By the end of WWII, the German soldiers were mostly wearing
flimsy cloth caps. The American boys were wearing hard
steel helmets. I guess Hitler had spent all the money for
the war on some tunnel or the other so he would have a
secure bunker for retreat purposes.
The Germans were short of everything by the end, but were still producing the somewhat simplified M42
stahlhelm very late in the war in at least two locations, and possibly a third. Not only that, they were still monkeying with new helmet designs (one of which - not surprisingly - looked remarkably like the postwar East German helmet). Interestingly, the Germans produced steel helmet shells of four different sizes (designated 62, 64, 66 and 68), and each size in turn would get a liner for one of two specific metric head sizes, rather than making one universal steel shell that used an adjustable liner to adapt it to every head size, large or small. So much for German efficiency!
Mr. niteowl77