SS-VT Officer’s Overseas Cap

Product Description: This SS-VT Officer’s Overseas Cap is an outstanding and very desirable example. It’s made of a typical, pre-war style, early feldgrau wool. There are no holes, only some areas of very light moth tracking to the wool nap. The front of the cap features a nice original SS button, which appears to be originally applied. The button is made of aluminum, with a Totenkopf emblem, and is marked on the reverse with the maker code “1194/40.” It shows only slight wear. The eagle insignia on the side of the cap was removed at some point in the past, but evidence of it can clearly be seen in the form of stitch holes on the flap. The front of the turn down flap has silver piping, indicating an officer rank, which has been factory applied with machine stitching. Inside, this SS-VT Officer’s Overseas Cap is lined in black cotton twill, which retains the original RZM cloth label. The label has some damage from being folded, but is mostly intact, and bears the round RZM logo as well as the SS organizational emblem. The lining is also stamped in white ink with “VA 1938” and the size “57.” This is an extremely attractive and scarce cap, that remains in excellent condition.

Historical Description: The “side cap” was a part of the uniform worn by nearly all military, paramilitary, political and civil organizations in the Third Reich. It was a narrow hat that could be folded flat and tucked into a belt or haversack. This was, at the time, a very stylish type of uniform cap; in the German Army, it replaced the round “pork pie” style of field cap used in the Great War. The German name for this cap, in most organizations, was “Feldmütze”- field cap. Despite the name, it was often worn as a daily service cap by postal workers and other personnel who would never be deployed to the field.  The men and women who wore the side cap gave it the nickname “Schiffchen,” meaning little boat, due to its shape. The side caps were made in the same type of fabric as the uniforms, in the uniform color particular to each organization. The side caps were adorned with branch-specific insignia, usually bearing some form of the German eagle and swastika national emblem. Many side caps also bore red, white, and black national cockades. The insignia were usually embroidered or woven, but metal devices were used on some caps as well. Officer caps generally were distinguished by silver braid along the top edge and/or on the upper part of the flap at the front of the cap and were often custom tailored from fine fabrics. The German military, and many other organizations, had broadly replaced the side cap with a new, more practical cap featuring a brim, by 1943. But the side cap continued to be worn by some troops until the end of the war.

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