Panzer Officers Overseas Cap with Pink Soutache

Product Description: This beautiful Panzer Officers Overseas Cap is a top quality example, in wonderful condition. It’s a typical tailor made, private purchase officer field cap, as used from 1938 through the end of the war. The exterior is made of a very high quality, finely felted doe skin wool, in an attractive light Feldgrau shade. The insignia are original to the cap, and machine applied. The eagle is a 1939 pattern, “Bevo” machine woven construction, and has been stitched to the cap with a typical “zip and flip” application style. There is some very minor fraying to one small area of the eagle’s edge. The matching Bevo cockade is also straight machine stitched with matching thread. This cap is also complete with textbook bullion wire piping indicating officer rank, as well as pink “Russia braid” branch piping soutache, as used before mid-1942. This pink color was used to indicate Panzer and Panzerjäger (tank and anti-tank) units. The exterior of this cap is extremely clean, with only a few extremely small, match head sized areas of moth grazing on one side that only affect the wool nap. The interior of this handsome Panzer Officers Overseas Cap is fully lined with a tan colored, fine rayon fabric. There is no maker stamp, as is typical for tailor made field caps. There is a size stamp, a large size 59. This cap is in near mint condition, and with the Panzer branch piping, is extremely desirable.

Historical Description: The “sidecap” 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 sidecap gave it the nickname “Schiffchen,” meaning little boat, due to its shape. The sidecaps were made in the same type of fabric as the uniforms, in the uniform color particular to each organization. The sidecaps were adorned with branch-specific insignia, usually bearing some form of the German eagle and swastika national emblem. Many sidecaps 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 sidecap with a new, more practical cap featuring a brim, by 1943. But the sidecap continued to be worn by some troops until the end of the war.

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