Recent history has rarely given such evil enemies as the Nazi’s of WWII. The started the whole kit and kaboodle ( alright, I just wanted to use that in a sentence) and then there was the Holocaust. These guys didnt kill people on a whim...no... they made a science of it. They were goose step’n bastards... but few baddies ever looked so good being bastards.
I once read that they redesigned the Weimar uniform as to atract new recruits, and boy did they succeed. There look was always German, the jack boots, the Stahlhelm, that coat with the litzen on the collar. Hell the germans (in fact the SS) were the first people to use a patented Camouflage pattern. Even as the war went on and the uniforms were changed for economy ( YEAH!!! ALLIED AIRFORCE) the bastards still managed to look cool.
Even there weapons were distictly German, sure , other countries used the mauser but few used a SMG that looked like the MP40 and none had a MG as effective and stylish as the MG34 and it economized yet no less stylish offspring the MG42. One of the supreme examples of weaponry cool has to be the MP44/STG44... no other weapon in the world looked like it. The Luger, The Walther p38, both were pistols that said “gott in himmel”.
As re-enactors, my friends and I used to get angry, there we stood in our drab boring US uniforms with our effective but “Meh” stylish weapons and there were the evil nazi’s Stylin with their cool stuff... It just wasnt fair. Germans didnt have a field jacket that made them look like a wayward golfer nor did they have the sublime idiocy of the Legging or the M1928 Haversack ( my head still spins trying to understand why we used that thing) and though practical I guess, field gray was a better more pleasant to the eye then the tans and browns of the early US uniform. (For the record, I do love the Pattern 43 uniform that was green)
Even their tanks,Vechicles and planes were distinctly German. The angular plates of the half tracks and early recon cars and Tanks to the dreaded Tiger and ME109, all had a distinct “Made by Nazis” look.
Our stuff was probably better built, more reliable, no body can argue that our Jeep was the finest small military vehicle ever produced but come on... style wise, was it as cool as the Kubelwagon or the Kittenkrad? not to mention the BMW w/sidecar.
Even when it came to personal gear there was a since of German style, the built in slant of the SMG pouches, the Pistol holsters and even the Gas mask can all helped to make the Nazi a styling bastard. The German Paratrooper was so styling that the British tried to copy there uniforms off of theirs and the USMC produced a Paratrooper smock almost identical.
It just seems wrong somehow... that these bastards got all the cool stuff and were such complete and total Douche bags.
2 comments:
Re-reading this... I have to admit that the US Airborne combat uniform was pretty cool, I should give props to the US of A for that at least.
I finally got to see Inglourious Basterds this weekend, and the first thing I said to my wife when the Nazis showed up was, "Damn, they sure knew how to put together a uniform." It's a shame such unrepentant evil had to ruin such a cool look for the rest of us. I have to keep my jackboots in the closet.
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