BACKGROUND: The German army utilized a wide variety of headgear including the visor, overseas and M43 field caps. All soft headgear of the era featured some sort of insignia with early patterns having the Weimar Reichswehr, (National Defence Force, Circa 1919-1933), era oval black, red and gold national cockade which was replaced with a circular national cockade in black, white, and red on March 14TH 1933 and was utilized through-out the Third Reich period on all soft caps with minor manufacturing variations. The variations included stamped alloy, hand embroidered and machine woven cockades. Generally the national tri-color cockade for wear on the EM/NCO’s overseas and M43 field caps were machine woven, first on a dark blue/green base, (circa 1934), then later, on a field-grey base, (circa 1939), while Officer’s versions were embroidered in bright silver/aluminum wire threads. A machine woven version in bright silver/aluminum flat-wire threads was also utilized by Officer’s but was also very popular with senior NCO’s. Tropical cap insignia was developed in late 1940, along with other pieces of tropical insignia, uniforms and equipment for wear by DAK, Deutsches Afrika Korps, (German Africa Corps), personnel serving in North Africa. The design of the tropical items essentially adhered to the pattern of the field-grey continental uniforms and insignia with color variations.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Machine woven, national tri-color cockade features a black, outer circle, encompassing a white, inner circle and a red center dot mounted on a woven, cut-out, tan rayon, diamond shaped base. Hard to find original.