The Nazi Gold Train

[Edward]

I've always been creeped out by "reenactor" Nazis, to be honest. I realize somebody has to be the Bad Guys at reenactments, but I just can't get the YOU'RE PRETENDING TO BE SOMEONE WHO FOUGHT FOR HITLER thing out of my mind. I think it trivializes what those uniforms stood for, and I don't support it by attending such events.

I remember being a kid and seeing other kids playing Army around the neighborhood with cut-out paper swastika armbands because the Nazis they'd seen on TV had "the best uniforms." I've always kind of felt that modern collectors of Nazi memorabilia must be stuck in a bit of that mindset.

Very much so, imo. Mind you, a sizeable chunk of the allied reenactors aren't any more evolved, taking a very similar 'cool comic book' attitude to the whole thing. I've got no real issue with reenactment, captin' where it perpetuates the rose-tinted view of the war as a great time in history, when people were Better and All Stuck Together and other such mythology. Maybe I listened to much to the experiences of folks I knew who lived through it. I do worry about how it's all going to be celebrated when they're gone. The way the WW1 centeenary has been celebrated in some corners (now Harry Patch is gone and can't speak out against it) doesn't bode well for WW2 as it passes from living memory.

Though I tend to think that many Asians have only an abstract knowledge of Hitler, Nazism and the Holocaust considering it part of what is to them a very distant "European history."

Given how little the average peson in the West knows about, say, Chinese history and Chinese conflict with Japan, it's not really hard to imagine it the other way around. The Holocaust comes up as a factor in my privacy law class in Beijing every year, as W. Germany was the first state in Europe to have a data protection law, and it was a direct cultural response to the horror of the Nazi genocide. Many who ended up in the extermination camps were selected to go there by using the state's census records to establish who was a Jew and so on. Data protection law was designed, in its origins, as a mechanism to prevent such abuse of personal information as the Nazis committed. Few of the Chinese kids I teach seem to have any significant prior knowledge of the Holocaust, as European history isn't much emphasised in their education.

But this again brings up an interesting point- why is it ok for people in the west to enjoy 'living history' or 're-enactment' as nazis, but we find it creepy and repulsive when asians do it? I personally thinks it's about context (easy to prove- not many re-enactors go out for a night on the town dressed as nazis) and intent (more difficult to prove- who knows how many nazi re-enactors are getting their jollies at events way more than some kid in Tokyo?).

I suppose we could build a case for historical accuracy, but it's a fair point that at these events people are often in a uniform just as a costume, rather than re-enacting any particular unit or event with a modicum of educational benefit. What I feel rather crosses a line are when you see photos of people at events in the US who've come dressed as Wehrmacht or SS, and have their kids dressed up as Hitler Youth. That's where it crosses the line, imo, into fancy dress, and starts to get really questionable.

I think people are a bit more sensitive about these things in the UK than perhaps I get the impression is always the case in the US, but that may not always be so. The interesting thing though is that I find some things become more and more culturally verboten the further we are from the war. A few years ago, one of the younger royals in the UK went to a party in an Afrkia Korps uniform (with an erroneously added Nazi armband; perhaps that was from the Allgemein SS uniform that, according to the hire shop, he'd really wanted but couldn't fit into. The theme of the party was "Colonials and Natives."). There was tabloid outrage. Back in the seventies and even the early eighties, several comedians in the UK wore SS uniforms in various character settings. Stan Boardman and the likes. Allo Allo was a much gentler, less questionable variation, but both were rooted in the wartime British humour of mocking your enemey in order to disempower his ability to affect morale. Interesting how this has evolved and varied as the war becomes more distant. Of course (as is all too often forgotten these days), during the war, ordinary people (and the majority of the military) knew nothing about the death camps....

The thing I keep coming back to in my head is that it's 'acceptable' for Americans to dress up as nazis for re-enactment/living history ('My grandfather died for my freedom to dress up as a nazi!'), but NO ONE makes concentration camp inmate uniforms, and no one wants to 'living history' that, and if they did, I'm pretty sure they would be pilloried for being disrespectful, so I think somewhere we got our values all mixed up.

Folks do tend to distinguish those who fought in combat with those who ran the camps. Me, well. I've got all the tim in the world for the poor bugger conscripts who fought in the war because the papers came thorugh the door and they didn't want shot for declining. Not so keen on the volunteer, gung-ho types.

 

[Otter]

Funnily enough, back when I was an Orifice in the RA we ran into an old Luftwaffe AA gunner when we were out on exercise. We had a radio CP set up for our battery half way up a hillside sheing comes a rather well dressed elderly gentleman with a cane, out for his constitutional. He started to look at us strangely, so I asked my Bombadier to explain what we were doing as he spoke good German. As he explained that we were an AA missile unit his face lit up with a big grin, he explained he had been doing exactly the same here during WWII a and had met and married a local girl. We invited him to join us for coffee and showed him what we were doing, spending a pleasant couple of hours with not exactly an old comrade in arms but an old opponent, now a friend.

 

[p51]

I remember being a kid and seeing other kids playing Army around the neighborhood with cut-out paper swastika armbands because the Nazis they'd seen on TV had "the best uniforms." I've always kind of felt that modern collectors of Nazi memorabilia must be stuck in a bit of that mindset.

Let's face facts, the Germans, I feel, did have the best looking uniforms. But once you get past that, it's all about the context.
I don't collect German stuff. The only German things I have for m re-enacting displays are 'war trophy' types of things, like a Whermacht officer's hat and a panel cut off a "Dornier bomber" and painted with the German cross on the side (not the swastika). That's it. A guy I work with has several concentration camp uniforms, bought from the estate of a GI who'd kept them from a camp he liberated for some reason. He also has some items... made from parts of the poor souls who were sent to those camps (no, I won't elaborate, it gives me the chills just thinking about it). He actually wonders who I won't talk with him on the subject. He once said, "I don't get it, your GI collection is 100 times the size of my German one," to which I said, "Probably, but nobody would likely be physically repulsed by anything I have."

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Another creep factor is the fact that many of the German uniforms, particularly SS uniforms, in addition to what they symbolize, were made by concentration camp labor. Lesser known to people today is that the SS had quite an industrial empire of their own with scores of companies and factories that were directly and wholly owned by the SS making everything from their uniforms to pottery and mineral water. In fact the SS through their Apollinaris company was Germany's largest producer of mineral water!

 

[Marv]

I agree, Germany did have the best looking uniforms but then again they were designed by Hugo Boss.

 

[Fastuni]

Hugo Boss had a brief, and he designed a winning uniform for the nazis that pressed all thier buttons about supremacy and inspiring fear.

I agree, Germany did have the best looking uniforms but then again they were designed by Hugo Boss.

When will this myth ever die?

Boss didn't design anything.

The uniforms were designed by the respective organizations themselves, and continued German uniform traditions while accounting for contemporary fashion preferences.

Boss was a workwear/sportswear/uniform manufcaturer back then that merely produced some uniforms on contract, as did hundreds of other companies and countless tailors.

They produced men's suits only after 1948 and their fame for "quality designer men's wear" started in the mid-60's by engaging an Italian designer.

 

[Big J]

When will this myth ever die?

Boss didn't design anything.

The uniforms were designed by the respective organizations themselves, and continued German uniform traditions while accounting for contemporary fashion preferences.

Boss was a workwear/sportswear/uniform manufcaturer back then that merely produced some uniforms on contract, as did hundreds of other companies and countless tailors.

They produced men's suits only after 1948 and their fame for "quality designer men's wear" started in the mid-60's by engaging an Italian designer.

But of course, Boss would say that wouldn't they? After all, I've never seen Fanta telling people how it was invented by the nazis when the German Coca-cola factory ran out of ingredients.

In the end, true or not, all that matters is that people believe it to be true.

 

[Otter]

Heck, if that train is loaded with Nazi Uniforms it is worth a mint. Have you seen what an original set of Peas Pattern Waffen SS camouflage clothing sells for these days ?

 

[Big J]

I agree, Germany did have the best looking uniforms but then again they were designed by Hugo Boss.

Marv, I'm gonna have to disagree with you on that one. I think that the nazi era German uniforms incorporated some clever design features for their time; the first uniforms designed with mechanized/motorized troops in mind, and they were ahead of their time in 1939, but by 1944 they were relics of a bye-gone age IMHO.

By 1944 the US was well ahead of them in terms of fabric technology (nylon!) and other areas like zippers and velcro. Naturally, these designs were driven by the need to save money and simplify the production process, but it produced some real style classics; khaki pants, wind-breakers, denims, that sort of thing.

Can anyone name any Nazi era uniform designs that became post-war popular classics?

 

[Big J]

Heck, if that train is loaded with Nazi Uniforms it is worth a mint. Have you seen what an original set of Peas Pattern Waffen SS camouflage clothing sells for these days ?

Achtung baby! $$$

 

[Big J]

Another creep factor is the fact that many of the German uniforms, particularly SS uniforms, in addition to what they symbolize, were made by concentration camp labor. Lesser known to people today is that the SS had quite an industrial empire of their own with scores of companies and factories that were directly and wholly owned by the SS making everything from their uniforms to pottery and mineral water. In fact the SS through their Apollinaris company was Germany's largest producer of mineral water!

Damn that aryan mineral water made by untermensch! How mental is the 'logic' of that? But you are right, American uniforms were made by honest to goodness American gals on the home front (I saw it on a poster). It's waaay creepy to make people make your uniforms before you gas them. I'm so glad the nazis didn't win the war.

 

[Fastuni]

But of course, Boss would say that wouldn't they? After all, I've never seen Fanta telling people how it was invented by the nazis when the German Coca-cola factory ran out of ingredients.

You can't be serious... :eusa_doh:

The black SS uniform was designed by the SS officers Karl Diebitsch and Walter Heck.
Hugo Boss, a party member, got the first contract to produce the uniforms.
The SS officers and bigwigs of course didn't have to resort to factory produced uniforms, but had theirs tailored.

But don't let facts bother you. [huh]

 

[Big J]

You can't be serious... :eusa_doh:

The black SS uniform was designed by the SS officers Karl Diebitsch and Walter Heck.
Hugo Boss, a party member, got the first contract to produce the uniforms.
The SS officers and bigwigs of course didn't have to resort to factory produced uniforms, but had theirs tailored.

But don't let facts bother you. [huh]

Well, they're only 'facts' if you can provide me with references to source documents. Otherwise, it's all just 'some guy on the internet says....'.

 

[Edward]

Funnily enough, back when I was an Orifice in the RA we ran into an old Luftwaffe AA gunner when we were out on exercise. We had a radio CP set up for our battery half way up a hillside sheing comes a rather well dressed elderly gentleman with a cane, out for his constitutional. He started to look at us strangely, so I asked my Bombadier to explain what we were doing as he spoke good German. As he explained that we were an AA missile unit his face lit up with a big grin, he explained he had been doing exactly the same here during WWII a and had met and married a local girl. We invited him to join us for coffee and showed him what we were doing, spending a pleasant couple of hours with not exactly an old comrade in arms but an old opponent, now a friend.

I heard a great story from someone in the Chap crowd a few years ago. They knew some old boys involved in a BoB Old Comrades' group, all RAF.... apart from one guy who'd flown with the Luftwaffe, then at some point after the war come and sttled in the UK. He was as welcome as any of the rest of them.

Let's face facts, the Germans, I feel, did have the best looking uniforms. But once you get past that, it's all about the context.
I don't collect German stuff. The only German things I have for m re-enacting displays are 'war trophy' types of things, like a Whermacht officer's hat and a panel cut off a "Dornier bomber" and painted with the German cross on the side (not the swastika). That's it. A guy I work with has several concentration camp uniforms, bought from the estate of a GI who'd kept them from a camp he liberated for some reason. He also has some items... made from parts of the poor souls who were sent to those camps (no, I won't elaborate, it gives me the chills just thinking about it). He actually wonders who I won't talk with him on the subject. He once said, "I don't get it, your GI collection is 100 times the size of my German one," to which I said, "Probably, but nobody would likely be physically repulsed by anything I have."

Mn. I lean to the view that such stuff as exists belongs in a museum where this sort of thing can be put in context and dealt with apropriately. If I was still adding to the collection of 'war relics' I put together when I was much younger, I wouldn't entirely rule out Axis stuff, but the political stuff is nasty. I was always more intrigued by the bits and pieces used by the poor buggers on both sides that got sucked into conflict via conscription, in a war not of their making.

Can anyone name any Nazi era uniform designs that became post-war popular classics?

I guess the Lewis Dominator doesn't count?

I do sometimes wodner whether, had Hitler won and so not gone down in history in the same way as The Ultimate Evil, whether there would be an Axis equivalent of the A2... I'm quite partial to the design of the Panzerwrap, myself, but that of course was based on a pre-war, civilian design. I have seen repros of an SS, rabbit-fur-lined parka that look really nice. To anyone who didn't really know their stuff, they'd be just a nice coat. All the same, I can imagine it being a bit awkward owning up to from whence the design originated.

You can't be serious... :eusa_doh:

The black SS uniform was designed by the SS officers Karl Diebitsch and Walter Heck.
Hugo Boss, a party member, got the first contract to produce the uniforms.
The SS officers and bigwigs of course didn't have to resort to factory produced uniforms, but had theirs tailored.

But don't let facts bother you. [huh]

I think Big J was pullin' yer leg....

It's long been a popular mythology that Hugo Boss designed the SS uniform - I think I only learned otherwise on here. Of course, in fact Boss merely manufactured it. They've had stick for that since, though tbh I find it hard to credit the idea that most any business in that ers wouldn't have fallen all over itself to get a government contract of any sort, in any country.

The Fanta story is entirely true, though as happened with so many properties (Bayer pharmaceuticals being one), the Fanta brand passed into Allied ownership following the war, and has been controlled by the Coca Cola company since.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yep. the Fanta story is fully documented in Mark Pendergast's history of the Coca-Cola Company, "For God, Country and Coca-Cola." Coca-Cola GmbH was run by a German named Max Keith, who Pendergast concluded was never a member of the Party, but who knew how to curry the favor of those who were. He was allowed to continue operations thru the war, using what remained of his pre-war supply of Coca-Cola concentrate, but when that ran out, he had to improvise. He came up with a fruit drink made up from pulp, peelings, and other fruit waste, and called it "Fanta, a product of Coca-Cola GmbH" to ensure that the Coke trademark remained before the German public.

After the war, he regained contact with Atlanta, and turned over his books and formulas to the head office. Coke began using the "Fanta" name for its line of fruit-flavored sodas in the late fifties, but these bear no resemblance to the original wartime product.

 

[Fading Fast]

I'm just catching up with this thread.

A few thoughts. The swastika, which to me and most of us, at least in the West, is now a symbol of evil, depravity and inhumanity on an almost incomprehensibly frightening scale, was a symbol long before the nazi's embraced it. If you can remove your opinion of the symbol from the nazis (hard to do and I almost never can), it is an impressive symbol (there is a clip that plays on many WWII documentaries of the German Air Force flying by with their planes in the formation of the swastika - again, hard to separate out the evil from the symbol, but if you can, it is impressive). Hence, my guess is that at some point in the next 100 plus years the symbol will make a mainstream comeback as eventually WWII will be history (and will no longer be, as it is to many of us, emotionally impactful as we had relatives alive in our life - or even still today - who lived through it). I want to emphasize, I just watched part of "Judgement at Nuremberg" and despite having seen it several times and pictures of the Holocaust God knows how many times, I felt sick anew just seeing how beyond comprehension the evil and inhumanity of the nazis were. So there is no, none, none at all diminishing of that evil by me, I am just trying to highlight that the swastika has a history that pre-dates the nazis and, my guess, will - given enough time - become acceptable again.

Two, I had no idea about the Japanese weddings, etc. that came up earlier in this thread. I have read about how much of the history they teach is inaccurate (the Chinese, for very good reason, make this point forcefully), but had no idea / had never thought that it extended to their views of nazis. It must be eye-opening, or maybe they dismiss it, when they are exposed to other views.

Has there been any update on "The Nazi Gold Train" that started this thread? That would be an incredible historic find.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Damn that aryan mineral water made by untermensch! How mental is the 'logic' of that? But you are right, American uniforms were made by honest to goodness American gals on the home front (I saw it on a poster). It's waaay creepy to make people make your uniforms before you gas them. I'm so glad the nazis didn't win the war.

Many Eastern European Jews were tailors by trade and thus possessing a skill that was useful to the Nazis (i.e. making their uniforms) saved them from the gas chamber. And a labor camp though conditions were harsh offered a far greater chance of survival.

 

[Stand By]

I'm just catching up on this thread too …
I had NO IDEA that Fanta came into being that way. So amazing what one can learn here.

As for the nazi re-enactors, I don't get it at all.
I just met up with an old school pal after 20 years of not being in touch (after a falling out) and it was really great to see him again. Then he proudly told me that these days he is into the re-enacting thing in a big way - and has so much nazi stuff and is part of an SS machine gun unit.
Now, I didn't say anything - after all, I'm just seeing him after so long and I'm looking to mend fences and not strain relations again - but he must have seen something in my face as he said "Oh, we don't dress up as any SS unit after 1943 - it was after 1943 that they were responsible for the real war crimes and atrocities and that'd be bad and we wouldn't want to provoke anyone or upset anyone."
I wanted to say that the SS were gassing and shooting jews as early as 1940 in Auschwitz … but clearly that's what the re-enactors tell themselves to justify what they do for weekend fun - and tell the public and hope that if they do it enough, people will accept it as fact.
Dressing as Wehrmacht would be okay for re-enacting purposes (it's a fine line, I know. But all the US Army/British Army re-enactors need someone around to "kill"and capture, I suppose, rather than wander aimlessly about or dashing here and there excitedly for nothing at all). And as long as they were always seen to lose or be chased away, I could accept that - but SS ? Never.

And as for the Japanese fetish for Nazi uniforms - OMG, just dreadful.
My girlfriend is all about animal rights and is signing petitions against animal cruelty on a daily basis on Facebook - and I hear some of what she sees on there and petitions against - and she's told me about "crush" videos - where women will be before a web-cam and have an animal and threaten to step on it with a stiletto heel or stomp on it or crush it slowly tail-first in a roller (the mind boggles!!!) - and sometimes these ghoulish women are in a nazi outfit (and apparently it's very popular coming out of Asia) so that sickos out there in their basements can get their perverted jollies from it online. And it never ends well for the poor, innocent creature.
Sometimes I despair at the world.

 

[Fastuni]

Well, they're only 'facts' if you can provide me with references to source documents.'.

Robin Lumsden, who writes collectors guides to Third Reich/SS militaria and is a respected authority in collector circles, states this in his book "The Allgemeine - SS". Diebitsch and Heck designed a lot of other stuff for the SS, too.

Otherwise, it's all just 'some guy on the internet says....

Which is exactly what your claim is. Now is your "source" for your claim that "Boss designed it" any better? Can't wait to see it.

The only established fact is that Boss was an ardent party member and got the first contract to produce party organisation uniforms.

The next problem with the "Boss was the SS uniform designer"-legend is that it is usually stated as a reason why the SS uniform was such a "good design".

It anachronistically tries to make a reference to Boss's fame as a prime menswear label... which it only achieved in the 1960's, after getting into men's suits in the 1950's.

Also there was nothing really groundbreaking about the SS uniform design... it just combined three ingredients argueably well:
German military traditions (basic cut of a four-pocket tunic), the tradition of the blackclad Prussian Deathshead Hussars as an elite force and changes to account for modern civilian fashion (open collar with necktie instead of closed collar). I'd dare say that the "intimidating/menacing aura" was achieved by this organizations activities and purpose much more than through it's pre-war uniform.

I think Big J was pullin' yer leg....

I don't have that impression.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Now, I didn't say anything - after all, I'm just seeing him after so long and I'm looking to mend fences and not strain relations again - but he must have seen something in my face as he said "Oh, we don't dress up as any SS unit after 1943 - they were responsible for the real war crimes and that'd be bad and we wouldn't want to provoke anyone or upset anyone."

Straining out the gnat, and gulping down the camel.

I've seen stickers in car windows with the "SS" lightning-bolt logo, and it puzzled me until I found out that it was being used as a symbol for some kind of custom motorcycle club. That's as bad as the trivialization of the swastika -- perhaps even more so. There was a case a few years back where a bunch of US Marines were using the SS logo for their own unit, and that filled me with a blind rage that I can't begin to describe. I don't offend easily, but that was beyond any mere matter of "offensive." Whatever blind stupid fool in the chain of command allowed that is not only a disgrace to the uniform he wears but also to the memory of every one of the millions of human beings who died because of what that symbol represents.