WWII German Ausland Organization A.O. Cap Eagle. Extremely rare and faithfully reproduced, this embroidered cap eagle is available in EM, officers and Generals versions (your choice) and is the correct 2 5/8″ tall. This is a great item to add to an advanced collection, these never come up for sale.
The NSDAP/AO was the foreign organization branch of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). AO or Auslands-Organisation (Foreign Organization).
The party members who lived outside the German Reich were pooled in this special NSDAP department. On May 1, 1931 the new organizational unit was founded on the initiative of Reich Organization Leader (Reichsorganisationsleiter) Gregor Strasser and its management was assigned to Hans Nieland. But Nieland resigned from office on May 8, 1933, because he had become head of the Hamburg police authority, and later, a member of the Hamburg provincial government, whereupon Ernst Wilhelm Bohle was appointed director of the “AO”, which served as the 43rd and only non-territorial Gau of the NSDAP. Only actual citizens of the German Reich – (Reichsdeutsche) – with a German passport could become members of the AO. Persons of German descent, ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche), who possessed the nationality of the country in which they lived, were refused entry to the National Socialist Party.