‘Wie der vater, so de sohn’(Like father, like son)

By the nineteenth century, it had been a custom for German families to take long leisurely walks in parks and public promenades on Sundays and holidays: the mother and father leading in their formal attire accompanied by children behind, dressed in their “Sunday best”.  Many German boys not only wanted to play like soldiers with other kids, but to also dress like their fathers if they were in the military. Those men who were in service would often wear their dress uniforms displaying branch of service, specialties and rank. Being proud of both their sons and their own military standing in the community, German soldiers wanted to encourage the boys’ enthusiasm for the military traditions, and did so by acquiring toy weapons and play uniforms for the children’s use. Down-sized tunics and accoutrements were bought or made so that boys could wear them alongside their parents in public or at play. The Kaisers’ Germany, with its variety of officers’ and enlisted men’s uniforms for calvary, guards, specialty units, the fledgling air corps and seasoned naval services, saw many soldiers’ sons attired in beautifully made miniature replicas of their fathers’ resplendent dress coats, caps and swords. For those families that could afford it, tailor shops created high quality children’s uniforms that were exact copies of those worn by adults, made to meet the boys’ smaller frames. In other families, homemade uniforms, equally cherished by the children wearing them, were often lovingly stitched together using more humble materials, and lacking the details offered in professionally made pieces. Childs’ miniature swords and daggers were another area that saw vast differences in quality and construction. Some blades were crudely made representations of full-sized weapons, while others were crafted by actual swordsmiths, being forged and detailed to look like exact, but smaller versions of the adult weapons. In addition to uniforms and blades, down-sized copies were made of visor caps, helmets, belts, buckles and accessories.  Following Imperial Germany’s abysmal defeat in the First World War and the creation of the ill-conceived Weimar republic, fewer children continued to wear play military uniforms on playgrounds or in public. This was due in part to the crushing economic depression that affected all Germans, reducing many families to subsistence living, and the drastic reduction of active soldiers serving in what remained of the Imperial armed forces.

Children’s war playing and the historic admiration of German soldiers found a new foothold when Adolf Hitler and the “Nationalsozialistische Deutscher Arbeiterpartei” came into power in 1933. The German population then adopted an extreme reverence for anything connected to the military and the men who made up the armed forces of the Reich. Sons of soldiers, too young for the “Deutsches Jung Volk” (the junior branch of the Hitler Youth) revived the traditions of dressing like their fathers, now proud again of the adults’ military roles. In addition to children of soldier fathers, youngsters of the “Sturmabteilung” (SA- stormtroopers) members, or other paramilitary and civil organizations wore copies of the groups’ uniforms, either as admiring sons following their fathers, or as mascots for the Nazi political units.

In the later stages of the National Socialists’ reign, as Hitler’s aggressive campaigns failed, turning the tides of war against Germany, war playing times became all too “real” for many children. Millions of fathers and brothers did not return from the growing fronts, and the devastation of the German homeland destroyed much of the childhood ideals concerning the glories of battle.  

After the total defeat of Hitler’s dictatorship and the division and occupation of Germany, the “Bundeswehr” (Germany’s armed forces later organized, and relegated to a minimal home land defensive force) no longer held the same public significance as the German forces that had preceded it. Along with this decreased emphasis on militarism, the wearing of children’s uniforms became far less popular in the revitalized country, wanting to distance itself from its dark past and humiliating defeat. Once part of a long tradition that was then deemed obsolete, children’s military uniforms became just another (albeit lesser) victim of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. 

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