What is the origin of the lake tank image that has become a meme? (2021)

Germans pioneers wore white uniforms? That sounds like the worst possible colour for digging ditches, recovering tanks or camouflage (if it isn't snowing). Why would they do that? Did Hugo Boss do the design?

Edit: ops, that joke wasn’t clear.

A prisoner’s uniform needs to be cheap, distinctive, and easy to spot it doesn’t need to be clean.

If the person were a prisoner he wouldn't be carrying a rifle..

From the link, the white pants are part of the "Drillich" work uniform. From searching around, these were intended as work uniforms / overalls. You were intended to wear these (there were both pants and jackets) over your actual uniform, and these would take the abuse.

It seems like the early war patterns were simply undyed. Mid-war versions were apparently dyed darker.

Here's a forum with a bunch of pictures of examples: https://www.militariacollectors.network/forums/topic/4042-th...

Undyed coveralls makes sense, thanks.

Thus the joke…

It’s a play on words, and the involuntary nature of service in the German military at the time.

For some value of 'joke'.

Fair, but it’s a meme thread. My initial thought was.

Pioneer: O panzer of the lake, why are our uniforms white? Panther: They must be easy to spot.

But, I tried to reach past the pun and failed.

> Did Hugo Boss do the design?

I'm not saying that you're saying that, but there is a persistent meme that Hugo Boss designed the Nazi officer uniforms, or maybe is was the SS, or it was the whole Wehrmacht. This lends a certain mystique to the Nazis and cements the notion that they were somehow extra sharp. Aesthetic forbidden fruit. I don't like that, not in the least because it's not correct. The uniforms for all the Nazi arms of the state were designed by party insiders. Boss didn't even start designing men's tailored suits until after the war.

This is not to exculpate Hugo Boss, but to knock the shine of fancy suits off of the nazis. Hugo Boss had been selling ready made menswear since 1923, joined the nazi party in 1931, and won contracts to produce the uniforms much the way FEDS Apparel makes the USDA branded polo shirts [1]. In fact, he produced the uniforms using slave labor. He's guilty as sin.

someone with better citations saying the same thing with more details seven years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/78ho4c/comme...

[1] think of these dorky (no offense to the dorks who keep our milk free of pathogens) polos or windbreakers when you think of the nazi uniforms https://www.fedsapparel.com/collections/us-department-of-agr...

German Army had 1.3 million conscripts and 2.4 million volunteers in the period 1935-1939 so odds are he signed up to be there.

Those numbers aren’t independent of each other. People about to be drafted will often volunteer to be in a military as a volunteer rather than a draftee, to get the waiting over with, etc.

I thought Hugo Boss designed Nazi uniforms. Apparently not. As you say, he just made them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Boss_(businessman)

Post WW II the Panzer IV's were offloaded to the Middle East. But it competed well with its Soviet T-34.

At first it looked like Czech military fatigue but the confluence of two rivers points to Germany.

> The man is an unnamed German pioneer likely at the time of recovery.