The Reichsministerium für die besetzeten Ostgebiete, or RMBO for short, was the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories created by Adolf Hitler on July 1941. The organisation was headed by Alfred Rosenberg to control the vast areas captured by the Germans in Eastern Europe and Russia. Rosenberg had presented Hitler with his plan for the organization of the conquered Eastern territories, suggesting the establishment of new administrative districts, to replace the previously Soviet-controlled territories with new Reichskommissariats to include Ostland (Baltic countries and Belarus), Ukraine (Ukraine and nearby territories), Kaukasus (Caucasus area), Moskau (Moscow metropolitan area and the rest of near Russia areas).
The RMBO was a civil ministry-styled government and was not part of the NSDAP Party branch. It was created by the German civil authorities as an administrative unit of the Grossdeutsches Reich. The governing people were largely party functionaries and senior SS, but it was also staffed by foreign office people because of its ambiguous status of being a German "colony" or administrative district without being part of Germany proper. It was planned to become part of Germany itself following the war and "Germanization" of the population. This also meant that these territories were not under the purvey of the Reichszeugmeisterei (RZM) being the national material control office of Third Reich Germany. There has been numerous discussions about such artefacts from Eastern territories where it should never have come under the RZM and thus objects marked as such have not been recognised by collectors to be original. It was also known that an American company, WW2 Products Ltd., based in St. Louis, manufactured reproductions of these metal RMBO eagles that have a RZM marking on the reverse. The RMBO eagle below has been identified as a late-war visor cap insignia that does not have RZM markings on the reverse. An identical RMBO eagle can also be found today at the Army Museum in Paris (musee de l'armee), at the Contemporary department, the Two World Wars 1871-1945 section (Les deux guerres mondiales 1871 - 1945). From author's own collection. source: Wikipedia / WAF
