FP & Andy,
What documentation do you have that states Officers were not required to purchase their own sidearms?
Richard K
Richard, I think you mean the reverse? Fred, while it is generally thought by collectors/historians and supported by documented clothing regulations, that officers of the armed forces and police were required to purchase their own equipment and given a stipend for this purpose, officers of the Sicherheitspolizei were provided weapons out of a central armory. This is of course documented by the partial records of the RSHA arsenal located in the National Archives. I attach one of the record cards from this central file of a senior officer that was provided equipment: a P08 and binoculars.
Other such cards are located in the National Archives under the Records of the RFSS and Chef d. Deutschen Polizei. They have also been reproduced for the benefit of collectors. I provided some of these records concerning mostly NCOs and ordinary ranks in postings last Spring in the Firearms section of this forum.
So for this instance, we have the documented instance of officers procuring weapons from a central state source, in this case the RSHA Armory in Rauscha, rather than relying on private procurement. But we have no documentation to extend this procedure to the VT/WSS or TV. But we do know that Allegemeine SS units did maintain their own mini-arsenals.
