Hitler Youth Uniforms: Shirts

Figure 1.--This Hitler Youth wears the summer uniform with black lederhosen, a popular choice for boys involved in outdoor activities.

The standard Hitler Youth brown shirted uniform was based on that of the NAZI Strom Troopers (SA), showing their origin as a junior auxilary of the SA. The SA was much more important in the 1920s when the Hitler Youth were founded than after 1934 when Hitler had SA leader Roem and his associates shot to placate the Army. The Army saw the SA as a potential threat as it was the NAZI Party para-military group, in part a party army. The SA eventually complained that the brown Hitler Youth uniforms made them look like boy scouts. The same brown shirt continued to be worn throughout the 1930s and 40s to the War's end.

Origins

The standard Hitler Youth brown shirted uniform was based on that of the NAZI Strom Troopers/Sturmabteilung (SA), showing their origin as a junior auxilary of the SA. The SA was much more important in the 1920s when the Hitler Youth were founded than after 1934 when Hitler had SA leader Roem and his associates shot to placate the Army. The Army saw the SA as a potential threat as it was the NAZI Party para-military group, in part a party army. The SA eventually complained that the brown Hitler Youth uniforms made them look like boy scouts.

In The Black Corps, historian Robert Lewis Koehl notes that both Rossbach's Storm Troopers and the Schilljugend "were notorious for wearing brown shirts which had been prepared for German colonial troops, acquired from the old Imperial army stores". [Robert Lewis Koehl, The Black Corps: The Structure and Power Struggles of the Nazi SS (Madison Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), p. 19.]

Chronology

Until the NAZIs seized the government in 1933, Hitler Youth uniforming was more informal than after the organization became the only legal uniformed youth group. The same brown shirt continued to be worn throughout the 1930s and 40s to the War's end.

Style

The brown shirts were military styles shirts with epaulettes and two buttoned flap pockets. Long sleeve shirts were the most common, but short sleeves were also worn during the summer.

Hitler Youth Level

I believe that all Jitler Youth levels wore the same shirt style.

Conventions

The Hitler Youth brown short was rarely buttoned. It was normally worn opened necked with a kerchief.