Our stock of WWII German Army uniforms covers most types of uniforms and equipment used by infantry, artillery, armored crew, and special forces. We have a range cross section and regiments ready to hire.
However, with due notice, we are ready to prepare our uniforms to order with any specific regiment or body insignia as needed. All of our uniforms can be provided as a basic uniform or with the inclusion of appropriate straps and equipment from our in-house prop store, we can provide a uniform in full combat order. We can also offer accompanying weapons such as pistols, bayonets and knives from our internal armory. Full details on request.
For Hosenfeld, the Nazis were a small gang of criminals who did not represent the German people as a whole. He continued to perform his duties not for them, but for Germany, to preserve him from Bolshevism. Many other officers probably felt the same way. In July 1943, for example, General Heinrici was concerned that Germany was in danger of losing the war. It was, he wrote, as if to reinforce his own commitment to continue the fight, 'of course there should be no defeat in this war, since what would come next cannot even be thought of. Germany would sink, and ourselves with it.
There is little evidence to suggest that Nazi ideology spread through the army to fill a void left by the disintegration of military values and the basic loyalty of men to each other as "comrades". The relative homogeneity of each division in most respects meant that the allegiances of the primary group remained intact within the division for most of the war. It was not so much the disintegration of such loyalties as their persistence, into a mix of seasoned and increasingly cynical and brutalized veterans with a direct current and, from early 1943, of ideologically deeply nazified young men who formed the basis of barbaric behavior . from the war of the German troops in the east. Even in times of great loss, such as the end of 1941 and the beginning of 1942, the social cohesion of the companies of the 253rd Infantry Division was damaged but not destroyed, and with the return of the convalescent soldiers and the arrival of New recruits were soon reinstated. These were groups of men united by ties of mutual loyalty forged in the heat of battle.
Even when, as they did more and more after Stalingrad, they began to doubt if victory could ever be achieved, they continued to fight for a feeling of camaraderie and mutual support in adversity. Here they could create emotional bonds in small groups that would provide a substitute, at least to some extent, for the families they had left home, caring for the wounded, decorating their bunkers and homes, and, like the troops who invested so much emotional capital into the Christmas celebration in Stalingrad, providing some kind of meaning to life amidst the folly of war. Here, in another way, perhaps, was the national organic community, the Volksgemeinschaft, in miniature; and, consequently, the aggressive masculinity of all the soldiers was directed outward, toward the enemy, and toward a population that, at least in the east, they considered racially inferior, in fact barely human.
The men also continued to fight out of sheer fear: fear of what would happen to them if they surrendered to the enemy, fear of their superiors if they showed signs of weakness. The armed forces had their own martial courts, which were freely used by the officers of the three services to prosecute crimes ranging from the theft of food packages sent to the tent at one end to the desertion of colors at the other . Any of these crimes could lead the offender to a firing squad. Numerous prosecutions were filed for the loosely defined crime of "undermining military force" (Wehrkraftzersetzung), which could include anything from defeatist statements to self-mutilation in hopes of being invalidated; and, as in civilian life, criticism of the regime and its leaders was also a criminal offense. Conversely, as we have seen, there were relatively few prosecutions for crimes against the civilian population in the occupied areas, such as looting, rape or murder, and shooting captured enemy soldiers instead of taking them prisoner was widely tolerated, especially in initial stages of Operation Barbarossa.