In all honesty I don't really agree with the idea that the USA should have Wehrmacht ANYTHING - remember, it's Dixie that went Southern Fried Fascist! - and would suggest that it makes more sense to think of the "Coal-scuttle" helmet as only secondarily a visual link to 20th Century Germany; I would argue that it makes more sense to take this helmet, given its similarity to the modern US Army standard, as a strong visual hint that the Timeline 191 United States is looking to the future in a way that the SOUTHERN VICTORY Confederate States of America never quite seems to (consider that, even after the Featherston Administration starts dragging the Confederacy kicking & screaming into the middle 20th Century, the South looks no farther into the future than the next war with the United States).
I've never really gone on at length about my ideas for the Uniforms of the CSA Vs the USA, but here are the highlights:-
-:GREAT WAR
- I'm definitely of the opinion that Confederate Uniforms for this conflict are topped off by a Kepi (although more due to the Kepi's associations with victory in the War of Secession & the Second Mexican War than due to fairly rampant Francophilia); I'd imagine that the French influence on the Confederate States is likely to be more visible in the armoury than on the clothes horse (since France entered the conflict looking more Napoleonic than is strictly comfortable to contemplate), with French influence particularly visible in the field artillery (as mentioned in the text) and aviation elements (the Tredegar rifle may well be influenced by the Lebel 1886 to boot).
While the Confederacy isn't as aggressively backward-looking as the French (they WON their big 19th Century Wars), their uniforms & equipment should have a somewhat old fashioned cut (think of the difference between CS & US uniforms at the start of the Great War as somewhat equivalent to that between Pershing's command on the Mexican Border and the AEF on the Western Front), though not to the point of being impractical for modern warfare.
The USA uniform contains far fewer backward-looking flourishes (they don't have any Great Victories to look back to and have to look forward to future triumphs), which gives them a more "modern" look (by the standards of 1914); as though they were looking ahead to the Second World War but didn't quite realise it. Another idea that I'm fond of is that the USA uses a peaked cap quite similar to that of the British "Tommy" (to help distinguish them from the Confederate Kepi, but also as a way of showing that in this Timeline the American Civil War has reached out to swallow the entire English-Speaking World).
- Both the North & the South still use the Blue = Infantry/Red = Artillery/Gold = Cavalry branch of service colours (although as mentioned elsewhere, at some point the two nations start pointing their chevrons in a different direction - the CSA point down and the USA point up - as a visual joke & useful shorthand). For the record I imagine that US Army sergeants would wear much the same uniform as officers, while CS Army sergeants wear the same uniform as their troopers (to help visually separate Jake Featherston from the officer corps he will come to loathe and eventually surmount, as well as point out the more "Aristocratic" nature of the CSAs officer corp).
- I've toyed with the idea that CS General Staff officers (at least during the First Great War) would wear a grey jacket with their uniform (with "butternut" trousers) to help more closely associate them with the Great generals of the past; I've also toyed with the idea that white would be the branch of service colour for the CS General staff (hence its use by the CS Military Police, who are in some ways HQs representatives on the Front Lines), since this lets me imagine the average Johnny referring to his ultimate superiors as "Lillywhites."
- I like the idea that the CS Army of the Great War is still split between National and State regiments; the cut of their uniforms are functionally identical, but State regiments likely use different buttons, cap badges and so forth (I'm also fond of the idea that while every US Army officer wears "US" on their collar, only officers in CS Regular regiments wear "CS" while State officers use the initials of their homeland - i.e. VA or GA or TX).
- British influences on the CSA should probably be modelled on those elements of weaponry & equipment employed by Imperial Dominions like Canada or Australia & New Zealand (if the British were willing to give it to the Dominions or to Russia, they would probably give it to the Cofederacy).
- US Military Police use red as their identifying colour, their Confederate equivalents use White (for reasons that should be obvious!).
- N.B. Of course uniforms would change over the course of a War, becoming simpler and somewhat rougher (as spares run out on the Confederate side one would probably see forces on less important fronts being obliged to use elements of civilian wear).
-:BETWEEN THE WARS
- For some reason one imagines the US & CS Armies more closely resembling each other during this period (at least in terms of uniform), the Confederacy electing to apply an "If you can't beat them, copy them" mentality (attempting to work out what allowed the US to beat them - besides overwhelming manpower & material superiority - attempting to copy that and then improve on it to the point where they could hope to beat the Yankees at their own game).
- One definitely imagines the Confederate Army would be much shrunken after the Armistice; it seems highly likely that the General Staff would make a point of finally subordinating State Regiments to the Central Government (creating a single fully-Nationalised Army for the first time in Southern History); any lingering differences in Uniform between regiments would likely be swept away in the process (though a smaller army means that the South can better afford to equip everyone to the highest standard the Armistice allows).
- Having won the Great War and thoroughly vivified its confidence, it seems highly likely that whatever Germanic influences the North adopted would likely be retired during this period (for the record I doubt the USA would have gone Full Prussian at any point); given this is a period of relative retrenchment under various Socialist Administrations, it seems unlikely there would be major changes to Uniforms & personal equipment (though the North would likely do its best to keep up with major advances in aircraft & warships).
One idea to keep in mind is that the US Army spends the entire inter war period focussing on partizans and a North American continent where all the local opposition has been cut down to size under conventions imposed following the Armistice; I'd expect it to be somewhat left behind by the US Navy, Us Air Corps and the USMC (which are the branches of service most likely to be launched against First-Rank opponents overseas and would, of course, receive whatever investments might be made during the Pacific War).
- One idea that isn't more relevant to any single Great War/American Empire/Settling Accounts period than it is to all the others is the thought that, while the CSA happily uses a campaign hat with the "Lime Juicer" peak (think Smokey the Bear or a Canadian Mountie) the USA prefers the "Carlsbad Crease" (think Col. Kilgore from APOCALYPSE NOW); this is a purely artificial conceit, as it helps set the US campaign hat apart from its Southern equivalent (all the better to prevent Yankee soldiers from looking like a Canadian or a Southern Sheriff!).
-:SECOND GREAT WAR
- Another idea to help set the CSA apart from the USA visually concerns camouflage patterns; my idea is that the North & South never use colours associated with their rival as principal colours - so US camouflage patterns only use the very smallest elements of grey & khaki, while Southern camouflage seldom uses large areas of Blue or Green (one imagines that the Confederate equivalent to the Fleet Air Arm would paint their warbirds grey, rather than blue).
- By the Second Great War Featherston has doubtless applied his levelling instincts to Army fashions; it seems likely that every Confederate soldier wears much the same uniform (at least in the field). Suggest still using the Kepi to indicate which elements within the army (mostly the Generals) are still the least assimilated to the Freedom Party way of doing things? The rest of the army might well use a floppier "patrol cap" as their standard headwear.
- One last idea; at the very start of the Second Great War, the US Army should look as though it has been treading water through much of the Inter-War period; not hopelessly out of date, more like a service that has done JUST ENOUGH to get ready and not much more (if the US Army of the Great War seemed to be looking forward to the Second World War, the US Army of the Second Great War looks as though it isn't enjoying the Big One now that its here).
The Confederate Army, on the other hand, should look like a service whose time has come; this is their Big Break, rather than a major distraction from the Hard Work of keeping North America under wraps.
Please pardon my ideas for being more general and less specific; the last thought I wish to leave you with is that while we should make sure both sides evidence a strong sense of American elements from Our Timeline mixed in with more foreign designs, we should be careful about which foreign influences we should pull in (for example I don't really agree with the idea we should borrow from the Soviet Union for the 2GW* United States, as I would argue that the parallels between the USA & the West European democracies at the start of WWII are far stronger - especially with the French Republic, suffering less from top-down purges and more from bottom-up malaise).
I am especially inclined to think that using WWII Germans a model for the 2GW US Army is contra-indicated, given that the Third Reich became what it did because it LOST a war and the US Army suffered from the problems of Victory rather than defeat (and also because Germany & the US drifted apart between the Wars, implying that any teutonic influence on American designs would be much weaker later in the first half of the 20th Century).
*2GW = Second Great War (this explanation may well be redundant, one merely wished it to be available as a courtesy).
