Germany. An Auxiliary Police (Polizei) Officer's Tschako with Parade Bush

This sturdy-framed shako has a green felt exterior, with a leather circular top, straight front and domed back with protruding neck guard, in the traditional police helmet style, that was established in 1920s and lasted until 1945. The front is adorned with a gilt aluminum Third Reich Police shako plate, illustrating a spread-winged eagle sitting upon an oak leaf clustered wreath centred by a swastika insignia. Immediately above the shako plate is an oval bullion thread cockade, attached to the helmet via a u-shaped prong on the back of the cockade and slid through a slot behind the shako plate. Projecting from the rear of the cockade and held in place by a metal loop is a white horse hair plume. There are two circular screened vents on either side near the top, to allow for proper ventilation. Detail oriented scaled officer's chin strap. Metal posts on either side hold the chin strap in place, resting upon the top of the visor. It also comes with a reinforcing, heaving stitched 20 mm wide leather strap sewn in place along the lower portion of the shako, around the circumference, covering the seams where it meets the visor and the neck guard. Both the visor and the neck guard have brown vulcanfibre uppers, with synthetic undersides finished in olive green. The inside has a butterscotch-coloured leather sweatband that is perforated along the edge. It is size stamped "55 1/8" in blue ink beside the seam where the two ends of the sweatband are stitched together at the rear. It comes with a retractable two-piece butterscotch-coloured nylon liner with supports in the dome. It measures 170 mm x 245 mm x 155 mm in height, not including the plume and cockade, exhibiting very light crazing on the circular top, visor and neck guard, along with extremely light soiling on the sweatband, the fabrics remaining very clean, the stitching intact, horse hair bush frayed, extremely fine.