East German Fallschirmjäger Assault Vest

Hi guys, today we're going to be taking a look at a pretty cool piece of East German history. Today we're going to be taking a look at a Fallschirmjäger assault vest. Now this was worn by the East German paratroopers, also known as Fallschirmjäger. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. But anyway, it was a pretty essential piece of gear for them. It provided them a way to carry a lot of the equipment that they, you know, had to carry. They were a pretty elite unit among East German armed forces. And this is really a really cool piece. It's got a lot of functionality, a lot of different pockets, and this particular piece is in very clean, pristine condition. So we're going to take a closer look right now. So a lot of the times I like to start off with looking at the build quality slash fabric material. And with this, you're going to find the same exact type of twill material used in most East German uniforms. So it's basically the same type of, you know, twill material. It's usually got a waterproof coating on it. If it's still, you know, somewhat new, you'll notice that it has that. So yeah, pretty much the same material that they've used in the past. Same pattern as well. You've got the Strychthorn raindrop camouflage pattern. Very iconic, although extremely simple. And yeah, you can see that this thing is very clean. Just looking at the tag, this M48, I mean, the colors is just still there. There's really no imperfections that I can see on this uniform. It seems to have been unissued and likely unworn. So yeah, a very, very cool piece of history. You know, when the wall came down in 1990, I'm sure there was still a lot of stuff in storage units. So it's likely that this just never got issued and was a piece of surplus. But yeah, starting, you know, at the top of the uniform, we've got, you know, obviously right here, a little tag, you know, to hang it. The size tag M48. 48 is the medium size. And I have seen these vests made in different sizes as well. Although there's, those are a little bit less common. So I think M usually refers to the height or like the build of a person. And 48 is like kind of the width. So they have S, G, M, and other like versions to, you know, if you're like a got a more athletic build or a more heavier set build. They really have, you know, a bunch of different stuff. But anyway, so you see here we got two chest pockets. So these are going to be undone by the classic plastic pebbled buttons you'll find on most East German uniforms. And yeah, these, as you can see, are very, very in great condition, great shape. And we have another little, you know, piece of fabric here. So probably for attaching, tying down different types of things. From what I could read online, this pocket was usually just used for like compasses, random stuff. It didn't really have an assigned purpose. It was just, you know, you could use it for whatever you needed. I do have some socks in here just to highlight the depth of each of these pockets. So if you see it standing out a little bit like that, this is why. And the same thing for the other one. We've got the same type of buttons. And I do have to be a little bit careful because the sewing that sewed these buttons in is very, very fragile. And if you pull too hard, it will break. So I'm not going to undo that one, but it's basically the same thing. I think another cool thing about this vest before getting any further is just the fact that for its time, it's a pretty, you know, not like advanced in a sense, but compared to what this was worn with. So, you know, now how, you know, modern militaries have combat shirts and they put a plate carrier over it. This doesn't have any protective capabilities in terms of, you know, Kevlar or anything like that. But the uniform one worn underneath it could be compared to a combat shirt in that it didn't have any special pockets on it or anything like that, but this did. So it's kind of like, you know, a load bearing kind of vest, you know, pretty, pretty cool for the time when this was introduced. But anyway, let's go to see how this was opened and closed. So we do have a little bit of metal here. We have these metal clips for opening and closing the vest. So if you just push in on this side right here, you can unclip from these D-rings just like that. Hold on. I seem to be having a little bit of difficulty doing that with one hand. There you go. So yeah, we just got these nice clean D-rings, no rust or anything on them yet, which is really nice. And the same thing for this one down here. You just got to push it in. Hold on. Push it in. And we'll get to this one a little bit later. It's giving me a little difficulty. But anyway, another thing to highlight, there is a kind of a stitch out area for the belt. So this is the standard East German belt, you know, load bearing belt, you know, worn with all the combat uniforms. And I believe just combat uniforms, the dress uniform has a different one. But basically, there's a little place you can route this through so you can buckle your belt. And on the other side as well, you can kind of see right here where it comes through in between the other pockets and stuff, and where it meets in the middle there. So again, on the front, moving further down, we have this, you know, ammo pouch, pretty standard East German ammo pouch. Interestingly, it is stitched on, so they just took a regular one and stitched it on. So you can keep your rounds in here. And I do have stuff in here to replicate the depth. I don't have any actual, you know, East German magazines. But, you know, if you were, you could put them in there. And this is one of the curved pouches, as you can see, not a straight pouch. So very interesting. Another important essential piece of gear to have is your NBC. So we have a gas mask pouch here. And I actually do have something cool in here. I do have the one of many East German gas masks used, the SCMH-41. So yeah, you keep your mask in there. And on older versions of this, I've seen they actually just sewed on one of those green East German gas mask bags. They just straight up sewed it onto here. So if you know what I'm talking about, it's just like a green rubberized vinyl material that the normal infantry uses to hold, carry their gas masks in. And on the original versions, that was literally just sewn onto here. For this version, you get a nice actual piece of, you know, material cloth. So that's very cool. And before we go to the back, I do want to show you the stamp. Even though it's pretty illegible slash unreadable, you can't make out the date on here. This number is not the date. NVA, National Volks Army. But the date would usually be by a number. So the, not a number, I mean the, a letter of the alphabet. So the letter of the alphabet would correspond to the year. The only thing you can really make out here is a two for the second quarter, but you can't make out any number of the alphabet. There's also this cloth here, but it doesn't have anything contained on it. There's also a pretty cool thing inside the vest, which is going to be this Makarov pistol pouch. So you have this concealed pouch in here. You'd fit a Makarov in here. That's what it's made for. So yeah, the inside of the vest kind of looks like this. So like you can see it here, I have the belt going in through the inside. So that's what it's meant for. And then down here around the waist, you have these other type of gray buttons that you could use to, you know, attach the different sides of the vest. And very cool. Another thing I forgot to talk about that I'd like to go back to is that there is a little bit of padding on the shoulders. I don't know what material it's made out of. I'm not going to cut to see what it is inside here, but it is some sort of material padding. When you wear it, you can definitely feel it. You can feel it right here. So that's cool to have some padding on the shoulders to dampen the weight. So when we get into the back, usually most uniforms don't have anything really interesting. But this one almost has more stuff on the back than on the front. So try to make it more even. So what do we got going on back here? Well, we got a number of things starting with the top. So we got these metal clips. And what these are going to be for is for the chemical cape to wear with your gas mask in case of an NBC nuclear biological chemical attack. I believe these clips would be clipped to that rolled up cape. Kind of similar to how the infantry would wear it. And then we have this kind of hidden back pouch. So we got these pebbled buttons right here and these little loops. And if you undo these loops, what you see, hold on, there you go, is a whole back layer of storage space. So you can store a lot of stuff back here. It goes down to where approximately this seam right here. So to get some perspective, you know, you got a lot of space there to put something to store. So that's pretty cool as well. And then the foam padding goes about right here on each of the shoulders. And then again, we have more of these little loops for, you know, whatever you want to use them for, I guess. So back here is usually where the actual filter for this mask would go. So I only have the mask itself, not the filters or the hose. But usually right here on the end connect to a hose and it would connect to like a coffee can style filter. And if you don't know what that means, just look it up. It's just a style of gas mask filter used, you know, in the USSR and stuff. So basically there are two little separations in this pouch with these two pebbled buttons. So on one side goes your canteen. So you got a standard canteen here. And then on the other side, here's where you would put your two filters. And then I believe this here is interesting because we have a metal button. So you don't see that on very many uniforms, although I have seen it on at least one, the Volkspolizei uniform uses metal buttons. Basically, you could use this metal button to wrap around one of the filters, unless this one, unless this pocket is meant for the canteen. Maybe this one's meant for the canteen and this one's meant for the filters, but basically one of them is supposed to go in there. Looks like there's a little piece of fabric here. Not sure what that is. Just looks like extra material. But there you go. And then you'll see you have these three small pouches right here. Now, from what I've heard, this is just for other miscellaneous items that you might have on the fly. You know, whatever else you would need to store in here, you could store in here. And they're all basically the same size. Yeah, one interesting feature about this is another vest I have. The inside of this is actually hard rubberized vinyl material. And I'll point that out in a comparison video I'm going to make with the two vests. And then on very late versions, instead of having these metal clips, it would be green nylon. It would be like green nylon loops. The same type of material, the same type of green material you see in the UTV era equipment. So by the end there, there was kind of UTV making its way into every type of equipment, including these vests. I do believe this is a later one because it doesn't have the, you know, front green vinyl gas mask bag sewn on the front. I do believe it's a later version. But like I said, that date stamp is illegible. So I'm definitely not sure what it says. But if any of you guys have an idea, please let me know. I'm sure it could be narrowed down just by looking at the features. So that's basically what the back is going to be looking like. Like I said, again, got this big pouch, two separations, and these three smaller pouches that all use these pebbled buttons. So flip it around again, say some final thoughts about this uniform. It's a very cool piece. Kind of uncommon to find these days. I mean, they're not impossible to find. They are on the internet, but they usually fetch around $200 to $300. So they're on the little bit of a pricier side. I ended up buying this one on Facebook from someone in Eastern Europe, I believe. So both of these ones that I have, they didn't come from the States. They came from overseas. One of the other ones I found on the German version of eBay, and I had someone from Germany get it for me. But basically, yeah, you're probably more likely to find these, obviously, in Europe, East, former East Germany. But yeah, they're a little bit pricier and just a cool piece of history. So yeah, hope you guys enjoyed this video. If I missed anything, please let me know. I think it covered all the bases, covered all the basics. But yeah, I definitely think this is a really cool piece of Cold War and just general military history. Thank you guys for watching.