SS BeVo Rank Tab

Product Description: This SS BeVo Rank Tab is a rare and unissued original that you rarely encounter. Very hard to find ‘BeVo’-style Waffen-SS rank tab to be placed on the left side of the collar. Finding a normal right-side SS-Rune tab is still commonly easy today, as these were found in large stacks in Germany in 1945 by American GI’s and taken back as souvenirs, but none of them actually took the blank matching rank tabs home, hence these are actually much rarer than any SS rune tab. A piece that is missing in many collections – and/or missing to complete a restoration! There are no holes, and no evidence of ever having been stitched to anything. The reverse of this SS Rank Tab shows the folded edges of the badge beVo cloth. Handling has removed some of the wool nap at the corners and on the front, exposing the weave and the glue from the inside. The wool is folded around a textbook stiffener made of a typical lacquered cheesecloth type material. There is no indication of any rank pip or braid ever having been applied. This collar tab would be a great companion to a runic tab, and also displays nicely on its own as a piece of Waffen-SS rank insignia. The SS BeVo Rank Tab is in excellent plus condition.

Historical Description: Regulations for the SS Collar Tab went through quite an evolution in just a short 16 year period. The first SS Collar Tabs were introduced in 1929 by Heinrich Himmler as part of the newly introduced SS uniform code. Initially, tabs were worn by both lower rank SS men and their senior leaders. Lower ranks would wear a rank tab as well as a numbered unit identification tab, with senior leaders wearing their rank tabs on both collars. In 1933 the well known “SS” runic tab was adopted by Hitler’s personal body guard detachment, the “Leibstandarte” or “LAH”. The LAH used this runic tab in lieu of the numerical unit identification tab to identify them as members of the elite unit protecting the “Führer”. In 1934 the runic “SS” tabs were again adopted for use by the early “SS-VT” units. This adoption eventually led to the wide spread use of SS runic tabs by German Divisions; the later non-German volunteer units would not be permitted to wear the runes, and bore their own unit designed patch instead. SS Collar tabs can be found in an extraordinary variety of numbers, designs, and pipings depending on unit and rank, from hand-embroidered tabs worn by officers to mass produced embroidered and machine woven types that were used on combat uniforms.

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