Long before camouflage clothing was common, the Waffen-SS was wearing it. While the German army fought most of the war in plain field-grey, the SS ran its own clothing development and issued printed camouflage smocks from 1938 onward — plane-tree, oak-leaf, blurred-edge, and finally the 1944 pea-dot pattern called Erbsenmuster shown here. Many were reversible, a spring-green scheme on one face and autumn browns on the other, turned inside out with the seasons. The smocks gave SS troops a distinctive silhouette and a real concealment edge, and their patterns went on to influence military camouflage design for decades after the war.

Caught mid-stride and shouting, the figure wears the pea-dot smock over field trousers with an MP 40 in hand — the compact submachine gun favored for the close, fast fighting the SS specialized in. Set him with the Waffen SS in Italian Camo to show the two camouflage stories side by side, and with the Waffen SS Advancing with Panzerfaust to build a squad on the move. In a diorama the reversible smock lets you match the figure to the season — green for summer, brown for autumn ground.

W. Britain model 25063. 1/30 scale, matte-painted metal. Single figure — a Waffen-SS soldier in pea-dot camouflage advancing with an MP 40. Boxed.