WWII German Kyffhäuserbund enameled Visor Cap Wreath

WWII German Kyffhäuserbund enameled Visor Cap Wreath.

The difficult circumstances of World War I’s postwar years led to a significant shrinking of the veterans’ associations and their role. During the Weimar Republic in 1921, this organization shed its federal structure and centralized itself under a common leadership. Following this step, it changed its name to German Warriors Association Kyffhäuser (Deutscher Reichskriegerbund Kyffhäuser e.V.). In the name of Gleichschaltung, the Kyffhäuserbund was nazified after the Nazi takeover of power in 1933. Five years later, its name was altered to Nationalsocialist Reich Warriors Association Kyffhäuser (NS-Reichskriegerbund Kyffhäuser e.V.), becoming the sole and exclusive organization representing the veterans’ interests in the Third Reich.

The Kyffhäuserbund was swiftly and unceremoniously disbanded during World War II in March 1943 by Adolf Hitler himself. Apparently, the reason was the German defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad. Its assets in the whole Reich were transferred to the Nazi Party. All its surviving local associations, which in the last phase of the war effort became the breeding ground for Volkssturm units, were also placed under the direct orders of the Nazi Party. After Nazi Germany’s defeat in World War II, the Allied military governments issued a special law, Kontrollratsgesetz Nr. 2, for the disbandment and liquidation of the Nazi organizations (Auflösung und Liquidierung der Naziorganisationen) on 10 October 1945. This denazification decree outlawed the Nazi Party and all of its branches, effectively disbanding the Kyffhäuserbund’s avatar that had been established during the Third Reich.