I saw this post on tumblr, stating that Nazi uniforms were extremely impractical, and failed in multiple ways. So I tried looking up the specific claims, but all I could find was that the uniforms did have an internal suspension system, and the winter uniforms were insufficient for Russian winter. Does anyone know enough about Nazi uniforms to address the rest of it? It just seems that, if this were true, it would be more widely known.
For those who don't want to click the link:
Let me give you an example: suspenders. Back in the 1930s, the modern tactical harness hadn’t yet been developed. Instead, soldiers would wear a sturdy pair of leather suspenders in order to help distribute the weight of their ammo belts (which could be substantial - bullets aren’t light!). Hitler didn’t care for that - he thought it would make his troops look like farmers. Instead, he commissioned his uniform designers to come up with a complicated system of internal suspenders that could be worn under the uniform jacket, with metal hooks projecting from special holes near the jacket’s waistline. The idea was that the ammo belt would rest on the hooks, thus allowing it to be supported without disrupting the jacket’s clean lines.
The problem? The system’s designers, being accustomed to crafting for the runway, had completely overlooked that soldiers sometimes need to move quickly. At any pace quicker than a brisk walk, the ammo belt would bounce off of the hooks and slide down the wearer’s torso, often tripping him in the process. Worse, news of the issue didn’t filter back to the high command until the uniforms had already been widely distributed, so it was impossible to fix in an economical fashion. The Nazi troops eventually resorted to wearing external suspenders over the internal suspenders in order to keep their ammo belts in place, thus entirely defeating the purpose.
Then there are the cold-weather jackets, made infamous by the Nazis’ disastrous Winter Campaign against Russia in 1941-1942. At the time, the standard cold-weather jacket in use by most armies consisted of heavy quilted fabric stuffed with torn-up cotton. Hitler didn’t like that at all; in his opinion, it made it look like his troops were wearing blankets. So he had each soldier issued an individually tailored winter jacket made of suit-grade fabric and lined with fur (sourced from civilian clothing seized from death camp inmates, because of course it was).
You can probably guess where this is going. Predictably to anyone who’s not a Nazi fashion designer, the fine fabric of the jackets wasn’t tightly woven enough to stop the wind. The fur, meanwhile, harboured lice and fleas, stank abominably when wet, and was impossible to launder in the field. They’d managed to issue their troops dry clean only winter apparel, in a campaign that would send them far from their supply lines. That the weather ended up killing more Nazis than the Russian army should thus come as no surprise.
And these aren’t outliers. Virtually every element of the Nazi uniform made up for its smart styling by being ridiculously impractical. The officers often had it worst of all; their uniforms were expertly tailored to make their builds look trim and powerful, at the cost of being stuffy, uncomfortable, and difficult to move around it. Indeed, some officers’ uniforms were so smartly tailored that they couldn’t sit down without taking their pants off. Yeah, let that image roll around in your head for a moment or two.
It gets a few details right, but is in the main largely incorrect.
The internal suspension system was impractical, and leather y-straps began to be issued as early as 1940. But the internal suspenders were not a pet project of Hitler's - their use dated from the early 1930s, and were simply a fashion choice made by the Reichswehr. It's not as if they were the only flaw in German load bearing equipment. The entire system was antiquated and somewhat cumbersome; long after the British, American, and Russian militaries had embraced cotton webbing, the Germans continued to use leather belts and ammunition pouches that had been designed in the late 19th century. Besides being weaker than webbing, leather has a nasty tendency to bend, warp, or crack. Because the items worn on the belt were not attached by grommet or snaps, but hung from the belt by straps, a soldier's equipment could become tangled and constricting, especially if he had to crawl or roll about on the ground.
Second, there was no "standard cold-weather jacket" in the early 1940s. The British, Americans, Germans, and Russians continued to issue long wool greatcoats. Padded parkas and overtrousers were indeed worn by Russian troops, but so were greatcoats. German soldiers absolutely did not enter Russia wearing "individually tailored winter jackets." There were clothing drives following the disastrous winter of 1941, when men in woolen greatcoats were exposed to temperatures as low as -40 centigrade, but civilian donated items would always have been in the minority. From the mid-war on, the German military began to issue a variety of parkas and other specialized cold weather gear, but they never came close to replacing the wool greatcoat for general issue.
Third, the German uniforms themselves - the basic wool blouse and trousers - were no more or less impractical than any other jacket and trousers. They couldn't be layered as easily as American clothing, but were somewhat heavier. They were fitted garments, but not constricting. The real issues were twofold: one, they took an absurd amount of time to manufacture, and the designs were continually simplified as the war went on; two, the quality of German wool dropped precipitously as artificial fibers and wood pulp were added in increasing percentages to stretch Germany's limited supply of wool.