Heer Panzer schirmmutze

[Friedrich-Berthold]

The cap was made in Neuruppin, a Pz garrison in the Mark Brandenburg. I think it is an old saw of collector lore that III. Reich caps "...never had grey interiors..." but this one does. It was a very nice cap. Today it has a new, happy home, where one hopes the owner secures it from moths, uv rays, too many fingers, as well as from awful dust and grime.

Seeing this cap again makes me regret that I sold it. Also my diatribe about collector internet Quatsch was as germane in 2008 as it is now. The internet has spread much misinformation together with actual knowledge of merit. Oh well. One rolls the rock up the hill to have it fall down on one's head.

[locloc08]

Here's a Pz cap of the less ostentatious variety.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Very nice, thank you.

[BenVK]

If I may I would like to pick up on the discussion of grey interiors.

I can totaly understand how the myth was circulated amongst collectors that grey interiors might all be post war. A high percentage of Bundeswehr caps have them. I'm not at all sure why that is, anyone? The same rayon and the same leather was used in most just like their wartime cousins. Later versions obviously did away with real leather sweatbands and the addition of a new type of stirndruckfrei system was introduced and grey became the standard colour scheme with very few in any other colour.

If we go back to the war years though, the SS Kleiderkasse, without a doubt, contracted a number of hat manufacturers to produce grey wool shirmmutzen for both Officers and NCO's with matching grey interiors and obviously completely unmarked sweat shields. What I find most facinating about these particluar hats is that numerous examples have been found in Norway and Denmark etc. It's always been my collecting desire to research the supply routes of regalia from the manufacture through to the clothing depots from original records. Unfortunately, not many of these documents still survive as far as I'm aware though.

It's just a theory of mine but I suspect a large order of grey lined SS caps ended up being supplied to the Nordic countries and therefore that's why quite a few of them survive to this day in good condition. They were not ravaged and destroyed by combat and neither did they end in Soviet hands.

Wehrmacht caps with grey interiors on the other hand seem to have been supplied more randomly or prehaps due to the much larger quantities involved compared to the WSS, the ratio of grey interior caps found today are disproportionation to the amount actualy made during the period? I don't know. One thing I do know though is that you can spend your whole collecting career just buying hats based on condition and wow factors and all the rest of it and not spend a single moment to consider these fundamental questions.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

German forces in Norway in the spring of 1945 remained fairly intact, which likely included whatever supply organization supported them. Such grey lined caps were a fairly normal feature of the wartime SS. However, with the shortage of textiles, I am sure after a certain point, the contractor used whatever textile was at hand. The original records surely do survive somewhere, but the coffee table book researchers are not energetic enough to find them, and whatever amateur researchers exist in Europe are likely unable to gain access to archives without a legitimate scholarly brief and bona fides. You just cannot go to archives on an antiquarian whim. Access to same requires a vetted research plan and proof of scholarly quality.

Happy foetid cap linings.

A further point is germane here: collector half truths and hearsay nonsense ("no grey linings') cause endless mischief and cheat a lot of beginning collectors. Part of the reason for this, plainly, is the desire of the less generous and jealous older collector to limit the field to an in group via the willful transmission of falsehood and misinformation to throw the faint of heart off center. It is a custom on these sites to lambaste dealers for all kinds of bad things, but I am especially put out by the deliberate use of psychological warfare to dis spirit collectors and thereby reduce competition as done by other COLLECTORS and by whomever for less than honorable motives. The above is also furthered by the phenomenon of the cyber expert who has actually no collection, nor any real experience, and most important, no willingness to think in such a way as to grapple with the evidence of the past and surmount the shades of truth that are always present. These subtleties and historical truths fly in the face of the fundamentalist, list making dogmas of the present as visible on these sites from several self appointed "experts" derived from worst mores in Anglo Saxon business practices and management techniques gone totally wrong.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Ben Vk, however, is a cyber expert who really is an expert, and he also asks subtle and sophisticated questions the answer to which are found in Norway, Denmark, and Germany, to say nothing of the Czech Republic. Whatever depots survived as in the case of the Dachau complex in these nations likely got plundered and a fraction of same survived to make it into Nordic collections, which we treasure. I know that a cap that I bought in Vienna and took far from same now resides in one of these Nordic collections, so its presence in the North is more a function of globalization than geographical determinism. A lot of militaria pilfered by GIs and for a long time in the US now has migrated to Europe, Asia, and Oceania. Our brave new world.

The SS WVHA files have survived and surely hold many treasures for all seekers of truth. It is a shame that the coffee table book Schreiberlinge have not engaged said source, as other real historians have done. I simply do not have the time.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

This source is not without some relevance to your hopes.

[BenVK]

I wish you would stop calling me a cyber expert FB! Makes me sound like a cyborg or something!

I do question the lack of response to this thread through? Does no one give a damn about what they are collecting? If someone else says, that's a TR cap, is that good enough for you? Don't you want to learn more about the whole history behind it?

I despair!!

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Alright, you are an expert. I am not a science fiction person in any case.

Ben, you and I constitute a significant fraction of those who care about more than the stitch and the "prestige laden forehead free pressure" thingy that made losing the war easier or not. Or of which no sane German ever took much notice while bombs were falling on them, and Soviet armor was squishing Kursk and Heeresgruppe Mitte and pi pa po.

We all despair and with good reason.

Dir alles gute, wie stets, Jhr, FB

[BenVK]

In answer to my own question, no, some people do not!

Luckily we have others like FB.