Hitler Youth Uniform Garments: Winter Jackets

Figure 1.--This boy looks to be a DJ about to become a HJ boy. We wears the drk wool witer jacket. Botice the plain brass buttons, the pointed collars. and the tab closure at the collar.

The DJ and HJ had a dark jacket worn as part of a winter uniform. They may hve been also worn on chilly Spring and Fall days, but as agroup the leader would have mae the decision. We are not sure just when the jackets were adopted by the HJ. We note different styles, but all were short jackets. The principal style was a short jacket wotn to waist level. This was similar to Eisenhower jackets, ejust a touch longer. We are not yet sure about the sailor styles. It was also short, but we are not yet sure about the precise length. As these jackets are dark and the pants were dark, it is often difficult to make out jacket featurws. We are also not yet sure if they were black or navy blue. This may have depended on the style. We believe that they were heavy wool jackets. We do not have much information on these jackets, but there seem to have been different styles. We note some that had a pointed collar and a kind of tab at the collar. Others had some sailor features. We are still working on features such as buttons and epaulttes, but will gradually work this out as we acquire more images. Some of the jackets seem to have plain brass buttons to both close the jacket and on pocket flaps as well as the tab neck closures. We don't see epuletes on the jacket here (figure 1). The boys wore these jackets over their regular uniforms. The same shirt and short pants were worn both during the summer and winter. Some boys wore ski-pants or long pants instead of shorts with the winter jacket. We think these jackets were only for the boys. We see both Deutsche Jugend (Pimpf) boys and the older Hitler Jugend boys wearing them and as far as we know there were no differences in the styles worn. Notice the boy is wearing his leter belt strap over his jacket rather than over the shirt.