German Uniforms of World War 1 I The Great War Special

Just visually, when you picture German soldiers from the First World War, you probably first conjure up images of those spiked helmets, but there was more to their uniforms than that, and that's what I'm going to look at today- German uniforms. I'm Indy Neidell. Welcome to a Great War special episode about German uniforms of the First World War. The German Army was formed after the unification of Germany under Prussian leadership in 1871, and- spoiler alert- was dissolved in 1919 after the defeat of the German Empire in this war. The name Deutsches Heer was the name given to the combined land and air forces. That term is also used for the modern German army, the land component of the Bundeswehr. By the constitution of April 16th, 1871, every male citizen was liable for military service between his 17th and 45th birthday. This would really begin with your class of the year of your 20th birthday. 17 to 20 year olds were classified for volunteer purposes, home defense, and to even see active duty in time of war, but in peacetime were only required to register. So in peacetime, obligatory service didn't start until age 20. Thing is, since the recruit class was comprised of all men in the country aged 20 of that year, and that was a huge number of men, the army was very selective in nature and most men were passed over or put back one or two years. If you had, for some reason, not been accepted into service by age 22, you were automatically put in the reserves until you were 45. In 1914, Germany could mobilize about 4.9 million men from a population of 67 million. Enormous numbers of volunteers came forward in 1914 from all ages as the war began, but after 1915, only about 5% of eligible males volunteered. And now let's look at what they wore. Well, just the infantry today because of time constraints. What the infantry wore from 1871 to 1914 was a quartermaster's nightmare. First off, you had the military tradition of dressing different regiments in different colors so that commanders could spot them from a distance on the battlefield, but also, until 1910, each German state had its own uniform color, belt buckle motto, badges, armbands, helmets, and more. There were even differences within regiments, but in 1910 the entire German army adopted the field grey- Feldglau uniforms while maintaining state and regimental variations. The pre-1910 uniforms were still kept for parades, guard duty, and social affairs. I can imagine some of you are impatient to get to the spiky helmets, so I'll talk about them now. The Pickelhaube- that's what they were called- had canvas covers, and they weren't really actual helmets. Pre-war, their covers had the regimental number on them in bright red. In 1914 the color was changed to dark green and then left off altogether in 1915. The leather used in them was imported from Argentina, but the British blockade caused the first shortage of the war- leather for Pickelhaube. Felt, fiberboard, tin, and sheet metal were used as substitutes, which doesn't sound very comfortable. The Pickelhaube were produced until the spring of 1916 when steel helmets were introduced, but really, Pickelhaube were unsuitable for trench warfare. They were not durable enough, were expensive to produce, and didn't provide real combat protection. Hence the Stahlhelm M1916 steel helmet. Developed by Professor Friedrich Schwerd, these helmets had the distinctive 8mm horns on the sides for air circulation. The basic helmet was formed from one steel disc. The rivets at the lower part are for fastening old M1891 Pickelhaube side posts and chin straps. The helmet liner was held in place with three rivets and was designed to keep the helmet one finger width away from the head at the sides and two at the top. This was to prevent head injuries if the helmet were dented. In addition to ventilation, the horns could also support a heavy armored plate, called a Stehmpanzer. There was also a set of sectional chest armor, known as lobster armor by collectors, that weighed 16 kilos- 35 pounds. This was supposed to protect troops like sentries that were more exposed, but in general the soldiers threw it away, since it was of seriously dubious value in the trenches. As a result, both the plates and the lobster armor are quite rare. For the tunics, the Brandenburg and Swedish cuffs of 1910's design had been simplified into simple turnback cuffs in a transitional tunic design. These were great because any passes or small documents could be stowed away in the fold, but still, till the end of the war, the 1910, the transitional, and the 1915 tunics all continued to be produced. Here's just one specific uniform example, okay? A Bavarian soldier in 1917 would wear the 1915 wool tunic. The cuffs turned back like in the transitional, but the brass buttons of the 1910 and transitional had been replaced with a front that concealed buttons of horn. The later in the war, the buttons would be made of wood, bakelite, or whatever you could find. The only visible buttons on the tunic were four zinc buttons, two at the shoulders, two on the pockets. The soldier would wear the German enlisted man's field cap, the Feldmütze, which was visorless. NCOs wore the same style hat, but with a visor. The hats were field gray wool with colored bands at the bottom, red for infantry, gray for light infantry, black for artillery and combat engineers. The caps have two colored buttons. The top one had black, white, and red for Germany, and the bottom would have white, blue, and white, the state colors of Bavaria, or the colors of whatever state the soldier served. Prussia had white and black, for example. The belt buckles were iron, but painted black. Actually, an order from the Kaiser in 1915 changed the traditional brown finish of boots, belts, and other leather gear to black. This was in accordance with the new 1915 uniform. By 1917, ankle boots and puttees were in common use because of the continuing leather shortage. Now, this was a very brief look at only one type of German uniform. We'll cover more uniform designs from other warring nations in future, and as always, I encourage you to look this up for yourselves to get a better idea. Also, as always, I'll leave you with something to hopefully drive home that while this may be interesting, there's nothing cool about it or about the war. This is something not uniform related. Okay, this is from Corporal Karl Fritz, from the trenches at Verdun, to his family. For three days we were in the shell holes, seeing death in the eyes, every moment expecting it. Besides, not a drop of water and the horrible stench of corpses. One shell burying the dead, the other pulls him out again. If you want to dig in, you get straight to the dead. I had a group, but every man has prayed for himself. The worst part is relief, the in and out, the constant barrage. All is full, full of wounded here and heavy smell of dead. Furthermore, it is also constantly under fire. We had about 40 people dead and wounded. This was little for a company, so I have heard. They all looked pale and consumed. I will not tell you more misery, it may be enough. Sincere greetings and kisses, and Godspeed by your thankful son and brother, Karl. This was actually our second special about the uniforms of the armies in World War One. If you want to see more about the French uniforms, which was our first special, you can click right here. For more pictures of German uniforms, follow us on Instagram. And if you see a German uniform in a museum, tell everyone you know about our show. See you next time.