Figure 1.-- Boys before World War II and just after the War commonly wore H-bar shorts. The boy here in the 1950s was from Slovakia which at the time was still part of Czechoslovakia.

The style appears to have been most common in central Europe. We have received very little from the Czech Republic and Slovakia and thus we have very few actual images at this time. A HBC reader reports, however, that H-bar pants were more common in Czechoslovakia than in Germany. As far as we know, H-bar pants were wornnin both the Czech and Slovakian areas of Czechoslovakia. We are not sure why this style was so common in Czechoslovakia. School photograpgs very commonly show some of the younger boys wearing H-bar pants. This is of course a good indicator that it was a commonly worn style. Boys before World War II and just after the War commonly wore H-bar shorts. The boy here in the 1950s was from Slovakia which at the time was still part of Czechoslovakia. By the 1960s H-bar longs were becoming less common. We still see boys wear H-bar pants in the early 1960s. An example is a Hodejice school in the early 1960s. After the mid-60s, H-bar pants become much less common. Available school photographs are a good reflection of these trends.