Hitler Youth Uniforms: DJ Rune Patch--The Patch

Figure 1.--Here is the actual brown square/diamond ptch with the colored circle and rune. This one is red, but there were other colors. The brown patch blended into the brown shirt givibng the impression of a round patch. Put your curor on the imge to see the back and an original label.

We notice DJ boys wearing what we thought was a oval runic lighting bolt patch. It was called a 'sieg rune', meaning a victory rune. It was actually round, at leat the colored pat. The rune and round colored circle was actually on a brown square or diamond patch. The brown aa around the colored circke and rune is called selvedge. It is this brown selvedge thaT helps blend the patch into the sleeve.". We always saw the symbol as meaning a lighting bolt, but is twas done in the style of the rune for "s" meaning sieg or victory. This was a very popular image in NAZI German. The SS of course adoptef the double fune patch as its symbol. The diamond shaped rune was sewn on the sleeve. The patches were all manufactured initially as a square. They look like a circle because the brown square was done in the same color as the boys' brown HJ shirt and thus it is usually not apparent in the availavle photographs. The square was stood on its corner to form the diamond and give the rune its correct vertical look. Here some mothers did not get it exactly correct. The color of the brown shirts varied somewhat (through manufacturing and washing) so sometimes the diamond patch can be seen, but usually it just looks kije a round patch in available photographs. A reader writes, some of the patches match the shirts very well. I guess as time went by the cloth on which the runes were embroidered would have varied in shade. I have seen one boy with a patch that had the selvedge folded under to form a circle. I'm not sure why this was sone. It must have been more complicated then just sewing the patch on. I can only imagine this was done becausecthe