caps of the wehrmachtbeamte-heer
The armed forces officials of the army has always been a subject that has confused the hell out of me.
The sheer number of support services and the various functions needed to facilitate the logistics of any army has always been complicated but to my mind the germans managed to take it to a whole new level in terms of the uniforms and different colours of branch services they used post 1935.
As my main interest is caps I thought I would post a brief history of some of the styles and variations used by these officials.
So a bit of history…………..
After the Napoleonic wars the Prussian Army was re-organised and the admin tasks vrs the command and control tasks where separated from the line officers to be undertaken by separate better qualified individuals. This separate function continued and expanded in the Imperial Army and the Reichswehr and, for the discussion here, also in the Wehrmacht but to a new level. This of course was in response to the technological changes that occured in the 1930’s (TANKS BEING ONE) requiring even more logistical support.
In 1934 every official became classed as an armed forces official and regarded as members of the Army. Career officials included Chaplins, Army forestry service, non combat medical services among many others. The best info on this is in Uniforms and traditions vol 2 p130 onwards.
Uniforms of the officials were basically the same as the uniform of soldiers of equal rank. The branch colour was dark green on the cap.
This example is made by Pekuro and is high quality doeskin material. The piping is the same colour as the cap band and is a rough method of seeing if your cap is admin or jager.
The second cap is Beamte auf Kreigsdauer, a.k - wartime officials - introduced 1937 this rank were people needed in the army for their civilian knowledge and appointed with a rank according to their skills and education. The 1940 uniform specified that the branch colour was dark green but the cap band was grey-blue to distinguish them as civilian rather than military trained officers (I guess). This example is made from eskimo wool and came with a name tag inserted in the celluloid with the rank Sonderfürer. It is made in Kassel and has a Zapf logo.
This third cap is for specialist leaders - sonderführer- and their uniform regs of 1940 required that they also had a grey-blue cap band but with grey branch of service. Again these guys were civilians who were put into positions in the army were specialist skills were needed but no military personnel were available to fill them.
In 1942 the uniforms regs changed and the cap got an alluminium cord inter woven with grey blue silk threads. This example has the army officers cord and is made by ODD aka otto dittman from Dresden.
part two on the way………….
