Description
This is a WWII Dutch Police Tunic / Nederlandse Politie Uniform (1941), consisting of the following items:
- WWII Police Jacket from Amsterdam
- Sidecap with grenade pin
- Black belt and leather shouldercord
The jacket is dated 1941 on the inside on the stitched in label by the “Gemeentelijke Inrichting voor Uniformkleding”. This label also shows the coat of arms/cityweapon of Amsterdam. It also has the number 2340 stamped on it.
The condition of the jacket is typical old, used but not abused. There are some traces of wear and tear, judging from the 1941 date it was probably worn throughout the whole war. The biggest damage i could find was on the back that shows a broken belt hook (easy to replace) and on the inside a few small repairs.
The extremely rare sidecap is also present and is also in worn but good condition. On it is an exploding grenade pin (more on the meaning of that under here). On the inside of the sweatband is a small emblem with red letter “P”, also the initials TP are written on the inside of the sweatband.
Also present is the original black lether belt with shoulderbelt. The condition is “brittle” and dry. It’s easy to put on a mannequin, but has seen better days. It is however mighty rare to find!
This is a very very rare set. We put it on a mannequin torso and it looks amazing. Im not aware of any others for sale and have seen only one other set like this in all my collecting years!
A little background: In the “Westenberg Kazerne” in Schalkhaar was during WWII housed the Police Batallion “Schalkhaar”, it was resurrected in july 1941. The goal was to school Dutch policemen in the ideology of the SS. It’s symbol was that of an exploding bomb (similar to the dutch marechaussee). At the same time the “Gemeentepolitie” (Municipal Police) existed, but in real life both the Gemeentepolitie and Schalkhaar politie acted at the same time and it was in a city like Amsterdam not always clear what and who acted under what umbrella. Anti German policemen were thrown out of the police or even sent to German camps, and the leadership of all the policecorpses was in the hands of national socialists. Even more so was particularly the Amsterdam police in the period of late 1942 onwards forced by the German occupier to widespread collaboration, and was forced to arrest Jewisch people for deportation. At this time policemen that were not in favor of the nazi’s were thrown out of the police and replaced by pro German policemen. This (obviously) gave particularly the Amsterdam police of the period 1941-1945 a bad name, even more so because the largest part of the Jewish population lived in Amsterdam. Some of the lower ranks policemen however just tried to survive, they were not necessarily in favor of the germans but particularly older policemen with children were not in a position to go into hiding and remained to their positions. After the war they were in many cases regarded as traitors, and a fact is that particularly the Amsterdam police was responsible for making the jewish deportations possible.
I included here a black and white photo of a wartime dutch warcriminal named Johan Berendsen, that shows a similar uniform as we offer here for sale in wear (more on him here on wikipedia: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Berendsen), when reading the wiki link one can imagine some of the terrible history behind these uniforms. While the for sale uniform clearly originated as a municipal uniform it has on the sidecap the exploding bomb pin and i believe the owner must have been part of some really bad history during the war.
This is a very rare wartime period Dutch police uniform from Amsterdam, that looks amazing on a good mannequin and could easily be part of a museumdisplay.
A very rare piece of Dutch wartime history!!!!
(The mannequin is only for the photo, it is not included!).
Edit: found another grouppicture of the Amsterdampolice from 1943-1945 and added it too. It shows the same uniforms in wear!
