History

The cloth cap insignia of the Waffen-SS were essentially smaller versions of sleeve insignia. The basic types of insignia are machine-woven cotton or aluminum wire and hand-embroidered metal wire.

The SS eagle is usually placed on a black background and the wings of the eagle are tapered to a point, with the longest feather in the centre.

Near the end of the Second World War, there were 24 manufacturing firms producing cloth insignia for Waffen-SS personnel. Each company produced death’s heads and eagles in a slightly different way and as such, there are many different slight differences in the appearance of cloth insignia.

The main difference between the insignia found on Officer’s and Non-Commissioned Officer/Enlisted men’s caps is the quality of material used. Officer’s caps were primarily made with silver bullion or aluminum wire. In the early years of the Third Reich, it was discovered that silver wire quickly becomes black and so it was replaced with aluminum thread.

Another difference is the method of manufacture; early examples of Officer Insignia were hand embroidered, while examples from the caps of NCOs and enlisted men were machine embroidered.

Machine woven insignia is often referred to as “BeVo” or “BeVo weave.”

Tropical field caps may feature tan-coloured insignia.

Some camouflage field caps feature bright green skull and eagle insignia for the Spring pattern and dark brown ones for the Fall pattern. This is extremely rare, as camouflage caps were often worn without insignia.

The earliest cloth eagle insignia that was used was introduced in 1934. It took the form of the 1st pattern metal eagle insignia, which was also used by the SA (Sturmabteilung), and is often dubbed the "political" eagle pattern. The eagle was embroidered in white or light grey on a grey or black piece of cloth in the form of an inverted triangle.