My new DAK helmets

[NickG]

Good stuff!
So to summarize it, based on my understanding we have found:

(1) overpaints from feldgrau to the exact same DunkelGelb with Thale done stamp on the original feldgrau dome as appearing on mostly early type (partial) rework helmets...These would not be field overpaints...but instead most likely reconditioning workshop helmets with only partial overpaints...(those could be perceived as field overpaints and accepted by collectors but infact received only a partial treatment at the recycling facility...as they match the other helmets, same paint, different (less thorough) treatment...
and
(2) we have completely stripped and reworked early types to include dome treatment and replacement 1943 and later liners (also rebuilds)...no dome stamps of course as these were work shop total rebuilds...
and
(3) finally the 3rd category:the factory contracted tan helmets which are the sharp edge M42's again appearing in that same DunkelGelb color all around so to include the dome painted, to include a Thale stamp on top of the DunkelGelb (on some...spot checked by the inspector) meaning built from the ground up like this at the factory.
Correct? This would be the most controversial idea and rejected by many as the Germans did not make helmets in any color other that field gray and LW blue based on the purists opinions.

It is clear that the M35/40 helmets were reworked, sanded down and some only with outer-paint treatment including inside skirts (just like a field repaint job would look like...but done at the reconditioning work shop (Ghetto operation?) like this...
and others completely reconditioned (I guess it depended on the shell condition...)
and lastly the M42 helmets which are "new-borns " in this DunkelGelb ordnance color.
This alls based on the mixed helmet styles, mix of parts and mix of treatments but ALL
In the same RAL dunkelGelp color. (Not Egyptian, not Warsaw Pact color or whatever..)

And of course lastly ....
(4) category which would be the post war (re)refurbished helmets that have received a coat of black paint on top of the RAL German paint and utilized by the CZ fire/emergency services, many receiving also post war Czech liners, Czech repairs, check chin straps...but those are clear and not part of the plausible war time refurbished tan helmet topic as discussed here.

[Mr. Hollywood]

Who would have contracts showing these helmets were post war painted? Who would have contracts showing MG-34/42 Lafettes were post war painted?? Show me the contract for the German helmet factory showing an order for tan camo helmets?

It seems logical to me that surplus German helmets would have been repainted "en masse" as well for use,just like the Lafettes.

This thread will just go on and on I am sure.







Glenn

You are 100% correct......on and on and on and on and on. In the end these helmets will still be post war helmets, never to be accepted as original (nor should they be). This thread is full of wishful thinking, and hoping. Only those that have the desire to believe will do do, and the rest of us will move on to more scholarly pursuits with pre 1945 helmets.

Hell I put al lot of thought into my looooonnngggg previous post and not one person even made mention. I guess too much

[90th Light]

You are 100% correct......on and on and on and on and on. In the end these helmets will still be post war helmets, never to be accepted as original (nor should they be). This thread is full of wishful thinking, and hoping. Only those that have the desire to believe will do do, and the rest of us will move on to more scholarly pursuits with pre 1945 helmets.

Hell I put al lot of thought into my looooonnngggg previous post and not one person even made mention. I guess too much

Any comments from the experienced collectors you were going to talk to or might have been going to post here ?

Any reply from Kelly Hicks who you emailed ?

If it the post war case is so cut and dry them please state all the direct evidence or even circumstantial evidence

Please do a summation of all the objective points the post war case has going for it.

If collectors are going on and on and on then "lets cut to the chase" and hear the post war case/ facts ???

Then we can all "move on to more scholarly pursuits with pre 1945 helmets."

Chris

[Schwerpunkt]

Any comments from the experienced collectors you were going to talk to or might have been going to post here ?

Any reply from Kelly Hicks who you emailed ?

If it the post war case is so cut and dry them please state all the direct evidence or even circumstantial evidence

Please do a summation of all the objective points the post war case has going for it.

If collectors are going on and on and on then "lets cut to the chase" and hear the post war case/ facts ???

Then we can all "move on to more scholarly pursuits with pre 1945 helmets."

Chris

Chris this is yours and Nick's pet project , if you consider you both have thoroughly investigated this you should be able to present two lists , one for and one against with your conclusions no ?
Again there's too much one sidedness to the whole project.
You picked up two loose theories and disregard looking at the loose ends.

I want to know :

1) Are they from the ground up repaints or overpaints or both ?
a) how does that fit your theory of locally painted ? Why one stripped and another not ?

2) What with the dome stamps , are they consistent on every repaint ?
a) If painted in Germany by ET why would the other makers have the same paint ?
3) What about the makers code , is there mix of all makers or just the one
a) Again how does the dome stamp add up if there's one factory producing these from the ground up ?
4) Where were these helmets painted ?
5) Do you have a list of dates and makers for the parts ? Does it show a consistency ?
6) Lotnrs - Did you log all lotnumbers , do they show a consistency ?
7) Do we have solid proof of a vetbringback (and this must be trustworthy solid)
8) How many similar helmets have you looked at now :
a) How many repaints
b) How many overpaints

[Mr. Hollywood]

Any comments from the experienced collectors you were going to talk to or might have been going to post here ?

Any reply from Kelly Hicks who you emailed ?

If it the post war case is so cut and dry them please state all the direct evidence or even circumstantial evidence

Please do a summation of all the objective points the post war case has going for it.

If collectors are going on and on and on then "lets cut to the chase" and hear the post war case/ facts ???

Then we can all "move on to more scholarly pursuits with pre 1945 helmets."

Chris

Each dealer, and or higher end collector had the same opinion as I have.......post war refurbished helmets. I am sure many of us on this board have been in the game for sometime (20+ for me) and I all those years these helmets have had the same
conclusion. I have owned couple of them and I can confidently say that outside the parts there was nothing pre 45 about them. You can hold this helmet and when you see the paint in person it's obviously not war time. To be honest I don't need the other opinions to formulate my decision but for the sake of other collectors who don't know me, but know and trust the names of higher end collectors/ dealers that they recognize, their opinions might hold more water.

[kevinpre45]

Merry Chrismas!

Hello all
This has been a great and fun topic! Ive enjoyed all sides of contribution!
Kevin

[Aries22]

Each dealer, and or higher end collector had the same opinion as I have.......post war refurbished helmets. I am sure many of us on this board have been in the game for sometime (20+ for me) and I all those years these helmets have had the same
conclusion. I have owned couple of them and I can confidently say that outside the parts there was nothing pre 45 about them. You can hold this helmet and when you see the paint in person it's obviously not war time. To be honest I don't need the other opinions to formulate my decision but for the sake of other collectors who don't know me, but know and trust the names of higher end collectors/ dealers that they recognize, their opinions might hold more water.

Ok, when this helmets are post war made..so, how you can explain this stamps posted here before ?? Then are they fakes or early post war too ?

[francis006]

Ok, when this helmets are post war made..so, how you can explain this stamps posted here before ?? Then are they fakes or early post war too ?

Interesting to post them again Aries as I just noticed the stamp in the first pic is pretty "light" , so light that you can see it's done over a slight scratch in the final paint . So how can it be possible if it was applied on a mint finished shell ....or post war application ?
It could answer a question I was asking myself since pics of these stamps emerged , how is it possible for factory helmets (as they should be regarding the stamps) to only have a handful found when they should all have them ??
Another enigma to solve

[Aries22]

Interesting to post them again Aries as I just noticed the stamp in the first pic is pretty "light" , so light that you can see it's done over a slight scratch in the final paint . So how can it be possible if it was applied on a mint finished shell ....or post war application ?
It could answer a question I was asking myself since pics of these stamps emerged , how is it possible for factory helmets (as they should be regarding the stamps) to only have a handful found when they should all have them ??
Another enigma to solve

It will be related with two colours on this helmet, almost the same, but little another shade...and this stain is just first colour...as I mentioned I have hundreds of this yellow helmets and thousands retaken black ones..but only two with two almost same colours and only one with stamp...I have no serious evidence and information for it why it was made like this...just maybe, hope and so on, but what I know this stamp helmet is original....

[NickG]

Nah....those dome stamps are clearly Egyption....Cairo main arsenal.....

In all seriousness were dome stamps every discovered, shown and discussed before? So prior to this thread taking off the way it did ?
Have these period factory M42 dome stamps always been dismissed? or just never observed before, appearing on few helmets of course!
or do the naysayers just ignore this "smoking gun" proof as being "most likely faked" (another very weak argument!)

[NickG]

I want to know :

1) Are they from the ground up repaints or overpaints or both ?
a) how does that fit your theory of locally painted ? Why one stripped and another not ?

2) What with the dome stamps , are they consistent on every repaint ? few were found, worth further investigating and comparing!!!
a) If painted in Germany by ET why would the other makers have the same paint ? Counter question: why do continental helmets have the same paint?
3) What about the makers code , is there mix of all makers or just the one
a) Again how does the dome stamp add up if there's one factory producing these from the ground up ? one factory order (M42) plus others supplemented by work shop refurbishment in various degrees (M35/40)
4) Where were these helmets painted ? based on the components from Sudetenland, Poland...= SS industry, ghetto related refurbishment = SS use for me
5) Do you have a list of dates and makers for the parts ? Does it show a consistency ? 1943 liner pins which makes sense for M42 and early M40 rebuilts all with later parts like RBNr...so also 1943 period6) Lotnrs - Did you log all lotnumbers , do they show a consistency ?
7) Do we have solid proof of a vetbringback (and this must be trustworthy solid) yes New Zealand
8) How many similar helmets have you looked at now :
a) How many repaints
b) How many overpaints Aries22 has handled hundreds of these...how many have you handled?

See red
Regarding the work shop comment : remember Schindler's list movie, work shop operation for munitions, shell polishing etc... primarily for SS contracts,
this was in Zwittau-Brinnlitz...Well guess what, surprise surprise ...
That's in the Protektorate (CZ) now a days called "Svitavy" (Zwittau). Many many of such workshops existed like the small munitions plant that Schindler opened up saving the jews that he employed ). First he had a factory in Poland (also SS controlled) but moved to his birthplace in CZ-Sudetenland.
Remember helmet parts used for refurbishment came from both places to include 1943 liner pins from Sudetenland-Czechoslovakia...
The recycled helmets could have easily been refurbished there, so in the Protektorate in a similar work shop.
The SS did not have the channels the wehrmacht-Heer had, but what they did have is SS industry...and Ravensbruck KZ and Littzmannstadt Ghetto etc

ALL making gear and most often with beute stof, foreign materials, Italian wool, rebuilding, remanufacturing, mending/repairing. The SS was the most thrifty of all armed forces branches and also the fastest growing branch, so the need was there for many things handled by cottage industry sources (freely of forced labor) and to come up with 3000 plus helmets through those channels (for Greece deployment or whatever) is not UFO territory! Recycling was their thing!
Plus more helmets factory ordered = fresh M42's (Thale?) with dome stamps. Is this speculation?...YES, is this far-fetched, absolutely NOT!

These facts and the SS depot and the Sudetenland parts used etc...all place these helmets there and assembled like that DURING THE WAR.
To me the dots connect perfectly! Post war dots are non-existing...nothing to connect other than hearsay stories that made the rounds. tainting these helmets...
those dots connect, heard it from this dealer ,who heard it from...who heard it from (primarily doing the rounds in the USA initially 80's 90's...and spread with the internet to other places after that)

This explanation makes a lot more sense than "adding fake dome stamps" (newly made M42's) and coming up with export story excuses because the paint and finish/texture look unconventional, un-German so automatically a foreign contract with absolutely NO hard evidence to support that idea!!
We would need to find documentation that proves a work order existed (factory order and work shop reconditioning order and parts supply / paint supply order that ties these to such a work shop. Perhaps member Bubble can check archives in CZ!

[Aries22]

22

Yes excatly as Nick posted and one point of this thread is...where is the serious evidence for post war made and some so called Egyptian contracts too ? Everyone just heard it from someone another for many years and spread this theory everywhere and many started to belive in it....but all started because someone heard it from someone...this is the evidence ? Everyone logical thinking person must see then there is more proofs and some are serious for war made-photos, helmets with STAMP, informations and so on...but what are the serious proofs for after war made ? Then someone says it ??? This is nothing to me...

[NickG]

Museum of Tolerance excerpt of such work shop activities (in Poland) and extensive and diverse SS industry activities (using forced labor pool )
in occupied territories:
Even mentioning a DIRECT supply link between an SS supply depot (SS-Truppenwirtschaftlager) and such work shops (cottage industry)!!!
(red)
It is a Polish (General Gouvernement) example , but no doubt the same existed in Ukraine (Ostland) the Protektorate !(CZ) which explains these helmets being refurbished locally in a work shop and ending up in that Prague depot, along with the Saharianas etc...
__________________________

The first SS-owned firm to begin operations in Lublin was the German Equipment Works (Deutsche Ausrustungswerke, or DAW), which took over the workshops at the Lipowa Street camp in late 1940 or early 1941, and later established workshops at both the Old Airfield camp and Majdanek.42 The next large industrial enterprise established in Lublin was the SS Clothing Works (Bekleidungswerk), which was a subsidiary of the Waffen SS clothing workshops at the Ravensbrilck concentration camp and began operating at the old Airfield camp in Lublin in the summer of 1941. This enterprise underwent massive expansion in 1942, when it began receiving and processing mountains of clothing and goods looted from the victims of Operation Reinhard.43 Majdanek and the Jewish forced-labor camps in Lublin also supplied slave laborers to the various enterprises operated by the SS garrison administration (Standortvenvaltung), including a glass factory, a truck farm, and a laboratory for producing pharmaceuticals. In addition, the SS troop supply depot (Truppenwirtschaftlager), which supplied SS and police units stationed in or passing through Lublin, and the Supply Depot of the Higher SS and Police Leader of South Russia (Nachschublager des HSSPF Russland-Siid) were both located at the Old Airfield camp and operated workshops that employed prisoners from Majdanek and the two Lublin camps.44

In October 1942 Himmler gave an extra boost to Lublin's development as a center for SS industries employing slave labor when he ordered that the remaining Jews in the General Government employed in tailoring, shoemaking, or manufacturing furs be gathered in workshops in "concentration camps" in Warsaw and Lublin. In addition, he ordered that Jews employed by armaments firms be gradually isolated in "a few large Jewish concentration camps" in the eastern area of the General Government. The fact that this order was directed not only to Pohl as head of the WVHA, but also to Friedrich- Wilhelm Kruger, the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) of the General Government, to Globocnik, and to the Reich Security Main Office indicates that Himmler intended Lublin's development as an SS industrial center to be a joint venture of the various organs of the SS and police.45

The records indicate, moreover, that there was considerable cooperation, especially between Globocnik and the WVHA, in operating Lublin's SS industries and supplying them with slave laborers. For example, although he was not on the board of the DAW, which was subordinate to the WVHA, Globocnik directed the operation of its plants in Lublin.46 Further, the Old Airfield camp housed economic enterprises subordinate to the WVHA (DAW workshops), the Waffen SS (Standortverwaltung workshops and SS Clothing Works), and the police (Truppenwirtschaftlager and Supply Depot of the HSSPF of South Russia), which received both laborers and guards from Majdanek and from Globocnik's Jewish forced-labor camps.

The prime example of cooperation between the WVHA and Globocnik, however, is the East Industries Inc. (Ostindustrie G.m.b.H., or Osti), which was founded in March 1943 for the express purpose of using Jewish labor and also exploiting machinery and raw materials formerly owned by Jews in industrial workshops located in the Jewish forcedlabor camps in the General Government. Although the forced-labor camps in question were subordinate to Globocnik and HSSPF Kruger, who served respectively as Osti's chief executive officer and deputy chairman of the board, Osti was financed and controlled by the WVHA, and Pohl was the chairman of its board. In Lublin, Osti took over some of the DAW workshops, sorted and manufactured brushes in workshops at both the Old Airfield camp and Majdanek, and, using Majdanek prisoners, constructed an iron foundry.47

As a result of the cooperation between Globocnik and the WVHA, clear lines of demarcation cannot be drawn between Majdanek and the two Jewish forced-labor camps in the city of Lublin before September 1943. The Lipowa Street camp apparently was officially subordinated to Majdanek from its founding in 1941 until sometime in 1942.48 Nevertheless, Majdanek's SS Death's Head Battalion instructed the guards of the Lipowa Street camp to allow access to Globocnik at any time.49 In March 1942 the Old Airfield camp was guarded by the Fourth Company of Majdanek's SS Death's Head Battalion, but the company was actually composed of auxiliaries from Globocnik's SS Training Camp at Trawniki.50 During 1942 and 1943, moreover, a detachment of Trawniki men attached to the SS Death's Head Battalion was deployed to guard Majdanek itself.51 From about the middle of 1942 until September 1943, the male prisoners and their guards at the Old Airfield camp were directly subordinate to Globocnik,52 but the women's camp, which supplied laborers to the SS Clothing Works, was subordinate to Majdanek until March 1943, when it was taken over by Christian Wirth, the inspector of the killing centers. While the SS Clothing Works was thus subordinate to Globocnik as an integral part of Operation Reinhard, clothing received from Reinhard actions was also stored and processed at Majdanek.53 Majdanek also received prisoners from both of the forced-labor camps.54 The degree to which Majdanek was involved in the SS and Police Leader's system of Jewish forced-labor camps in Lublin is indicated by Globocnik's July 1943 report on the development of that system to date, in which he lists Majdanek as one of the camps and describes part of its function as "the supply of laborers to various enterprises of military importance."55

The distinction between Majdanek and the Jewish forced-labor camps in Lublin disappeared in September 1943 when Pohl, gradually expanding the WVHA's control to all economic enterprises operated by the SS, declared the labor camps under the SSPF Lublin to be subcamps of Majdanek.56 This was the high-water mark of Majdanek's existence. With Pohl's order, it became the center of a concentration-camp system in which 45,000 to 52,000 Jews and tens of thousands of other prisoners labored in a broad diversity of enterprises intended to produce the supplies necessary to feed, clothe, house, fuel, transport, and arm the SS.57 These enterprises included, among others, farms, numerous textile industries, a sawmill, a roofing paper plant, a tileworks, a brickworks, a peat cutting and processing plant, auto-repair shops, and plants producing airplane parts, explosives, fuses, and ammunition.58 The centerpiece of this military-industrial complex was to be the ironworks, which Majdanek prisoners built in the city of Lublin between August and November 1943

[Schwerpunkt]

See red
!

Nick , sorry answers are weak and inconclusive.
I don't "believe" based on hearsay.
So Aries is the guy pushing you then and you are just creating posts based on what he supposedly knows ?
Ok Aries , show us the data of your research and the photos.

But I fear nothing will be forthcoming. I think this topic has become a badly handled affair.
Perhaps to the detriment of the truth.

[Dennis J]

Nick , sorry answers are weak and inconclusive.
I don't "believe" based on hearsay.
So Aries is the guy pushing you then and you are just creating posts based on what he supposedly knows ?
Ok Aries , show us the data of your research and the photos.

But I fear nothing will be forthcoming. I think this topic has become a badly handled affair.
Perhaps to the detriment to the truth.

Do you think we are being played.

Dennis J