"Pink" smock or not?

[nutmeg]

I have no dog in this fight , but was passed this bit of info . true i do not know


These came from Berman & Nathan, costumers in London in the 1980's. They are NOT original

That's a long discredited rumor mill story

[90th Light]

boo hoo for you and your chinese phone ,you can ring and cry all you want , if you put in shop its open to all to view.. you know your quick to post smart ass remakes at me , yet dont like the stone cast back .

You'll keep Judas,

what you have done is caused problems for him now. Great way to help one of the few dealers out here who gives you any time of day,

Chris

[NZMark]

I'm not getting the 'warm and fuzzies' from you today, Owen? Aw.
Never mind - perhaps a collector - with actual conviction and total belief that these smocks are fake - will step up and sell to anyone here who has offered to buy a smock for the $500 figure you stated these are worth. Not just me - anyone who just stated they'd take a smock for $500.
Come on guys - they're fake, right? You can't lose!! Owen's out, obviously, so let's have real believers...
(Seriously, Owen - you can still redeem yourself and be a man of conviction - the offer is open-ended).
Now - can we have that itemised list of points which refutes the Spanish collector's findings, please?
All The Best,
Mark

[nutmeg]

Ditto... I want one for $500.. put me on that list too.

Jim

PS... Can we all see where the wind is changing direction? I hope it is fake until I get my hands on one..

I just paid $1500.00 for one and am very happy with it. I would like another with stronger colors.

[judas]

You'll keep Judas,

what you have done is caused problems for him now. Great way to help one of the few dealers out here who gives you any time of day,

Chris

I will keep sounds like a threat is it caused him problems
How

[nutmeg]

No place for personal gripes here, do it by PM and give us break . Is it impossible for many of you to actually stay on topic?

[salt*creek]

Real oak smocks are hard to find. Much rarer than blurred edge and plane tree in my opinion. Here is one for sale today at a show in Tokyo for $5500. No comparison...

[salt*creek]

Only pics my friend sent me. Notice how even though the sleeves are made of oak, the bottom section is a different print. Pockets flaps are plane tree on this one.

[phild]

Only pics my friend sent me. Notice how even though the sleeves are made of oak, the bottom section is a different print. Pockets flaps are plane tree on this one.

You would agree I presume that the reason so many German made SS smocks (I also have the same thing with a Heer Marsh pattern) have parts made from mis-match camo is that the factories where they were made used leftover stocks or even pieces of earlier supplies that often (usually) did not match the main stocks that they were using for a run?

This is very understood, but the difference with the Birch smocks is that if they were made in a distant non German supplied non German factory (just like the proven Norwegian camo parkas) the factory would have had NO previous scraps of German fabric to use up. Even so, we see and examples posted here of Birch smocks show that in some cases pocket flaps, waist "tunnels" and lower sleeves were in FACT made from different run fabric (just like the German items were) as is evidenced by the white ghosting of the slipped rollers.

[salt*creek]

I'm glad you said "if".

[phild]

I'm glad you said "if".

Yes, I have always said "if" in the context that for me these smocks would be impossible to accept if they were made in the same facilities that made the accepted SS smocks. On the other hand if they were not, no one familiar with foreign uniform production for the German military could fault them based on any characteristic that has been so far identified.

[salt*creek]

yes, i have always said "if" in the context that for me these smocks would be impossible to accept if they were made in the same facilities that made the accepted ss smocks. On the other hand if they were not, no one familiar with foreign uniform production for the german military could fault them based on any characteristic that has been so far identified.

👍

[90th Light]

I'm glad you said "if".

Let's research that " if " one step further or more.

It has consistently been repeated here by Owen that the "Birch" smocks are not sewn up like a beyond doubt German made smock. He has stated more than once, SS camo items are all sewn up consistently in the same fashion across the board. Well some who have collected a lot of SS camo items are now weighing that statement up.

They tell me that it comes down to how destroyed the factories were by Allied bombing and attack in the period 1943 to 1945. A factory in Germany which had been bombed heavily would be struggling to keep doing what it had once been able to do. A lot of their work and final assembly might be farmed out to sub-contractors or cottage industry. However what they could still do at the factory would still happen. The sewing and finishing of the final product might be different/ rougher to what it once was, not also underestimating the struggle to find enough material needed.

This means that not all rough finishing/ sewing is the result of concentration camp production or slave labor.

On the other hand, if the factory was still completely intact in another part of Germany or the Reich. Then the end product/ sewing might be of a higher standard even close to early war standards. Depending on how many trained/ skilled staff they had manged to retain/ find. In some parts of the Reich (Minsk for example ?), a factory willingly manufacturing for the SS (SS owned ?) could produce a product to a very high standard if all their buildings, machines, infrastructure was still intact with trained/ skilled staff to work for them.

A good example is what one collector has shared with me in regard to collector fact verses mythology of collecting Zeltbahn (including numerous SS Zeltbahn). He is a long time collector of the Zeltbahn in Germany, who has stated that the belief by many collectors that late war manufactured Zeltbahn with hand embroidered buttonholes were made by unskilled slave labour in concentration camps was not true.

This German collector had spent a long time and many years collecting Zeltbahn. He has spent hours on research and even tracked down, thus meeting people who were associated with firms manufacturing Zeltbahn during the war, either in managerial roles or actual workers on the factory floor.

The German collector said that the Zeltbahn made late in the war with the hand embroidered buttonholes were manufactured in factories that had lost sewing machines due to damage caused by Allied bombing. It was often possible after an air raid by salvaging some machinery to keep manufacturing going by just cutting the cloth and to machine stitch the straight edge seams but not to machine stitch the buttonholes, a far more complicated procedure.
In these cases, factories used their own labour force or additional piece labour (sub-contractor/ cottage maker ?) to hand embroider the button holes.

The German collector said in decades of collecting he had not come across any evidence of the Zeltbahn with hand embroidered buttonholes being manufactured either by "unskilled slave labour" or by inmates of concentration camps. There was a number of established firms that had the expertise and the machinery to produce the Zeltbahn and as far as they could tell those firms continued to produce the Zeltbahn until the end of the war.

He felt that this may have some relevance to the ongoing discussions on the subject of the "Pink" ("Birch") SS smocks.

Interestingly, when I considered this, I noted that I have seen the odd original pre-May M43 caps with hand sewn button holes. However, not many.

What this does alert us to ?

The production techniques of German camo maufacturers could vary according to what challenges, they were facing at the time, were they were located in the Reich in relation to Allied bombing/ attack etc. The nature of their organisation i.e. concentration camp verses private company. Plus the size of their organisation, the number of factory machines operating and how many skilled personal were still on hand.

In fact, do we know for sure exactly what SS camo items were made in the concentration camp system and those that were not ?

Chris

[NickG]

Since these smocks are different (but not alarmingly different) in comparison with "Reich produced" smocks it was suggested that these, if indeed of period origin, were possibly made somewhere in the East...where they remained and were found...

I researched this possibility further...We can probably rule out Balarus or any Ostland territory after all... This because of Stalin's scorched earth policy...
Stalin decreed such a scorched earth order, which meant that everything that could be of use to the Germans (like local printing presses, weaving mills) was destroyed; with this order, Byelorussian food stores and infrastructure were devastated. Furthermore, about 4,000 towns and villages were completely destroyed through both Soviet sabotage and combat. In a stunning feat, entire factories (heavy industry) were uprooted by the Russians to be re-established further to the east. (like Moscow region). The industries that the Russians could not relocate were destroyed much like the infrastructure. After the war most industries (complete factories) that were evacuated never returned to their original region!) ...

So the suggested "Ost smock" name with possible local Minsk area manufacturing possibility is unlikely and can probably be ruled out...unless it was a small scale cottage industry or Minsk Ghetto operation within the KZ lager industry program (slave labor)...
Other occupied territories such as "General Gouvernement" (Occupied Poland) and "Protektorat" (Czech territories),and Sudetenland etc...
could still be worthy candidate territories of Non Reich manufacturing where minor deviations in methods and materials might have occurred...
and of course the SS Industries system with KZ lager manufacturing, SS Bekleidungswerke installations outside of the Reich (those facilities not affected by Stalin's scorched earth policy during the Barbarossa defeats and retreat)

Just wanted to set that record straight! It is all speculation still at this point...but there must be a reason why these are slightly different
and it is not because the fakers did not do their homework...(color selection) that does not make sense...if you counterfeit something you do it right, you clone originals which these are not completely patterned after, but too well made to be movie props and too old appearing to be 1980's repros with a bogus Soviet discovery story and artificially created rodent damage...That does not make sense, especially since these were sold at surplus prices, so why create these fraudulently and than liquidate them...fire sale them...none of that adds up in my view!

[kammo man]

So you don't have pictures of anything do you.

All talk NO show.

Typical rookie move on your part Chris.


Answer me this..........

Just how many SS camouflage pullovers have you actually owned or examined ?

Be honest now.

Please answer this question ......