A jackboot is a military boot such as the cavalry jackboot or the hobnailed jackboot. The jackboot has a different design and function from the former type. It is a combat boot designed for marching. It rises to mid-calf or higher without laces and sometimes has a leather sole with hobnails. Jackboots have been associated popularly with totalitarianism, since they were worn by German forces in the run-up to and during World War II.
Cavalry jackboot
The term originally denoted tall ‘winged’ leather
, which were reinforced against sword blows by use of
chain mail sewn into the lining of the leather. The ‘wings’ (backward projections) on these high boots particularly protected a rider's knee-joint from a sword blow. These boots are still worn and still so termed by the Household Cavalry regiment of the
British Army, initiated during the 17th century. The term originates from the French word
jaque meaning ‘coat of mail’.
[ Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English][ Chambers's Etymological Dictionary of the English Language][ jaque in the Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).] These boots were made very heavy by the mail reinforcement but are slightly less heavy nowadays because modern materials are used as stiffeners. There are now few manufacturers of cavalry jackboots, the most famous being Schnieder Boots
[ Schnieder Boots website] of
Mayfair,
London, the official supplier to His Majesty the King's Household Cavalry.
[ Schnieder Boots website]
Hobnailed jackboot
The second meaning of the term is derived from the first, with reference to their toughness, but is unrelated in design and function, being a
combat boot designed for marching, rising to at least mid-calf, with no laces, sometimes a leather sole with
, and heel irons.
[ dress Colonial America - Britannica Online Encyclopedia][ Shoes: their history in words and pictures By Charlotte Yue, David Yue , p. 43] The Germans term this boot
Marschstiefel, meaning "marching boot". This is the classic boot used by the German infantry during World War I, though the stormtroopers dispensed with them in favor of laced boots of a type then used by Austro-Hungarian mountain troops.
[Gudmundsson, Bruce, Stormtroop Tactics: Innovation in the German Army, 1914–1918, (New York: Praeger Publishing, 1989), 51] An etymological source not derived from the cavalry jackboot has been suggested as from the word jack, jacket or jerkin, as a common garment worn by the peasantry.
["Jack", 11th Edition of Encyclopædia Britannica]
As a metaphor
Totalitarianism
The boots are associated popularly with
fascism, particularly
Nazism, as they were worn by the
Sturmabteilung and later the field forces of the
Wehrmacht and
Waffen-SS as part of the World War II German uniform before and even after Germany experienced leather shortages. When
goose step on pavement, the large columns of German soldiers in
Marschstiefel ("marching boots") created a distinct rock-crushing sound which came to symbolize German conquest and occupation. A similar style of boot had been in use with German armies for World War I, the Franco-Prussian War, and before.
Jackboots were also associated with the armies of the former USSR (called sapogi) and East Germany. Jackboots are still a part of the modern parade and service attire of the armies of Russia and some other states.
The word is used often in English as a metonym and a synecdoche for totalitarianism, particularly fascism.
In the United States in October 1993, the National Rifle Association (NRA) published a four-page advertisement in the center of its magazine American Rifleman, the first page of which showed goose step, jackbooted legs under the question, "What's the First Step to a Police State?"
See also
