A 1929 brochure for an NSDAP rally features a cartoon with the caption “… nur beim Zeugmeister!” (23). A short fat businessman in a bowler hat and in a subservient pose offers a knock-off brown shirt to a tall, dapper Stormtrooper in uniform towering over him. The text under the picture as well as the averted gaze of the SA man signal an unequivocal rejection. The message is clear: The attendees of the rally, in fact every SA member, should strive to acquire an authentic brown shirt from one of the officially licensed procurement centers (Reichszeugmeisterei) set up by the party in different German cities, and not settle for a cheaper imitation. In other words, the brown shirt, its authenticity, and its proper marketing were quite a serious matter for the Nazi leadership and significant resources were spent, including print advertisements like this one, in order to ensure compliance.
This cartoon, reproduced in The Honor Dress of the Movement points to just one of the multiple aspects of the brown shirt's history in the 1920s and early 1930s that Torsten Homberger reconstructs. This book constitutes a comprehensive, excellently documented account of the political, tactical, pragmatic, and cultural roles the Nazi Party uniform played in advancing the fascist movement during the Weimar Republic. Homberger's argument emphasizes the complexity and dynamism of the paramilitary uniform's functions. As it evolved during the 1920s, the uniform served purposes that at times could appear even contradictory: it was meant to discipline and create a sense of unity; to recruit potential followers and impress the public at large and voters with the message of orderliness, stability, and neatness; to intimidate rival political formations; or even to protect from injury during “clash violence.” In other words, the uniform as an emblematic piece of material culture complemented in important ways the power of ideology in making Nazis out of Germans in the course of one decade.
Chapter 1 sketches out the contours of the radicalized political landscape in Germany in the aftermath of World War I. The tumultuous years of the Weimar Republic abounded with paramilitary formations: from the populous veterans’ organization Stahlhelm to the prodemocratic Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold to the communist Roter Frontkämpferbund, to name just the largest ones. All of them participated in belligerent public spectacles (marches, parades, and other ceremonies), wore uniforms, and displayed prominently the symbols that represented their ideology. Their uniforms, in particular, shared design features borrowed from the German Imperial Army as well as the British colonial forces. For example, they all used a Sam Browne belt, a military accessory that became fashionable outside of Great Britain and whose functions – like those of many other sartorial details on the uniforms – the author describes with utmost precision. The Stormtroopers started as a militant political organization in 1921 and resembled their rivals in many ways. After this overview of context, chapter 2 delves into the history of the gradual transformation of the brown shirt into a signature element of the Nazi Stormtroopers’ uniform. The author points out the specific dynamism of this process – the grassroots contributions to that image, the crucial interventions of various Nazi leaders, the variability and flexibility of the other elements (caps, breeches, boots, etc.) in accordance with regional traditions and the financial means of members. At the same time, Homberger emphasizes the centrality of the shirt for the positive self-image not only of the individual wearers but also the movement as a whole. Its specific cut – short torso, longer sleeves, belt hooks on the lower edge of the shirt, and other unique design elements – made the SA men appear taller, slimmer, and more attractive.
Chapters 3-5 shed light on the mechanisms of distribution of the uniforms (advertisements and retail) and their logistical role in the Stormtroopers’ militarization as well as professionalization in the late 1920s. By 1932, the ever-expanding paramilitary organization started looking more coherent and like a professional army, which is in part due to the fact that all newly produced uniforms matched in hue; and if earlier the footwear and trousers varied in color and cut, after 1932 all SA men wore the same uniform above and below the waist.
Throughout, the author marshals evidence from a rich array of archival documents. The book includes impressive visual material and detailed descriptions of the actual uniforms that Homberger has found preserved at the German Historical Museum in Berlin. While the descriptions of garments employ painstakingly precise language, some of the analyses surprise with the somewhat undifferentiated use of terms such as “masculine,” “sportive,” or “conservative” in the context of Weimar fashion. It appears that the author takes the stability of these categories for granted, while in reality fashion – for men as well as women – witnessed the most dynamic and diverse developments in this decade. The multiple connotations surrounding these terms can be easily verified by a quick look into the popular and fashion press, including many magazines about men's fashion, which proliferated in Weimar Germany.
The book's final section consists of two chapters that are quite different in structure from the earlier chapters and from each other. Chapter 6 ventures into the period immediately after January 1933, when the Nazis started creating the “mythology” about the origins and rise of the movement in the previous decade. The author recounts the content of three propaganda films and some books set in the late years of the Weimar Republic that feature young uniformed Stormtroopers at the center of the heroic narratives. (It is not clear, though, why Homberger subsumes the films under the term “trilogy,” since they were produced by three different studios, directed by three different filmmakers, and had quite dissimilar reception histories.) Hans Westmar, Einer von Vielen. Ein deutschs Schicksal aus dem Jahre 1929 – a fiction movie based on the life of Horst Wessel – was released in December 1933, after the initial version was rejected by the censors and personally by Joseph Goebbels earlier in the year. Of the three, Hitlerjunge Quex. Ein Film vom Opfergeist der deutschen Jugend – an UFA production directed by Hans Steinhoff which premiered in September 1933 – was by far the most cinematically sophisticated and effective as a propaganda piece. The SA-Mann Brand, discussed last in this chapter, was actually the first and most straightforward propaganda film to be produced after January 1933 (released in June 1933 by Bavaria Film) and became notorious for its vicious anticommunist stance.
The concluding chapter 7 revisits all the preceding themes within a case study about the rise of the SA in Hamburg between 1921 and 1933. It is longest chapter in the book and relies – in addition to known historical sources – on the unpublished memoirs by one of Hamburg's highest-ranked SA officers, Alfred Conn, as well as Hamburg-based archives and periodicals. Ultimately, its engaging narrative serves as another, more contextualized confirmation of the monograph's central contention that the study of ideology alone cannot account for the SA men's “positive dual image” (181). It is namely through the exploration of the cultural history of the SA uniform that we can fully understand the mechanism though which the brownshirts acquired their public image of being simultaneously fearless, ruthless fighters and cultured agents of order.
