Czech CAMO Patterns

There is significant evidence to suggest that machinery for printing camouflage fabric had been moved to Czechoslovakia during the later stages of the Second World War, where it continued to produce material for the German war effort. These machines appear to have produced some of the earliest camouflage patterns worn by the new Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia. In the 1950s, however, Czech innovators began breaking away from the German and Italian designs and introduced some very colorful camouflage patterns seemingly designed for use in specific terrain or perhaps even during certain seasons. Then in 1963, the Czech Army can be said to have fallen victim to the drab trends of the Warsaw Pact, adopting a "rain" pattern design barely distinguishable at a distance as anything but a solid color. A plain khaki uniform was also introduced in 1975, but by the mid-1980s experiments with new camouflage designs began anew, producing a "leaf" pattern based on the US M1948 ERDL, and a two-color desert pattern. Never officially adopted for the Czechoslovak Army, on January 1st, 1993 the country was peacefully divided into two states, Slovakia and Czech Republic, and both of these nations later went on to adopt the new camouflage designs for their standard combat uniform.