author has the unlikely name of Sabine Reichel
Hall & Wang, 1989

I admit I find some of these items asthetically fascinating. But I don't think I want to own them because of what they represent, and out of respect for my father's memory.

 

[Vladimir Berkov]

Looks like a fake to me. Waffen-SS shirmutze hats were indeed grey/black starting in the 30's, only the very early hats were all black. That SS cap in the pic is also missing some of its insignia.

It really does look East German to me, and with the added fact that it is surrounded by helmets and hats which are East German says to be it is a total fake.

 

[Mr. Sable]

They'd be good costume pieces authentic or not. What were they asking for them?

If you make films, Nazis always make the most excellent villians. That's because they're evil and real... not like aliens or swamp monsters and such.