"Pink" smock or not?

[NickG]

The word FAKE gets tossed around very easily!
I remember the days when (most) European collectors considered the Dachau shields FAKE...Those were not around much over there and when these US vet hoards started hitting their shores, many EU based collectors had strong doubts...pristine looking and large quantities...and affordable...(like the smocks)...
Some still call them fake...

Reason similar to the smocks:
abundantly available, affordable pricing and in minty unissued condition...(smocks: some/w the rodent damage and pee is certainly not artificial aging! )

Now the shields are all over the place including on tunics...The internet helped correcting that misunderstanding...Same can be said in the other direction...
East coming West...Ukrainian G43 pouches in materials (colors, ersatz) with maker codes never before seen in the west...Never captured...nothing!
So also believed to be fakes...Again huge supplies and reasonably priced. I bought my first G43 pouch in Normandy in 1984 (40th anniversary). Big $ !!!
Hoards sitting in the Ukraine was just unheard of...no internet, cold war barrier etc...things evolve, viewpoints change, stuff surfaces...
So something we are trying to establish here with this topic as well...not just one liner negative comments that are unsubstantiated-unfounded for the most part... (bogus impermeable issue, thickness/density etc..) but at the same time I agree that a lot of what has been posted is circumstantial as well ...
but connecting possible dots should be investigated.

That's why even big time collectors are still sitting on these Pink-Birch smocks in their collections...on the fence...Wanting answers! Waiting for answers...
(image from a big Dutch collection)

[NZMark]

Actually, that was my post # 420 (the same one in which I recounted my conversation with Floch) 3+ years ago.

Thanks Leroy,
After so many pages it gets a bit difficult to re-read all the posts.
I find it strange that within the SS collecting community the inflexible, entrenched mind-sets of some is actually negative to the hobby. In the Heer section it seems a bit more relaxed and less aggressive, while also more open-minded when fellow collectors add real information to a thread. In fact new information is welcomed, not continually shot down with members being called liars, simpletons and weak minded.
The argument that something must be a fake if it requires a long explanation is obviously fundamentally flawed, especially when logical, well thought through and researched information is presented.
Having a closed mind in this game is counterproductive and will not advance our understanding of a subject we are all supposed to be interested in.
Mark

[NZMark]

Deleted - I'll not lower myself to mud slinging after all...

[NickG]

After so many pages it gets a bit difficult to re-read all the posts.
I find it strange that within the SS collecting community the inflexible, entrenched mind-sets of some is actually negative to the hobby. In the Heer section it seems a bit more relaxed and less aggressive, while also more open-minded when fellow collectors add real information to a thread. Mark

True more open minded in those forums because they see and know about non Reich production as a possibility.
Example 1: KM coastal enlisted combat uniforms made in France with full liners, (very non German) = French style and French embroidered insignia....
Example 2 : LW winter flight gear made in Sofia Bulgaria branded Alaska "Аляска", written in the tag like this...
All the hardware is German, (snaps-zippers) but made outside of the Reich for the LW..not even in occupied territories, but by an Allied nation, which had the fleece!

Foreign made stuff did happen! It is a possibility! (and SS industries had the means, resources (KZ)and flexibility, going outside of the RBNr supply Reich system!)
My Waffen SS rabbit fur cap (lacking RBNr info) with typical SS HBT silk liner (not seen on Heer versions) was made in occupied Poland (KZ lager Majdanek)

[NZMark]

I find it strange that within the SS collecting community the inflexible, entrenched mind-sets of some is actually negative to the hobby.
In the Heer section it seems a bit more relaxed and less aggressive...
__________________________________________________ _______________________________


True more open minded in those forums because they see and know about non Reich production as a possibility.
Example 1: KM coastal enlisted combat uniforms made in France with full liners, (very non German) = French style and French embroidered insignia....
Example 2 : LW winter flight gear made in Sofia Bulgaria branded Alaska "Аляска",
written in the tag like this...All the hardware is German, (snaps-zippers) but made outside of the Reich..not even in occupied territories, but by an allied nation !
Foreign made stuff did happen! It is a possibility!

A major possibility. If all other factors add up - and so far they do - then the question is where would these have been manufactured?
If the Heer system accepted quite variable uniform differences - why not SS? The perception continually pushed is that they would not have done so...why not?
The need for camouflage outstripped manufacture - this is historic fact. It is absolutely NO stretch to imagine these being manufactured in an occupied territory when seen in the context of what was happening within the Reich supply system.
Mark
Mark

[nutmeg]

My Birch smock just arrived from Chris (thanks!) . No question this smock has been strongly washed. In looking closely at the black stamp it also appears the date is 1947 as well. Here are the two pockets lined up the greener one is my planetree with the same film company stamps . Looks like the same HBT weave to me.

[blamers]

Fake

When yo compare the Pinky with an original, you feel immediately the difference.
Not water repellent at all.

The structure is totally different.


Again, I had 2 pieces.

Sold for the reasonable prises 350E


I am not missing them.

There will be always a pink cloud around them.
Mabey on a pink day they will become as originals......who knows...

[wolfslair44]

I don't pretend to be a cloth expert. That said, to suggest that in the last months of the war, where on-going retreats, shortage of supplies of every kind, problems with transportation in supplying material to clothing depots, etc., were the norm that it's not possible that different fabrics were used which were not to 'SS standards', etc. seems rather foolish. I'm sure by that point most were not worried about what kind of stitching was used, or material, etc., they were just happy to produce the garments and the soldiers happy to have something to put on by that point.

[nutmeg]

[QUOTE=blamers;7203316]When yo compare the Pinky with an original, you feel immediately the difference.
Not water repellent at all.

The structure is totally different.


If they were made in the East why would you expect it to be the same? Wish you had a third one for the price, I'd be Paypaling you right now.

[derka]

This endless thread is very enlightning for someone like me who have absolutly non dog in this race.
i have my own opinion about it, but this is not the point.
It reveals collector's diversity of approaches for collecting, and divergent behaviours acording the path each of us choose to follow.
All are respectable, as far debate stays in a gentlemen's exchange of points of wiew, wich seems sometimes difficult to preserve for some.
I hope egos won't win this game.
derka

[phild]

When yo compare the Pinky with an original, you feel immediately the difference.
Not water repellent at all.

The structure is totally different.


Again, I had 2 pieces.

Sold for the reasonable prises 350E


I am not missing them.

There will be always a pink cloud around them.
Mabey on a pink day they will become as originals......who knows...

I certainly would say that when I feel one of those and I German accpeted example and a German hbt SS smock the hbt smock feels very different from the other two!! Somehow everyone is ok with that oh so slight fabric difference. It's all funny to me

[Disco Partisan]

No problem.
- http://вечерний-екатеринбург.рф/cult...-cherez-ekran/
- https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A...81%D0%B8%D0%B8
- http://news.tut.by/society/169320.html
-Кто живет в Беларуси - Page 153 - Google Books Result

Thanks Andrei. Below are results of my investigation today. The "Minsk Studio of Newsreels" company indeed existed and just as you said it was established in 1935 in Minsk.
As we know, Germans invaded Russia in June 1941 and Minsk has been conquered by Germans just one month later (July 1941). Minsk was occupied for three years until July 1944.

Prior the war, the "Minsk Studio of Newsreels" has been making a well-known newsreel series called "Soviet Belorussia" ("Советская Белорусь"). Below are screenshots of two of those series produced just before the war started (May 1941). As can be seen in screenshots of 1941 newsreel series, the company name listed as "Minsk Studio Newsreel". But in screenshots of 1942 newsreel series (note it is the same "Soviet Belorussia" series) the name of "Minsk Studio of Newsreels" has been changed to "Belorussia Studio Newsreel" -it is because Minsk was occupied by German, in other words, the city did not belong to The SovietUnion at that time (1942). So they had to change the studio name, which of course has already been working somewhere away from Minsk, into exile, most likely in Russia



Note below that in 1942 it is not "Minsk Studio of Newsreels" anymore but "Belorussian Studio of Newsreels". They continued to make the same newsreel series that they were making prior the war (that is "Soviet Belorussia" / "Советская Белорусь"). And this was probably one of their very last newsreel series they made under that name ("Studio of Newsreels") because all following newsreel series ("Soviet Belorussia" / "Советская Белорусь") were made by BelarusFilm

[nutmeg]

I certainly would say that when I feel one of those and I German accpeted example and a German hbt SS smock the hbt smock feels very different from the other two!! Somehow everyone is ok with that oh so slight fabric difference. It's all funny to me

Sort of reminds me of the Groucho Marx comment:
if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.

[RobertE]

I know, its really useful.



And the Fake Pink pattern also comes with a COA.......

Will you issue it please.?

I want to show all who come to my house it so they can read the small print and be happy for me that I own one and a letter saying it was made in WW2 and went to a company in 1947 and then made its way to a dealer of old fakes etc.
If I have that paper telling me its real then I will believe its real.
Better still can you please put an app on my I phone with a link to this thread and all your posts telling the reader all about this fake Pink jacket ?

Please please please !

Please ......

Owen, I thought we were going for civility. This is sarcasm. Can you keep your posts more constructive?

What do you think of the hands on comparison shown of the HBT pockets on a smock you declared good, and now posted by the owner of a birch smock and "textbook" smock?

s/f Robert

[phild]

When yo compare the Pinky with an original, you feel immediately the difference.
Not water repellent at all

There will be always a pink cloud around them.
Mabey on a pink day they will become as originals......who knows...

Hard to see the pink cloud when no pink is there. As for water repellency, the hbt were not, the army smocks were not nor were the winter reversible uniforms which should have been.

I don't think the main goal was for water repellency although we know that many smocks were treated with s chemical to be and perhaps these were also. By 1943 the main problem was getting enough cotton duck for zelts. This is according to Oswald Pohl who knew a bit more than I about the matter. Hbt was a that point considered an alternate as were perhaps other variations of fabric. All that being said I am not convinced that Birch smock fabric is really different from mid war zelts fabric. I have handled zelts that were no heavier per sq cm weight than these smocks are made from