Dressing the Reich: The Fear and Elegance in Nazi Uniforms

Abstract

Germany was a nation both clad and obsessed with the uniform. Brian L. Davis, a uniform historian describes 240 different uniforms from the time of the Third Reich era. From coal miners, to Post Office employees, all the way up the Nazi hierarchy to Adolf Hitler himself, every man in the Reich had a uniform, in an “appeal to male vanity.”1 Bernhard Teicher, in his memoir, writes of his time as a young soldier in Nazi Germany, “Of course, we were issued uniforms (ideally everybody in the Nazi ​Reich​ should have worn a uniform!).”2 The Nazi Party’s desire for uniformity of thought and support extended directly to the propagandistic powers of the clothes that bore the Nazi insignia on the backs the German citizenry. True to its latin root ‘uni,’ the uniform served as a unifier in Nazi Germany.