BACKGROUND: Free Trade Unions in Germany were dissolved when the Nazis came to power in 1933, their members being absorbed into the newly created "Deutsche Arbeitsfront" (German Labor-front). The DAF was originally a sub-section of the NSDAP, but became an affiliated organization by 1936, and was the largest of all of the various Nazi organizations. The stated aims of the DAF were to create a national community of German professional and manual laborers, and to educate them in National Socialist principles. Membership was voluntary, but most workers chose to join to take advantage of the entertainment, sport, and travel opportunities provided by the attached KdF, "Kraft durch Freude" (Strength through Joy), welfare organization. The Volkswagen, for example, was a KdF project designed to provide German workers with a reliable and inexpensive vehicle, initially being called the "KdF Wagen."

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: A vertical oval cap badge, 53mm tall, framed with a gilt washed metal, rope-like surround. Its cloth center features the machine woven DAF emblem of a mobile swastika within a fourteen-toothed cog above a spray of oak leaves, all in golden-yellow on a black base. Reverse is embossed an RZM logo and "No.53". Both of its original brass attachment prongs are intact.