Docm30 said:
Just look at the caps shown
here. They're all photographed under the same conditions and the colour varies significantly. I've seen quite a few surviving uniforms and they range from straight grey to very green to brown. Sometimes they even have a slight blue tinge.
Skot the Sanguine said:
Docm30 said:
It's just that almost every illustration I've ever seen shows the post-1916 Germans in bluish grey trousers.
Knötel, for example. That example was done by an artist working in 1930's Germany who probably had access to official documents and surviving examples.
Also, judging by the huge variations in Feldgrau, we may both be saying the same thing. It may have just been that the Feldgrau used for trousers was of the bluish sort, as opposed to the brown or green kinds.
...Knötel might have liked the way the stone grey trousers looked and preferred to illustrate German soldiers in them.
That's just not something respected military illustrators do. They make errors based on lack of knowledge or misinformation, but to suggest they make inaccuracies intentionally is pretty baseless unless you can prove otherwise.
On your first point, these are examples of original uniforms photographed recently. One of the comments I made before was that fading can occur and it is hard to say for certain the divergence in coloring presently was so 90 years ago when they were all new examples. Some might have been displayed in sunlight for many years while others stored away, so we can't make the assumption the coloring variety of them now reflects the period. Bluehawk's quote saying "Different batches of dye, and the varied amount of wear meant that there was soon a large variety of shades of Feldgrau" is more compelling.
Regarding the second point, I didn't say it was an intentional misleading. What I said is that he might have chosen his preferred types to paint. The Feldgrau and Stone Grey might have both been common and correct to depict, so if he preferred one over the other he might have chosen to depict them more.
As for your conclusion to Bluehawk's information, namely that the trousers shouldn't be Feldgrau in the mod, I think that is quite poor. He said point blank that they were issued starting in 1907 and it was only in August 1914 that Stone Grey trousers were introduced. What this means is that by the start of the war, in the same month, virtually all regular army soldiers had Feldgrau trousers as well as reservists. Those who enlisted at the outbreak or who were issued depot uniforms around then may have received Stone Grey trousers...but they would have been the minority. The quote goes on to say "on September 21 1915, by Army order, the Steingrau trousers were authorized for wear with both the field uniform", which honestly doesn't make sense (the last part, "both the field uniform"). However, if it means that by September 1915 it became standard issue, then fine. Yet, it also says by late 1917 this was recanted.
So, what this means is that throughout the period of Stone Grey trousers being the standard, there still would have been plenty of Feldgray trousers in circulation. If you question how I come to this conclusion, simply sit down and look through numerous photographs of the 1916 and 1917 period and you will see that the Germans have a variety of tunics. The relevance of this is that if the same logic you apply to Stone Grey trousers being the official type between late 1915-late 1917 meaning there should be no Feldgrau trousers in the mod, then the fact that the M1915 Tunic being the standard from late 1915 to early 1916 onward would also equate that neither the M1910 or M1910 Simplified tunics should be in the mod. However, looking through photographs of the period one sees that the M1910 and M1910 Simplified tunics were still VERY common throughout the war...and similarly so would Feldgrau trousers, even in the late 1915-late 1917 period of the Stone Grey being standard.
So, my conclusion is that both should be represented (including piped and unpiped). The ratio will be harder to guess, but probably 60% 40%. Piping would go from a high % at the start of the war and decrease with time, becoming the minority probably by 1916...but that is a guess right now.
