The hairiest army of the world!


On February 8, 1971, West German Federal Defense Minister Helmut Schmidt...



... issues the so-called "hairnet decree" for the Bundeswehr.

In the course of the 1960s, long hair hairstyles had become common among young men...:



As recently as 1967, a hair decree expressly prohibited soldiers from “wearing a hairstyle that is shoulder-length or otherwise appeared feminine”.

This requirement met with rejection, particularly among those doing basic military service...:





Since then, the Bundeswehr has led a fight - hopeless from the start - against the long hair styles of its conscripts, who in every conceivable way undercut the actually prescribed trip to the hairdresser.

With the "Hairnet Decree" the military bureaucracy finally capitulates!

Now you can officially wear long hair as a soldier, provided it is stowed in a hairnet and - as the decree says - "does not get in the way of the performance of official duties", which made the Bundeswehr the hairiest army of the world almost overnight!









The conscripts don't have to buy the new hairnets themselves, they are provided by the state along with the rest of the equipment!

And with foresight, which is how German military bureaucracy is, the Bundeswehr equipped itself with 740,000 camouflage-colored hairnets, which would have been enough for two armies!

It's funny-those young men thought they were setting themselves apart from their parents' culture, against The Establishment. But their long hair was really a throwback to the old Teutonic tribes. The Bundeswehr could have played on that, and brought back braiding, or styles like the Schwabenknoten, as a sign of the fighting spirit of the Bund. They could have made "Teutoburg!" a battle cry.

Prost!
Brad

This permission for long hair among the conscripts was shortlived. When I entered service in 1983 nobody left the barracks for the weekend back home with a haircut like this and guess how we looked... The surplus hairnets were distributed to reserve units drafted for short term exercises and of course back then the hippies in uniform were issued more than one sample per soldier as a matter of hygiene. The foresight of logistics was back then without doubt smarter than today and the politicians in charge likewise.

This knot Not good to wear a helmet...

Cheers

Nah.,. Not a chance.

The Netherlands Army allowed long hair from the late sixties, and we didn't have to wear it in a hairnet either.
Smoking recreational tobacco was allowed, as long as we didn't do it to openly. We had a smoking room in our barracks...

We also had a union, I kid you not...

To this day, I still don't know what use we would have been, had we ever had to go to war.