Question: East German civil defence uniform

[Frank Soon]

Most of their uniforms are standard NVA white piping ones with purple collar tabs, shoulder boarders, and cufftitles (I have one with major rank), but in some pictures I saw a different fatigue style uniform with sleeve rank bars and a round "zivilverteidigung" patch, anyone knows what this is about?
Also, what was their highest rank? did they have generals?
Thanks
Frank

[tony james]

hi frank
i believe from info i gathered years ago was that the officer and NCO
ranks were from the NVA.the fatigue type uniforms i would think would be
for the lower ranks.since the wall came down not many officer/NCO tunics
have turned up.i have known of two field NCO tunics (cotton) with collar
tress, tabs and cuff titles which were original.hopefully in the near future
more solid information will be made avallible from sources that served in
these units.

tony

[Daniel Krause]

Hi,

the NVA style Uniforms were worn by "Full-timers" professionals.
The fatigues were the dress for the "voluntary" serving civilians.
They had also no Military ranks like the NVA, they had different ranks based on the position like Gruppenführer, Zugführer etc.

Best regards

Daniel

[Rev462]

As was mentioned already, the "full timers", who were administrators, instructors (presumably), etc. were taken from the regular NVA.

As far as I know a regular NVA general would have been the chief administrator, although I don't know the breakdown of how the juridictions were divided and so on. The standard NVA general's uniform would have been worn, i.e., red piping and collar tab backing and NO cuff title.

[Frank Soon]

Thank you, guys. :-)