SS Officer's wearing two cufftitles, one on each cuff?

[willysproject]

Hello,

Could anyone confirm or dismiss the practice of SS officers wearing one cufftitle on each cuff (left and right)? Did that exist? If so, could it have anything to do with being transferred from one division to another, and being allowed to wear the cufftitle of the previous division on the cuff of the right sleeve?

Kind regards,
Gerd V

[WalterB]

Hello,

Could anyone confirm or dismiss the practice of SS officers wearing one cufftitle on each cuff (left and right)? Did that exist? If so, could it have anything to do with being transferred from one division to another, and being allowed to wear the cufftitle of the previous division on the cuff of the right sleeve?

Kind regards,
Gerd V

Based on period portraits, soldiers sometimes wore cufftitles on the wrong sleeve and even sometimes wore decorations in ways that were not consistent with regulations.

[Bobwirtz]

Generally speaking, if you wore a cuffband with your unit and then were transferred to another unit, you could continue wearing your original unit cuffband if the new unit didn't have one. If the new unit had a cuffband, then you were supposed to change it, not add to it. SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Karl Demelhuber was the first commanding officer of the Germania Regiment in 1934 in Hamburg, but he continued to wear that same cuffband till the end of the war. There are specialty cuffbands that could be worn in addition to the unit, e.g. SS-Feldgendarmerie, SS-Kriegsberichter, etc. I've not seen photos of Waffen-SS men wearing their cuffbands on the wrong sleeve, but then again have never really looked for that. I thought I saw one once but the picture was printed backwards.

Bob

[HPL2008]

While the Wehrmacht did have some cuffbands that were to be worn on the right sleeve, all SS cuffbands were to be worn on the left sleeve. As has been pointed out above, this also applied if more than one cuffband was appropriate, which was the case with officer candidates, military policemen and war correspondents.

All campaign cuffbands to which SS personnel might be entitled were also worn on the left sleeve.

Members of SS units that had cuff titles could continue to wear those if they were transferred to units that had not (yet) been authorized one. If the new unit was given a cuff title as well, this was the only one to be worn.
Furthermore, there is some photographic evidence of the practice of wearing the cuff title of a former assignment in addition to that of the new one. It was definitely the case with former members of the Freikorps Danmark who continued to serve in the Waffen-SS after the original Freikorps was disbanded. I also recall having seen at least one photograph of an SS soldier from some other unit doing this. Still, in those rare cases it was also on the left sleeve.

Offhand, I can think of only one official exception to the rule of all cuffbands being worn on the left sleeve by the SS, but this applied to only a very men, of whom Julius Schaub was the best-known:
The "Stosstrupp Adolf Hitler 1923" cuffband - which was not exclusive to the SS - was to be worn on the right sleeve.

So far, the official story. However, it is of course always impossible to say with absolute certainty that no-one ever disobeyed the official rules and regulations. Still, I have never seen a single photograph of an SS man wearing a branch-, unit- or campaign cuffband on the right sleeve.

[Gestapo66]

Replay

Members of SS Handzar divison didnt wore the cufftitle at all !

Igi