SS Rank Tab

Product Description: This SS Rank Tab is an unissued original. It is made of black wool badge cloth. The front shows slight age and handling wear, with some dust and a very slight amount of soiling that we have made no attempt to clean. 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 cloth. Handling has removed some of the wool nap at the corners, exposing the weave. 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 condition rates as excellent plus.

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 bodyguard 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 widespread 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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