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Please give opinions on this tunic. It has Russian stamps inside..capture,museum??
Thanks, Mike

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Well, straight off, it's a Heer EM's tunic, and that insignia does not look like it has been on there long..

The problem with Russian stamping is that they could be taxation, theatre, museum etc, or all three combines , if you don't know Cyrillic..

Can i see a couple of pics of the sleeve, especially the angle of the sewn button flap?

another

Hmm..Russian theatre stampings, Insignia more than likely put on down the road at some point..$8500 is a tad steep, and i question the boards and cyphers..

dM58,, if you can get better photos of all the russian stamps some of us might be able to translate them..
*The one square blue ink stamp on photo #6 [under the 42] means something like 'written off'..Probably meaning its served its purpose and would not be used anymore..I see a 19 _ _r
That would be the date/year it was taken out of inventory.

How important is the 2 vs 3 belt hook holes rule come into play.3 would make this an army tunic?

Bill, yes..

Three belt support ramp hole, five button front Heer M-40/41 tunic

Cost of a stripped Heer tunic $6-800.00
Cost of insignia (if all were good..)$2500.00 approx.

Still does not match up to $8500.00 asking price.

Doug, I agree with the price issue. I have a book on SS Uniforms by Krawczyk and Lukas, where they show numerous "authentic" Waffen SS Uniforms with the "Army Pattern" of 5 buttons and 3 loop holes. They say that "at best the SS Bekleidungswerke manufactured jusst 20% of Waffen SS clothing, the rest..drawn upon Army stocks." They go on to say that many of the "regulations" did not reach the fronts. What's your opinion on this. Thanks, MIke

Well, even 13% of 4,000,000 men is a huge number.That is still over half a million tunics.I believe there was enough to go around to make at least an attempt to outfit most front line units at the beginning of the war.Near the middle and end, especially with high attrition rates, all branches of the armed forces were recycling tunics at an incredibly high rate.

Is it possible to find a Heer pattern tunic kitted out with SS insignia during the period? Absolutely.

Today however, it is incredibly rare to find one that is intact and unmolested.There are literally tens of thousands of Heer tunics available from which to produce fakes.

It is hard enough to find a genuine SS-BW produced tunic, stripped, in today's market.Most by now have been altered and added to.

I don't doubt it is true that the German forces 'made do' with whatever was at hand in times of shortages.However, as long as there was some semblance of a command, control and supply chain, the Germans did everything in their power to outfit their soldiers in the proper attire, with the proper field gear and weaponry, right up to May 8th 1945.

There were still supply trains running to Budapest in those last weeks, loaded with DOT-44 pattern tunics and pants, parkas, boots and shoes, ammunition, foodstuffs etc.

The Germans certainly were not lacking the resources needed to fight a war (fuel being a huge exception..), just the ability to move it to and from theater.

At the time this Army tunic was manufactured, the SS-BW was pretty much in full swing and producing uniforms, keeping up with the new divisions coming online. Before this the SS-BW was a fledgling outfit and many of the uniforms issued to the Totenkopf and SS-Polizei-Division were from Army stocks, but soon enough they were geared up and manufacturing.

By the way, I also have druthers about the authenticity of this tunic. The shoulder straps and slip on LAH ciphers are bad from what I can see on the pictures.