Normally i would see german tank commander wearing either the cap or the officer hat on their tanks in action
but do they wear beret too? i mean i have seen pictures of them in beret but normally at rest..
so do they wear the field grey beret in combat?

The berets were worn until the winter of 1940 then were officially replaced with the Feldmutze (forage cap).

Below is a picture of a Leutnant wearing the Schutzmutze in a propoganda pictue.



The impracticality of the daily wearing of the beret/helmet led to the introduction of the panzer forage cap. The beret was never popular with the crews, one reason being the difficulty in the required wearing headsets with them.

After 1941, the beret continued in use with Pz 38(t) crews and drivers and co-drivers of armoured personnel carriers such as Sdkfz 251's.

Panzer crews were expressly forbidden from wearing the field grey forage cap, theirs were black.




Rick

The "beret" was actually a loose cover over a crash helmet. There is a photo in the old Brian L Davis book on Wehrmacht uniform of a crewman wearing goggles over it, which has pulled in the beret to show the shape of the liner. This was a very unpopular item of clothing, & was replaced as mentioned above by the sidecap. Initially there was no black stock, so photos taken up to Barbarossa sometimes show the field grey cap worn with panzer clothing. Initially the black clothing was only intended to be worn on duty with the vehicle, so regular panzer crews would have had a full issue of standard service dress, including the sidecap. There was a rarely photographed field grey version of the panzer schutzmutze issued to Stug crews.