One has to remember that the purpose of most of the armies of most of the countries of the world is not actually fighting wars. Most are used for ceremonial or police purposes. And a big part of being a ceremonial army is getting flashy uniforms and marching up and down the square and saluting El Jefe smartly. And a big part of being a police army is looking sharp so the peasants don’t get any funny ideas. The uniforms are supposed to confer legitimacy.
Against an army that is actually trained to fight wars those types of armies probably won’t do so well.
The Pickelhaube was not, strictly speaking, a helmet. I was made of leather, and had almost no protective value against bullets or shell fragments. It was a eventually replaced with the pragmatic steel helmet. Before that it was no more than a version of a hat or kepi.
Before we go pointing at the Picklehaube, I would point out the ludicrous “Red Pantaloons” of the early WW1 French Army. Not only overly fancy, but were dangerously bright on the battlefield.
I’d say that, when this observation is correct, you’ve generally got the following situation: wealthy militia, overly dependant on old strategy, finds themselves unable to cope with guerilla tactics launched by a bitterly determined group of locals defending their own territory.
So it ain’t the uniforms, it’s what they occasionally represent. In a word: hubris.
It’s not exactly about keeping a clean, overwrought uniform, but the other side of the story was best expressed to me by an ex-Navy friend of mine. I remember what he said so well I can almost quote him verbatim. He was telling me about how barracks life was regulated and regimentalized to the point that the wax on the floors had to be applied to within a very precise distance from the walls, and when someone screwed that up there was going to be trouble.
“But the thing is,” he said, “you apply the wax within four inches of the wall because if you go any closer, you smear wax on the [expletive] walls and [expletive] the [expletive] wall up. If some guy fails to understand that, and continues to [expletive] the [expletive] wall up, he’s a [expletive] [expletive] moron. Now you’ve got two choices. You can kick the [expletive] moron out on his ass, or you can kick the moron’s ass until he learns to do exactly what you tell him to do when you tell him to do it. Do that, and suddenly you’ve turned a [expletive] moron into a sailor. Either way, you can’t have a [expletive] moron who can’t follow directions fueling up an F-14, so you’d better start him off by learning to wax the floors.”
That article merely states that Hugo Boss’ company indeed made SS and Hitler Jugend uniforms using slave labor.
I know for certain that Hitler himself actually sketched out a number of uniform designs, and often demanded final approval over uniforms. I have seen elsewhere, but cannot now verify, that Joseph Goebbels employed all sorts of architectural, fashion, and public relations consulting firms in order to tweak the asthetic image of the NSDAP.
Back to the subject at hand, I think there are two things going on–the uniforms of the upper-echelon officers, and the uniforms of the soldiers themselves.
A lot of fairly famous officers wore uniforms of their own design. Some were thought by many to be veryarrogantassholes, but not universally incompetent. It appears that American generals, at least, were allowed to create their own uniforms up to and through World War II.
The uniforms of soldiers presents a different problem, because until fairly recently there was a tradition whereby officers could outfit their soldiers almost any way they pleased. Often, the uniform would then become traditional. Who do you blame, the officer or the tradition, and does either really speak ill of the soldiers? Just because they wear kilts doesn’t mean I’d happily take on the Black Watch in a game of tiddly winks, much less try to fight them.