I am not going to go into any great detail in this Internet article. There are
probably about 300 different propaganda stamps, most produced by Great Britain,
the United States, and Germany. The Russians did not produce propaganda stamps,
but they printed dozen of propaganda postcards, many with a forged imprinted
stamp. We will probably illustrate less than two dozen here. If our readers
request any other specific items I will be happy to add them to this article.
Feel free to write to me with your request and I will add the image and a short
text. Readers wanting to learn more can search for my old articles and study the
field in depth. This will just be a very light look at many of the more
interesting propaganda parodies and espionage forgeries. It is meant to be a
general introduction to the field. I will also depict some selected items
because of their rarity or interest.
Perhaps we should take a moment to define the difference between a propaganda
parody and an espionage forgery. In the former, one government will take the
stamp of an enemy or occupied government and change the stamp in such a way as
to make a political statement and perhaps cast aspersions at and ridicule enemy
leaders or occupation forces. These stamps are designed to be recognized for
what they are, an attack on the enemy. In the case of the espionage forgery, one
government has produced a stamp that is a perfect imitation of the enemy stamp
to be used to mail propaganda or instructions to people in the enemy or occupied
country. These stamps are part of a secret operation and not meant to be
recognized.
There were some early pioneers in the field of propaganda
philately, and we should mention them.
This booklet was written by the Williams Brothers in 1938 and
discussed the British forgeries of the stamps of Germany, Austria, and
Bavaria during WWI.
The first serious English-language booklet about propaganda
philately in WWII was the 1954 Williams Brothers’ 52-page paperback
Forged Stamps of Two World Wars.
The first author who really discussed the propaganda stamps in
detail was Joachim Hosang who wrote four German-language paperback booklets
between 1954 and 1959 entitled Gezähnte Kriegspropaganda. Peter
Rickenback later translated Hosang’s first booklet into the English language
Stamps in Battledress.
Another German author, Wolfgang Prätzsch, has written extensively
on the German productions, most notably in the 40-page paperback booklet
Ubternehmen Wasserwelle. These authors are directly responsible for much
of what we know today about these clandestine programs.
Back about the year 2000 I think, I met a young German researcher
and author named Wolfgang Baldus. His work was so impressive that I opened
my files to him and today he has become the recognized expert about
propaganda philately. He has written numerous articles, paperback booklets,
and the two-volume German-language Schwartz Propaganda.
I would show his book above, but it is just a black cover so
instead I show you one of the research booklets he has written, this one on
the American Hitler Head forgeries.
We will mainly discuss black propaganda in this article, items produced secretly
by one nation to be used against another. We will start with Great Britain.
Without going into detail, up until July 1940 the items were printed by
Department EH, and Section D in countries where it operated. From July 1940 to
September 1941 the Special Operation Executive (SOE) was the printer; SO1
produced the propaganda, SO2 handled delivery. From 11 September 1941 on:
Political Warfare Executive (PWE) produced the stamps under the direction of Ellic
Howe (pseudonym: Armin Hull), and significant distribution by
SOE's SO2 unit. The listing has items with known Section D, Department EH, and
SOE document numbers, and PWE H-numbers, as well as those for which the code
numbers are not yet known.
During WWI the British counterfeited the stamps of Austria, Bavaria and Germany.
I first wrote about these in "Propaganda Forgeries of World War I, "The
Stamp and Coin Collector, April-May 1966. I wrote about them again in
"British Espionage Forgeries of the First World War, "American
Philatelist, September 1973. I must admit that this article was a great
disappointment to me. I sent the APS a dozen extremely rare photographs of
margin copies of all the stamps with various notations by the forgers.
Apparently the editor lost the photos, and without writing to me and asking for
replacements he simply printed the article with no illustrations. I was mad at
that editor for quite a while. I didn't write another article for the APS until
1985.
The World War I British forgeries of the German Germania issue were produced in
September 1918. They were printed in sheets of 100 (10x10). The forgeries have
15 horizontal perforation holes, whereas the genuine stamps have 14 holes. The
forgeries have less shading (more white space) along the brow and nose line as
compared with the genuine, giving Germania a somewhat fierce look. The
imperforate color proofs tend to be paler, flatter in appearance, without gum,
and printed on mildly tinted paper. The proofs are known as "Watford proofs"
from the manuscript notation "Printed at Watford" found in the selvage of the
sheets.
The actual printer of course was the British firm of Waterlow. There is much
documentation for this statement and among them is a sheet of directions for
perforating the forgeries discovered in the company's archives. It is written in
technical jargon but appears to have such comments as: G or B
Stamp (German) also A(ustrian)... Dimensions taken across sheet (longway).
Dimensions taken way sheet travels (short way). P.S. Waterlow B.& L. could not
wait while MP [machine perforations?] was
made so used MP 102/2 Edward VII, worked from dowel pin holes & centre stamp &
put extra hole each way in each stamp.
There is much more of course, but clearly Waterlow and the people doing the
perforations are discussing what machines to use and the number of perforations
on each stamp.
The British also counterfeited the 5 pfennig green, 10 pfennig carmine and 15
pfennig vermilion Bavarian 1916-1920 King Ludwig III issue. The forgeries were
printed in sheets of 100 (10x10) or 110 (11x10), both perforated and
imperforated. The perforated forgeries have 15 horizontal perforation holes,
whereas the genuine stamps have 14 holes. In the forgeries, the wavy lines in
the watermark are 3 mm apart at their closest, whereas in the genuine the lines
are 4 mm apart. All items are known in imperforate color proofs. The proofs tend
to be paler, flatter in appearance, without gum, and printed on mildly tinted
paper. The proofs are known as "Watford proofs" from the manuscript notation
"Printed at Watford" found in the selvage of the sheets. One block of nine 5
pfennig stamps which I bought many years ago had comments in the lower right
selvage that said:
"Watford" was the home of Waterford and Sons printers and Murray Teigh Bloom
states in The Man Who Stole Portugal that Sir
William Waterford was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his
counterfeiting of German, Austrian and Bavarian stamps... and his facsimiles of
Imperial German banknotes.
The above photo postcard is a British propaganda reproduction showing happy
German soccer players in a prisoner-of-war camp. This card is addressed to John
Von Possel of Altoona and gives his POW camp address in Great Britain. It is
coded H/6 and was disseminated in September 1918.
This folded air letter was sent from Karl Scholz to Josepha Scholz in Peterwitz.
It was disseminated in February 1917.
During WWI the British reproduced a large number of German prisoner-of-war
postcards and air-letters. They took genuine postcards and letters that had
pictures or text favorable to the British and reproduced them to airdrop over
the enemy by both aircraft and balloon. According to the History
of M.I. 7 (B) (March 1916 - December 1918),Captain
Chalmers Mitchell produced the following type of philatelic propaganda.
In 1917 the British produced 594,000 reproductions of 88 prisoner of war letters
and 7 postcards and 90,000 reproductions of 17 photo postcards.
By the end of the war, the total number of leaflets, prisoner of war letters,
cartoons, and other items produced by M.I. 7 (b) (4) was 25,986,180 products.
From 1915
to 1917, Russia issued eleven so-called "currency stamps," postage stamps
printed on thin cardboard instead of the usual stamp paper. They were meant
to be used as coins to save metal so the stamps were not gummed. The
original 1913 stamp printing plates were used so they looked exactly like
the genuine postage stamps. Several denominations were printed; the most
common are the 10, 15 and 20 kopeks. The Germans counterfeited the 15 and 20
kopek, stamps changing the last three lines to an anti-Russian message on
both stamps. The purpose was to undermine the value of Russian money and to
destroy confidence in the Imperial Government. The back of the genuine
Russian stamps had a five-line message stating:
I bought a single 20 kopek counterfeit in 1984 for $300. I bought the 15
and 20 kopek counterfeits se-tenant (Connected) in 1989 for $583. In May
2006, a pair of 15 and 20 kopek counterfeits was sold for US $350 each by
Raritan
Stamps Auctions. In May 2012,Cherrystone Auctions of
New York sold a pair of the counterfeits for US $1,900.
After the
Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, several peoples fought the new "Red" regime.
The Don Cossacks elected a "Ataman," the official title of the supreme
military commander of the Cossack armies. On 15 December 1917, the "White"
Cossack Army occupied the important city of Rostov-on-Don. During 1918, a
number of Russian postage stamps were surcharged for the use in the Don
area. A stamp with a face value of 25 kopeks was planned depicting Ermak, a
legendary Cossack leader of the 16th century, but was never issued. In July
1918, a currency token in the same design with a face value of 20 kopeks in
olive green color was printed by the Rostov-on-Don section of the State
Bank. On the front it was inscribed "Ermak." The back bears the imperial
eagle and the text:
In 1919,
the Bolsheviks printed a propaganda forgery of the "Ermak" currency stamp.
It is printed on yellowish thick paper and the wording on the reverse had
been changed to refer to the period when the Don Cossacks under their
"Atamans" ruled over the area. The new text was:
A copy was
offered by Raritan Stamps in September 2008 and sold for US $800. In May
2011, the same auction house offered a block of four for US$ 1000 that did
not sell.
My thanks
to Wolfgang Baldus who corrected my own write-up of this "stamp" with better
background information and an improved translation.
The propaganda parody appeared in the 1920s and was a forerunner to
anti-Semitic propaganda. The genuine Austrian 1920 80 heller stamp is rose
or red-orange, perforated, and bears the Austrian eagle and text
Deutschosterreich (German
Austria). An unknown party produced an interesting parody of this stamp in a
slightly deeper red, known both perforate and imperforate, with the Austrian
eagle and the text changed to Judischosterreich (Jewish
Austria). The parody is a good copy of the original. Aside from being
obviously anti-Semitic, the origin and motivation for this parody is
unknown. The stamp has been offered at auction a number of times on at least
three covers, usually on an envelope franked with genuine stamps and often
postmarked Wein (Vienna).
We should note that although Germany is often considered the center of
post-WWI anti-Semitism, Austria can contest that title and produced hundreds
of anti-Semitic postcards and other items. For instant, the Jewish-owned
Bruder Kohen Wiener Institut (B.K.W.I.) produced countless cards depicting
tongue-in-cheek caricatures illustrating various aspects of Jewish life.
With the rise of the Nazi Party, the Germans reprinted selected cards that
portrayed Jews in an especially unfavorable light. For example, for the
Derr
ewige Jude (Eternal Jew Exposition) one card depicted a
very unflattering caricature of composer Oscar Strauss.
Perhaps one
of the most pictorial of all the Austrian anti-Semitic postcards is the one
entitled Mander s'ischt Zeit! The card
depicts five people, three of whom have a distinctly Jewish look, fleeing an
array of Nazi flags. The title is Tyrolean slang: "Men, it's time!" a quote
from Andreas Hofer, a 19th Century Tyrolean freedom fighter. The title on
the address side is Abzug des Herrn Schuschnigg und seiner
Verbundeten ("Departure of Herr Schuschnigg and his
allies"). This refers to Kurt von Schuschnigg, the mildly fascist but
anti-Nazi Austrian chancellor just prior to the Anschluss, (German
annexation of Austria) who appears in the central position of the group of
five. The other four are a monk, representing the Catholic Church, an
aristocrat, a boy wearing an Austrian armband, and a Jew carrying his
moneybox. Austrian Chancellor Schuschnigg was forced to resign on March 11,
1938 after the annexation and was imprisoned by the Nazis shortly
thereafter. He survived the war and was liberated by American troops in May
1945. The card was designed by Artist is F. Kock. Card exists in two
printings, one on bright white paper and the other on gray paper. Artist is
F. Kock.
During
World War II the PWE printed a series of French stamps. I first wrote about
these in an article entitled "Propaganda Forgeries of WWII in Linn's
Stamp News of November 14, 1966. Although there are eleven forged
denominations in all, there are just four actual vignettes; Mercury, Iris,
Petain bare-headed and Petain with cap. All but the scarlet 30 centimes
Mercury are printed in perforated sheets of 20 (5 x 4); the Mercury is
printed in a sheet of 16, with four blocks of four separated by gutters. The
genuine stamps are perforated 14:13 1/2, as are the forgeries with the
exception of the 30 centimes Mercury, the 1 franc 50 centimes Iris and the 1
franc Petain with cap, which is perforated 15:14. Imperforate sheets exist
for all values. Each item is identifiable by a "secret mark" or its
perforation. Whereas the secret marks may have been intentionally introduced
for an espionage purpose, it is more likely that they are unintentional.
These forgeries were initially produced in 1942; some "H-numbers" are known.
Illustrated and discussed in L.N. and M. Williams, Forged
Stamps of Two World Wars, published by the authors, London, 1954, pages
15-19.
A "Most Secret" memo from Dr. Beck (head of PWE's French desk) to Rex
Leeper (head of SOE's SO1 propaganda unit) reports on black propaganda to
France for the week ending 23 May: about 1000 letters per week containing
LA
France Libre and Weekly Times are
being distributed in France. The memo further states that:
This almost certainly refers to the forgeries of French stamps.
The specimen business envelopes are from "Compagnie Generale des Tabacs,
Marseille (H.69)," "La Voix de France," and "La Nationale, Paris (Ixe)." The
covers were intended to be inserted into the French mail system, where they
would be postmarked by French postal service. It seems that none of these
covers survived the war, but this memo provides evidence that the forged
stamps were actually used in France. The "Most Secret" memo was discovered
in the British National Archives by Lee Richards in 2002 during his research for his book The
Black Art. He also supplied the majority of the PWE "H" code numbers and
printing statistics for this article.
In further
research in the British National Archives Lee found evidence that over a
thousand propaganda envelopes a week were sent into France, and one of the
regular enclosures seems to have been the propaganda leaflet Lettre
d'Angleterre. There were requests for additional envelopes (9,000 in
three different colors) and even requests for additional stamps:
1.20 franc brown Pétain (2nd type with Képi),70 centimes same type (orange
or dark blue - which one has yet to be decided) - engraving of first type -
used for values under 40 centimes - has also been ordered.
Lee points
out that the postage stamps were forged for the French section of SOI, and their job was propaganda, not agent-running
or intelligence-gathering. The letter-writing unit was distributing
thousands of envelopes inside Vichy France and Northern France. The
letter-writing unit was shut down in 1942; the forged French postage stamps
ceased being produced soon afterwards.
There are
two British forgeries bearing the image of Mercury. The 25 centimes green
Mercury of 1938-42 is PWE No. H.156. 10,000 copies were delivered to the
French Section on 12 October 1942. There is also a 30 centimes scarlet
Mercury 1938-42. The 30 centimes Mercury is printed in a sheet of 16, with four
blocks of four separated by gutters. This is one of the more exotic sheets
with gutters all around.
The Iris Vignette
The 1 franc
50 centimes red-orange Iris 1939-40 is the only forgery with this image.
The Petain Bareheaded Vignette
The 30
centimes scarlet Petain bareheaded 1941-43 is PWE No. H.195 (November 1942).
It was retouched and reprinted as PWE No.H.355A in April/May 1943. 15,000
copies of H.195 were delivered to the French Section 5 November 1942; 10,000
copies of H.355 were delivered on 11 March 1943. The 1 franc 50 centimes
red-brown Petain bareheaded 1941-43 is PWE No. H.191. 10,000 copies
delivered to the French Section 21 October 1942. The 2 francs green Petain
bareheaded 1941-43 is PWE No. H.271 (November 1942); retouched and reprinted
as PWE No. H.355B in April/May 1943. 10,000 copies of H.271 delivered to the
French Section on 30 November 1942. We depict the 2 francs above because it
is one of the rarer denominations.
The rose-carmine Petain Bareheaded Vignette
The 1 franc
50 centimes rose-carmine Petain bareheaded 1941-43 is a very rare color
oddity. Only 4 sheets (3 perforated, 1 imperforate) were printed. One
perforated sheet is in the Paris Postal Museum; the other 2 perforated
sheets were broken up. Therefore, at most 80 copies exist. The 1 franc 50
centimes red-brown Petain bareheaded 1941-43 is PWE No. H.191 (reprint).
10,000 copies delivered to the French Section 21 October 1942. The 2 francs
green Petain bareheaded 1941-43 is PWE No. H.271 (November 1942); retouched
and reprinted as PWE No. H.355B in April/May 1943. 10,000 copies of H.271
delivered to the French Section on 30 November 1942.
The Petain with Cap Vignette
The Petain 50
Centimes with Cap Sheet in standard 5 x 4 Format
The "Petain
with cap" was forged multiple times. The first is the 50 centimes green
Petain with cap 1941-43. The 70 centimes red-orange Petain with cap 1941-43
is PWE No. H.172. We don't know the code of the 1 franc scarlet Petain with
cap 1941-4 The 1 franc 20 centimes red-brown Petain with cap 1941-43 is PWE
No. H.171. 10,000 copies were delivered to the French Section 12 October
1942.
50c Petain with Cap Vignette in Wrong Color
There are
some interesting reprints of these British forgeries. In 2011 some of the
values appeared on gummed paper in blocks of four. They were identified as
"France 1942 Resistance forgeries." One buyer suspected they might be
essays. One never truly knows about such things but they appear to be fakes.
Fakers seem to like blocks of four. I have never heard of Ellic Howe doing
any blocks of four, and believe the quality is much too poor to be British.
And of course, the color is not right either. The above stamp should be
green. There was also a 1.50 F Petain bare-headed block of four on gummed
paper in red in this lot.
Reproductions and Facsimiles of the American Hitler Skull Stamps
There are
already numerous fake blocks of four of the American OSS "death's head"
parodies of the 12 pfennig Hitler stamp. They appear in various colors,
perforated, imperforate, and on covers.
Fantasy Stamps
In 2024 this small group of fantasy stamps and sheets was offered
at auction. My favorite is the sheet at the upper left that features Hitler
and his short-term wife Eva Braun.
A Watercolor of the Fake American Hitler Stamp
Although these fake stamps were made for profit in Austria somewhere in the
1950s, this watercolor did not appear until 2014. It seems to name the
artist and town at the top but since the text has been cut in half, we can
only guess who and where was identified. We see the artist’s name as
Atelier hack, with the first word meaning "Studio" and the second the
name, which could be Hackmann or something similar. We do not know.
The street or town below the name is Schelling. As a town it could be
Schellingstrasse or Schellingweg. Researcher Wolfgang Baldus
did a search for such streets years ago and found that there was only one
Schellingstrasse in Austria, a small street in Ansfelden in Upper
Austria.
Below the watercolor is a fake envelope that someone put together seeming to
show the fake Hitler stamp as genuine propaganda that went through the mail.
This would indicate that some thought was applied to making this fantasy
item seem to be a genuine wartime item.
The Laval Propaganda Parody
The British
also prepared a propaganda parody of the France 1941-43 30 centimes scarlet
Petain bareheaded. They added a sinister Nazi-collaborating Prime Minister
Pierre Laval peering around from behind Petain. The vignette implies that
Germany is running the French government. It was probably produced in
November/December 1942. It is perforated 14 and printed in a sheet of 20.
Pierre Laval met an ironic death. As the end grew near, he fled first to
Germany, then to Spain, then to Austria, where he was arrested and sent back
to France to be tried on the charge of treason. He was sentenced to be shot
by firing squad on 6 October 1945, but swallowed cyanide before the sentence
could be carried out. A physician saved his life so that he could be stood
up in front of the firing squad and executed a little less than two weeks
later.
Forged French Postcard
The British
also forged at least one French 80 centimes postcard. Little is known about
this item but it can be identified by three shading lines in the mustache
instead of the usual 5 lines of the genuine.
The Blitzkrieg Card
France produced two black propaganda postcards against Germany
during World War II. Only one was used. Both cards originate from the French
propaganda organization, which existed only a short time because of the
German invasion in May 1940. The two propaganda postcards in question were
printed shortly before the German invasion.
The front of the first French postcard, sometimes called “the
Blitzkrieg Card” Depicts Adolf Hitler shouting:
Three years! Five years!! Eight years!
This answers the question of the two children who are shown below
Hitler:
Please, Mister Führer, how long will your blitzkrieg last?
Two versions of this card are known. One measures 100 x 136 mm and
is printed in glossy black color on yellowish paper. The second version
measures 85 x 143 mm and is printed in black and red on white paper. The
words “three years,” “five years,” “eight years,” and “Blitzkrieg” are in
red, the rest is in dull black. The French authorities coded the postcard
“44” although it does not appear on the card. 1,735,000 copies of the cards
were disseminated from 23 March 1940 to 8 May 1940. The Drop reports from
the French Air Force state that the leaflets were dropped by bomb groups 15,
34, and 38.
The Living Space card
The second propaganda postcard depicts a photomontage of a field of
graves with mourning people and a smiling Adolf Hitler in the
foreground. The image of the postcard was also produced as a leaflet with
the caption printed enlarged on the reverse. Neither postcard nor leaflet
was disseminated. The text is:
Adolf: Don’t be afraid, German comrades, my policy of the enlarged living
space
guarantees every German his own plot.
The British PWE Morocco Overprints
One of the
more interesting British propaganda operations involved a PWE black
propaganda overprint on the French Morocco 50 centimes and 1 franc stamps of
1939-40 overprinted Deutsches Reichspost in Marokko.
The overprinted items were produced in May/July 1942 in an attempt to
persuade Petain and Laval that their Nazis masters were deceiving them and
were preparing to occupy French possessions in North Africa. The overprint
exists on two stamps, in both thick (Type I) and thin (Type II) forms; the
two types are usually found vertically setenant. One authority maintains
that proofs of the thick and thin overprints were prepared, with the thin
overprint being chosen for production. The story is that 1 sheet each of the
two denominations were sent to the United States Embassy in Paris, who then
showed the stamps to Petain or Laval.
We should
mention that this use of an overprint in a propaganda operation was used as
early as WWI. Although the origin is uncertain, and may be nothing more than
a practical joke, there is a Germania 10 pfennig red stamp overprinted with
the denomination Schweiz 10 Centimes and
a Germania 20 pfennig ultramarine stamp overprinted with the denomination Schweiz
25 Centimes. They were apparently intended to persuade neutral
Switzerland that they were about to be invaded and become a German puppet
state. The stamps were first depicted in the French Newspaper Le
Matin ("The Morning"), 12 December 1914. The article
claimed that there were a number of other denominations in the set. The
German embassy in Berne refuted the charges and said that the paper had been
hoodwinked.
Another
overprint that is certainly a fake is a Germania 10 pfennig red stamp
overprinted with Die Welt ("The World").
These stamps appeared shortly after the Marokko stamps and were intended to
show the world that Germany expected to conquer all.
The Marokko
productions are certainly genuine British PWE products, and we can probably
say with assurance that the Schweiz and Welt overprints
are complete frauds. In 1992, two se-tenant pairs with the Morocco
overprints sold for $9,000. In October 2009, two pairs of the Morocco stamps
in se-tenant pairs showing both overprints sold for $18,000. However,
because of the value of these parodies, forgeries do exist. In April 2009, a
fake pair of the stamps with the dark overprint were offered on EBay for
$4.95. The vendor received no bids.
The Himmler Parody
The PWE produced two black "Himmler" parodies of the Germany 1941-1944 6
pfennig violet Hitler-head stamp that depicted SS Reichsführer Heinrich
Himmler full-face. Both were printed typographed in violet in sheets of 20
(5x4), perforated 14:14 1/4 comb. I first wrote about and illustrated the
parodies in "A philatelic view of Heinrich Himmler, "The American
Philatelist, February 1970.
The first,
PWE No. H.279 (December 1942), has facial shading of narrowly spaced lines
that are rough and ill-defined with white uncolored patches around the eyes,
cheek, and chin. The hair is poorly defined and appears to run into the
background.
The second,
PWE No. H.388 (April/May 1943) has facial shading of widely spaced lines,
sharp and clear; the hairline is well defined and stands out clearly from
the background. The wide-line variety is by far the more handsome parody,
and resulted from a redesign of the narrow-line variety. However, because
the wide-line item was reported first, it was designated Type I, and this
nomenclature has persisted and confused philatelists for 50 years. Let me
say again, the attractive stamp is type I; the crude stamp is type II. 5,000
copies of the wide-line variety were delivered on 3 May 1943. A complete
mint sheet of the wide-line variety was offered in a June 2008 auction
estimated at 15,000 Euros ($23,395 dollars).
A Full sheet of Twenty Himmler Parody Stamps
Black and Violet Proofs of the Himmler Parody Stamps Type II
Proofs of
the Himmler exist in black and in violet. Above, we depict proofs of the
Type II Himmler parody stamps. They originate from a German collector who
found them in Denmark decades ago. They are printed in black on heavy,
smooth, very white cardboard with a chalky surface that resembles an old,
hard photo paper.
The better
looking parodies (Type I) exist in sheetlets of four (2 across x 2 down),
sheetlets of eight (4 across x 2 down) and as single stamps. A German friend
told me many years ago that he was offered a sheet of four of the type I
proofs for $2250.
Early Rough Sheetlet Proof of Himmler Parody Type II
Three
different imperforate proof sheets of 8 (4 across x 2 down) exist of the
narrow-line variety (type II) with hand-written comments "V. Rough Proof -
1st Print" and "2nd Proof." The third proof was almost perfect and is nearly
identical to the finished parody stamps in black ink. British Stamp dealer
Ron Shelly owned the proof sheets, which were said to have come from the
estate of an assistant to Sefton Delmer. In 1976, he sold the sheets to a
collector in Arizona apparently using dealer Zbigniew Bokiewicz of
Continental Stamp Supplies Company of London as a middleman. The proof
sheets are discussed in L.N. Williams, "Britain's black propaganda bogus
stamp," British Philatelic Bulletin, August
1986; the sheets are depicted in Werner Bohne, GPS Reference Manual of
Forgeries, Release #26, April 1988.
A Fourth proof sheet in the Correct Color sold for $2214 in 2015 The
owner
states a similar sheet sold for $3,438 at Grosvenor Auctions (UK)
in May, 2008
A single
proof stamp of type II was sold by a London firm who purchased it in 1980
from a "Mr. Stephens who claimed to have been in Intelligence during the war
at the head of some 20 colleagues and in that position to have taken part in
making the plate for printing the Himmler stamp..."
The British
forger Ellic Howe first used a small printing shop called Index
Ltd at 56 Victoria Street, London, SW1. The Managing
Director was George Critchley, who had been the Secret Intelligence
Service's printer since WWI. David Stephens managed the shop.
Eventually,
Howe took over the engraving process and spread out the jobs to Fanfare
Press for printing, Spicer's for
the paper, and the Monotype Corporation for
loans of the various matrices which were otherwise unavailable in England.
By 1943, Stephens was in charge of Howe's private process engraving plant
off Chancery Lane.
A British
PWE report dated 7 January 1943 states that the parodies were submitted to
the SOE for quantity order on 15 December 1942, but that an order had not
been received by the time of this report. The order from SOE was placed on
15 January 1943. The PWE began the operation in the first week of April
1943. The parodies were prepared by Ellic Howe under the direction of Sefton
Delmer. An obituary for British stamp dealer Julian Clive in Linn's
Stamp News, September 1993, credits Clive with the idea of the Himmler
parody. The intent was to spread a rumor that Himmler was preparing himself
to be Führer and had ordered the printing of the parodies, thereby fueling
Hitler's paranoia. Delmer recalls in Black Boomerang:
The next document I asked Hull to produce for me was utterly beyond the
bounds of possibility, and I ought never to have ordered it. This was a set
of German postage stamps showing, instead of the head of Hitler, that of
Himmler. From the counterfeiting point of view it was a masterpiece. The
Himmler head was engraved in exactly the same style as the head of Hitler on
the ordinary German postage stamps. Which was not at all surprising. For
Hull had been producing scores of thousands of Hitler postage stamps over
the past three years. We used them for our posting jobs in the Reich because
our agents quite understandably felt it beneath their dignity to subsidize
the German war effort with even the price of a postage stamp.
Unlike the stamp itself, however, the story that went with it was entirely
unconvincing. Philatelist Himmler, it said, eager in his vanity to taste in
advance the pleasures of Fuhrerdom, had secretly ordered these stamps to be
made in readiness for the day of his accession. He loved looking at them.
But owing to the mistake of a subordinate official a few sheets had been
prematurely issued to the Post Office and the public and despite the frantic
efforts of trusted Gestapo and SD agents to hunt them down and retrieve
them, quite a few were still in circulation.
My friends of the underground went into operation with considerable
enthusiasm for this silly Delmer stunt and posted letters and newspapers
bearing the Himmler stamp in letterboxes all over Germany. S.O.E. agents
delivered German newspapers with wrappers bearing the stamps with
counterfeited cancellation marks to subscribers in Sweden and Switzerland
who we knew were regular recipients of German newspapers. But no one noticed
the Himmler stamps. Not even when in my gloom at the lack of an echo to the
operation I asked that the newspaper wrappers with the Himmler stamps should
be delivered to known philatelists. The trouble was that Hull's counterfeit
was far too excellent, the Himmler stamp much too similar to the Hitler
stamp, and the public-including the philatelists-far too unobservant.
Finally, in sheer despair, my friends in S.O.E. sold some wrappers to stamp
dealers in Stockholm and Zurich, and that way, the story of the Heinrich
Himmler stamp did at last percolate into the neutral press. But as an
operation that stamp campaign had most sadly and badly misfired.
Not, however, for the stamp dealers. A set of these Himmler stamps commands
a high price in philatelistic auction rooms today. I wish I had some.
It is
interesting to note that although Delmer was an excellent spy-master, he
wasn't much of a philatelist. He says that the parody was "a set," when it
fact it was a single stamp, later reprinted to improve the image. He also
says that they are identical to the Hitler stamps and yet the pose is quite
different with Himmler in full-face rather than in profile. We find this
over and over in wartime biographies, when individuals try to discuss stamps
and actually know very little about them.
The "Operation Water Wave" Watermark
Delmer
acknowledges that the propaganda effort was a flop. However, postwar
information shows that samples of the parody were delivered to Himmler, who,
enraged, retaliated in 1944 by initiating Unternehmen Wasserwelle (Operation
Water Wave), the German parodies of British stamps. In my original article I
point out that although Delmer did not fool any philatelists, he did fool
the American Office of Strategic Services. I quote a report to Washington
that mentions the stamp and suspects that there is a pro-Himmler,
anti-Hitler underground at large in Germany. Those gullible Americans!
Allen
Dulles to Washington D.C.:
As to the Himmler stamp, I do not know whether there are any copies
available. Far as I know, only one turned up in Switzerland…It may have been
a black propaganda stunt by one of our allies or it may have been a slip by
Himmler or some of his friends of which they quickly refuted.
On 10 June
1944 Berne reported to Washington D.C:
The Himmler stamp may have been a trick pulled by some of Himmler's enemies
to make trouble for him, or it may be that some enthusiast in the Ministry
of the Interior thought it might be nice to honor Himmler this way…In any
event, the mystery of the stamp has not been cleared up.
Speaking of
the Americans, we now know that General Donovan of the OSS sent American
President Roosevelt at least one Himmler parody with a Stuttgart
cancellation. He sent the stamp to Roosevelt on September 29, 1944.
A "thank
you" note from Roosevelt says:
October 5, 1944
Dear Bill,
Ever so many thanks for the Himmler and Hitler stamps. I had heard
that there was such a stamp as the Himmler one and it will be an interesting
addition to my collection.
My best to you,
Very sincerely yours,
"F.D.R"
What is
interesting is that as we have just shown, the Himmler parody was produced
by Armin Hull for the British Political Warfare Executive starting in
December 1942. One wonders if Donovan took credit for this stamp as an
American product, or did he tell the President that it was made by the
British years before.
Fredric
Boyce says in SOE's Ultimate Deception: Operation Periwig, Sutton
Printing, UK, 2005, that the Himmler stamp was produced as part of the black
Operation Periwig campaign to convince the German people that there were
anti-Nazi resistance movements within the Third Reich. However, since we
know that the Himmler stamp operation started in April 1943, and the
deception campaign started about November 1944, it would appear that the
author is incorrect.
Charles Cruickshank mentions the Himmler stamp and other forged documents
in The
Fourth Arm: Psychological Warfare 1938 - 1945,Davis-Poynter,
London, 1977:
Black leaflets included a whole range of ingenious forgeries: posters
purporting to be of German origin; currency notes; clothing coupons; ration
cards; postage stamps, usually imitations of the real thing, but including
one issue with Himmler's head to support the rumor that he was angling to
become Fuehrer; official notices headed "Heil Himmler!" for the same
purpose...
The Rumor Campaign
Of course,
the British did everything they could to make this rumor appear to be
genuine. In an attempt to raise the morale of occupied Europe and lower the
morale of the German military, civilians and their allies, the secret
British "Underground Propaganda Committee" produced well over 8,000 thousand
rumors, (they called them "Sibs" from the Latin (sibalare- to hiss).
Researcher Lee Richards mentions the whisper campaign and many of these
rumors in his book Whispers
of War. In regard to British
propaganda rumors about Himmler wanting to replace Hitler he lists several
moral-destroying rumors. I have selected a few of the more interesting ones:
20 August 1943 - Take the line that Himmler is trying to negotiate with the
generals in order to succeed Hitler... The generals want to make peace with
Britain and the U.S.; Himmler wants to make peace with the USSR, renaming
himself Gauleiter of Soviet Germany.
27 August 1943 - Himmler has established himself in so strong a position
that Hitler had to accept his explanation about the Himmler stamp which was
prematurely released...
17 September 1943 - Continue to push the line that Himmler is trying to make
peace with Russia...
1 December 1944 - An attempt was made to assassinate Hitler. Himmler
organized it. Himmler is preparing to canonize Hitler and prepare the way
for a new leader - himself.
There are a
number of PWE black propaganda envelopes and postcards franked with the
"Himmler" parody (PWE No. H.388) of the 6 pfennig German Hitler-head
definitive issue of 1941-1944. In 1943, Ellic Howe prepared a number of
covers for distribution to individuals in the neutral countries of
Switzerland, Sweden, and possibly Portugal. The covers and cards were
franked with one or more of the Himmler parodies and one or more of the
British forged Hitler-head definitives. British forgeries of German
cancellations, censor strips, and censor hand stamps were applied to the
covers. Most items show typewritten addresses, but at least one cover shows
a handwritten address and at least one unaddressed cover is known. These
covers and cards were probably placed into the mailboxes of the addressees
by British agents operating in the neutral countries. The covers could not
have gone through the German mail system since (a) at that time, all mail
from Germany to neutral countries had to be presented unsealed and without
any stamps to the post office, where the identity of the sender would be
checked and postage would be applied by the postal clerk; (b) the covers (as
contrasted to the postcards) do not show the mandatory name and address of
the sender.
A
letterhead and rubber stamp were prepared (PWE No. H.389) for use in the
Himmler postage stamp operation. The letterhead bears the text "Der deutsche
Volkswirt / Berlin-Charlottenburg 2 Kantstrasse 162" and other business text
in black ink on white paper.
Researcher
Lee Richards reports that in an attempt to ascertain the effects of its
clandestine psychological warfare, the British Political Warfare Executive
routinely monitored neutral and enemy media looking for comment and reaction
to its radio broadcasts, underground rumor-mongering and leaflets. The
comments of enemy prisoners of war, captured documents and other
intelligence sources were also studied. Any comebacks to PWE propaganda
campaigns were circulated to interested parties through Evidence
of Reception reports.
The following reports mention the Himmler parody:
August 1943: The stamp bearing the head of Himmler has now been referred to
in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, which carries
a reproduction of it in its issue of 28 July 1943 with the comment that it
is very unusual for a politician's head to be used on a stamp during this
lifetime when he is not the leader of the country.
November 1943: A paragraph in Stanley Gibbons Stamp Monthly (October 1943)
refers to a Lisbon report that Himmler had ordered the arrest of the
director of the department responsible for printing German postage stamps.
Himmler had ordered the preparation of stamps bearing his effigy but they
were printed too soon, and some of them leaked out. Himmler therefore vented
his wrath on the printing department. The paragraph continues by pouring
ridicule on the whole story on the grounds that the preparation of a stamp
involves dozens of people, and in a spy-ridden country like Germany the news
of such work would be bound to leak out. A similar story was sent by a
journalist in Lisbon to the Editor of the North American
Alliance on 14th September.
December 1943: The Himmler postage stamp has had considerable publicity this
month. It arose from the arrival in Switzerland of a letter franked with
this stamp and postmarked "Stuttgart - 23 September 1943." An article
appeared on it in the National Zeitung, Basle (22
December 1943) and also in the Berner Briefmarken Zeitung. The
Daily Telegraph (1 January 1944) under a Zurich dateline
reports that the German radio had announced that a batch of these stamps,
not yet in circulation, had been stolen from the Stuttgart GPO. Swiss
philatelists were said to have paid as much as £35 for a copy.
February 1944: The Himmler stamp continues to be a subject of discussion in
the Swiss press. The Berner Briefmarken Zeitunghas
further correspondence about it and declares that an official notice from
the Reichspostministerhas denied the
authenticity of the stamp. The Journal de Geneve (28
January 1944) connects Himmler's possible wish to liquidate Hitler...The
Daily Mirror(29 February) gives a long story about the
stamp under a Lisbon dateline, and winds up by saying that it is estimated
that a couple of the stamps in good condition would fetch $5,000 in America.
March 1944: The Himmler stamp continues to provide news and the Evening
Standard (11 April) claims to have unearthed the "facts."
It is a normal issue of the German Post Office, and forms one of a series of
four, designed to commemorate Hitler's tenth anniversary, the other three
bearing portraits of Hitler, Goebbels and Ley.
April 1944: The Himmler stamp continues to be talked about. The Swiss paper Journal
D'yverdon (3 February 1944) tells the usual story about
it, and adds that it caused the disgrace of Himmler and the coming into
power of Martin Bormann. It is also mentioned in the Weekly
Illustrated of India (26 March) which says it is puzzling
British Intelligence Officers.
We mention
the envelope addressed to Dagens Nyheterabove.
I have more data on that cover from a 1978 letter from the individual that
opened the envelope. He said:
My own Himmler stamps arrived on a brown envelope. The envelope contained a
number of stenciled pages containing information on the situation in
Germany… Unfortunately, I cut the stamp off the envelope on arriving home…
The franking was very poor, and consisted of a few undecipherable lines….
It is interesting to note that the British production of these Himmler
parodies apparently led directly to the Germans producing propaganda
parodies of British stamps. Adolf Burger, one of the Jewish counterfeiters
held by the Germans in Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp says in the
Devil's Workshop: a Memoir of the Nazi Counterfeiting Operation,
Frontline
Books, 2009:
In the middle of 1943 stamps turned up in the Ruhrgebiet that were purple
imitations of the real 6-pfennig Hitler stamp. However, they did not bear
the image of the Fuhrer, but that of Heinrich Himmler. The Gestapo
discovered the stamps and handed them over to headquarters in Berlin,
together with a counter-intelligence report which stated that the stamps had
been found after an attack by British planes.
As usual we (the counterfeiters) were shown the Himmler stamps as a model.
Anyone who thought that Himmler would be delighted to see himself
unexpectedly on a stamp was mistaken. On the contrary, he was indignant and
felt that he and the National Socialist state were being mocked, and started
looking for revenge. He knew exactly how it was to be carried out. He
intended to strike back using the same weapon as was used against him,
namely stamps.
For more on
this propaganda campaign see "Operation Water Wave" below, in the German
section of this article.
Postwar
fabrications of covers bearing the Himmler parody are known. Numerous
postwar forgeries exist of both types of the parody. Most postwar frauds of
the parody are clumsily prepared and are easily identified. One dangerous
fraud may be detected by the presence of 6 distinct dots in the small
rectangle on Himmler's forehead. The legitimate parody has only 5 dots; a
horizontal shading line extends into the rectangle's upper left corner. In
the past, the parodies sold for about $100-150 each. In October 2009, a lot
bearing the two types of Himmler parodies sold for $1300 at auction.
Another Himmler parody - Germany Shackled
A less-classic British PWE parody of Himmler depicts him shackling a
civilian. This parody of the German 9 November 1944 red Hitler Putsch stamp
shows Himmler leading a manacled civilian man, who represents Germany in the
chains of Fascism. The stamps were printed offset in sheets of 20 stamps
(5x4). They are known both perforated and imperforate, although the latter
are quite rare. Postwar forgeries exist. The parody was probably produced in
December 1944. I first wrote about this parody in "A philatelic view of
Heinrich Himmler, "The American Philatelist, February
1970.
The Hans Frank Parody
The PWE produced a parody of the genuine Hitler stamp, instead depicting
Hans Frank, the General Governor of occupied Poland. I first wrote about
this parody in depth in "The Hans Frank stamp parody, "S.P.A. Journal,
February 1970. The stamp is a black parody of the General Government 1941 20
groschen sepia Hitler-head stamp showing Hans Frank full-face. The
propaganda parody is PWE No. H.308. The design was started in early January
1943. It was printed by Waterlow & Sons in sheets of 20 (5x4), perforated 12
1/2 comb. 5,000 copies were delivered on 11 March 1943. The British
airdropped the Frank stamps in containers between the end of January and the
end of April 1943, during the RAF's second drop period, which had the code
name "Intonation." In June 1943, the Polish Underground prepared a small
number of canceled covers bearing the Frank parody and two genuine General
Government 2-groschen Hitler-head stamps and containing a propaganda
leaflet. The sheets are also known imperforate.
The Frank Parody Image on a Propaganda Leaflet
The image
used on the Frank parody is found on several Allied propaganda leaflets.
This one is
entitled "Announcement." It is gummed so that it can be stuck on a wall or a
lamp pole. Some of the text is:
It is our intention to administer a just and effective punishment to the
leaders for the organized murder of thousands of innocent people and for the
cruelties which violated all principals of Christian faith.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
President of the United States.
The "Action
Frank" envelopes were prepared by the Polish Underground for occupied Poland
and had a British PWE 20 groschen Hans Frank stamp parody (PWE No. H308) and
often a propaganda leaflet. In June 1943, a small secret group called
"Wawerczyke" (loosely, "Pinprick Sabotage Organization") that was a part of
the Polish AK (Armii Krajowej - the Home Army) prepared and distributed the
letters in an operation known as "Action Frank." This action was a part of a
larger operation known as "Action N" (the "N" stands for "Niemcy," which is
Polish for "Germany"). Each letter was stamped with one copy of Ellic Howe's
Hans Frank parody and two copies of the 2 groschen Hitler-head issue of the
General Government. The covers were addressed to individuals in various
Polish towns. Inside the envelopes was placed a printed leaflet with
voluminous text on both sides. A cover with original insert sold for $6850
in a mail sale of November 1990, and for $3150 in another sale of September
1998. A cover (without insert) sold for $5,250 in an auction of summer 2000.
Hans Frank Parody on Cover
When I
first wrote my article on this parody we knew of about a half-dozen covers.
We now know of more than 30.
The Propaganda Enclosure
Many of the
covers contained this black propaganda message. It is entitled "Germans of
the Reich." It pretends to be written by a group of Germans living in
occupied Poland. It berates the Nazi Party for the "wild, thoughtless and
indeed stupid methods" used against the Poles which have just made them more
fanatical in their hatred toward Germany. Some of the extremely long text on
both sides of the leaflet is:
At this time when everything is at risk and the Russian Bolsheviks
infiltrate the hinterland of the front with saboteurs and gangs it is a
purely irresponsible action on the part of the High Police Director to have
entire villages in the district of Zamsoc forcefully relocated... It is easy
to explain and understand why resistance occurred. Prepared for the worst,
the angry farmers turned to resistance. Police measures taken during this
campaign caused 2000 innocent humans to lose their lives... This is the
fruit of unpardonable and foolish PARTY POLITICS... To those of us
Volksdeutsche who have lived peacefully and untroubled among the Poles for
decades, these measures are so alienating that they provoke only true terror
at the thought of this degeneration of German culture...
British P.W.E. Leaflet G.49
British
Political Warfare Executive Leaflet G.49 uses the same portrait of Hans
Frank in a wanted poster. The Royal Air Force airdropped it over the enemy
for two consecutive nights starting 9 August 1943. The leaflet is printed in
black and red and the "G" in the code indicates it targeted German military
and civilians. The folded leaflet opens up on one side to show German troops
supervising the digging of mass graves for murdered Polish civilians with
the caption:
Justice
After a Mass Execution in the Lublin District
Some of the
text is:
Will the war criminals ever admit that the war is lost?
No, never. As long as they can find anyone stupid enough to die for them
they will exploit this. They will never capitulate. Who in their position
would do so? They will stop at nothing in order to make others die for them
to the last possible moment, in order to prolong their own lives. For this
they will be prepared to go to any lengths. They will lie as long as lies
are effective. When lies no longer help them they will use brute force. For
they have, according to Goebbels' own words "destroyed all their bridges
behind them".
The war criminals are the war prolongers.
The other
side of the leaflet is entitled:
For them war means life, peace means death
The leaflet
depicts six documents with photographs of high Nazi officials charged with
war crimes. They are Geppert, Alvensieben, Zörner, Fischer, Wächter and
Frank. Beneath the Frank document is the caption:
Frank
Wanted for murder. The number of victims is not completely established; but
probably more than one million. He is co-responsible for the mass murder of
Jews in special extermination camps in Belzec and Treblinka. He is solely
responsible among other things for the murder of 430 Poles in Iza, 23 in the
district of Grojec (March 1943), 94 in Warsaw, 180 in the district of
Miechow, 4 in the district of Milec, and 60 in the district of Sandomierz
(May 1943).
A similar
leaflet is coded G.70 with the title "The Accounts are being Kept." It was
airdropped by the R.A.F. from 22 September 1943 to 18 October 1943. This
second leaflet was black and white and depicted just five wanted criminals
instead of the six of G.49. They are Geppert, Zörner, Fischer, Alvensieben,
and Frank. The caption beneath the Frank photograph is the same as G.49
above.
Frank Death Picture
True to
their word, the Allies executed Hans Frank by hanging after the end of WWII.
This is his official photograph, released by the U.S. Government. Howard K.
Smith wrote that:
He was the only one of the condemned to enter the chamber with a smile on
his countenance. Although nervous and swallowing frequently, this man, who
claimed to have returned to his childhood Catholic faith after his arrest,
gave the appearance of being relieved at the prospect of atoning for his
evil deeds. In October 2009, a single copy of the Hans Frank stamp with
margins on two sides sold for $1,000 at auction.
There is an
entire field of collecting that we call "Secret Posts." These are various
secret addresses that were used during WWII to get mail to and from agencies
in the Axis and Allied camps. They allowed people on different sides to
correspond and conduct business. There are literally hundreds of such
addressed, some to low value civilian organizations, and some to extremely
important military agencies. The 22 February 1944 card above was mailed from
German-occupied Warsaw, Poland, to Rus Alexandre Herculano
41 in Lisbon, Portugal. Since Lisbon was a hotbed of
intrigue as a neutral country on the Continent, there are over 50 such
addresses in that nation alone. This particular card would have been picked
up and forwarded to the Polish Red Cross in London. This is a very important
field and deserves an article of its own. We just show one card to whet the
appetite of the reader.
The Hindenburg Forgery
I first wrote about this forgery in "Allied forgeries of the postage
stamps of Nazi Germany, "The American Philatelist, February
1971. The British forged the 1934 German 12 pfennig carmine Hindenburg
medallion stamp to mail propaganda tracts to Germany. The forgery is printed
by typography on unwatermarked paper in sheets of 4 (2x2), and possibly in
sheets of 15 (3x5) or 20 (4x5). They were perforated 14 x 14 1/4 comb, very
close to the genuine. The forgery is excellent, but may quickly be
distinguished from the genuine since the unshaded area of the throat is
wider in the forgery, and the forgery shows a red border around the head
(particularly the face) that is absent in the genuine.
A
declassified memorandum found in the British Public Records Office by Lee
Richards may cast light on this item. The text reads:
4 April 1941 - 10 April 1941 / German Stamps. We have sent D/H Section [SOE
Balkans & Middle East Section] 5,000 12 pf. stamps, including a few genuine
ones, for the purposes of posting letters in Germany, for use of the Middle
East.
This must
refer to the Hindenburg forgery, as there is no other known British forgery
of a 12 pfennig stamp. The SOE may have inherited the stamp forgery project
from an earlier propaganda unit such as Section D under Major Lawrence
Grand. Another probable reference to the Hindenburg forgery is in Charles
Cruickshank's SOE in Scandinavia. Cruickshank reports
the use of forged German stamps by what must have been Section D in
Stockholm, and that section existed only from 1938 to July 1940. He also
mentions a courier taking 10,000 envelopes with forged stamps into the Third
Reich each week.
German youth are on the march...but where?
This 14-page brochure was found inside one of the envelopes bearing a forged
Hindenburg stamp.
The Hindenburg forgery appears on envelopes containing propaganda
messages. The propaganda messages are a series of numbered and dated
pamphlets entitled "Tatsachen / Informationsblatt für Deutsche" ("Factual
Information Sheet for Germans"). The German-language propaganda messages in
the envelopes include the following subtitles: "German mothers: What will
become of our children?"; "To Germany's thirty million Catholics"; and
"German youth are on the march... but where?" The known titles of the
propaganda fit well with the main propaganda themes used by Section D:
attacking the Nazi-Soviet Non-aggression Pact, attacking the anti-Christian
policies of the Nazis, propaganda aimed specifically at German women, and
propaganda to cause division between Germany and Austria. Several envelopes
containing propaganda and bearing uncanceled stamps exist. A single canceled
example appeared in 1998 from Brachelen dated
26.4.41.
The Witzleben Parody
The British
PWE produced a "Witzleben" black parody of the Germany 1943 24+26 pfennig
brown-red Hitler Putsch stamp, PWE No. H.1227 (November 1944). I first wrote
about this product in "More propaganda parodies," German
Postal Specialist, April 1977. The parody shows General Field Marshall
Erwin von Witzleben, whom the Germans hanged for his role in the
unsuccessful plot to blow up Hitler. Text is "Gehangt am 8 Aug 1944: und ihr
habt doch gesiegt," ("Hanged on 8 August 1944: and despite all you were
victorious."). The British product parodied an earlier genuine German stamp
depicting a Storm Trooper.
The complete sheet of Witzleben parody stamps
The original German stamp
- the basis for the Witzleben parody
The parody
was printed photogravure in sheets of 20 (4x5), perforated 14. 5,000 sheets
were sent to Major Wintle for the SOE on 7 December 1944. In 1940, von
Witzleben (1881-1944) was Commander of Army Group D in France, and was in
overall charge of Army West when he was relieved by Hitler. Witzleben was an
active conspirator against the Hitler regime, and was chosen as the military
head of the resistance group that was to have formed a new government had
the plot to assassinate Hitler succeeded.
We
mentioned earlier that spies seldom get it right when they talk about
stamps. Ewan Butler was in charge of the German Section of the British
Special Operations Executive in Stockholm, Sweden. In regard to the
Witzleben parody, like Delmer, he calls the single stamp a set:
London provided us with another set of forged stamps. These bore the head of
Field Marshall von Witzleben, who had headed the military element of the
plot, recorded the date of his execution, and a slogan originally devised by
the Nazis to honor those who fell in the Munich Putsch on November 1923...
Witzleben's show trial
A full
sheet of 20 British parodies of the German Witzleben stamp was sold in June
2013 for 5,000 Euros ($6725 US) and another was offered in December 2013 for
9500 Euros ($12,835 US).
THE WINTER RELIEF PARODY STAMPS
The Winter Relief Booklet Outer Front Cover
The Winter Relief Booklet Inner Front Cover
A pane of Winterhilfe stamps
No mention
of British parodies would be complete without a look at the "Winter Relief
Fund" parodies. These stamps have been talked about in the philatelic press
for years, the one stamp often called "Himmler talking his head off." I
first wrote about these stamps in "A philatelic view of Heinrich Himmler," The
American Philatelist, February 1970. The background story is wonderful
with the image being used by both the British and the Germans, each for
their own propaganda purposes. I also depict some of the items in my article
on "Death
and Disfigurement" as a PSYOP Theme.
The "Winter Relief Fund" parodies
The British
PWE "Winterhilfe" black propaganda stamps were modeled vaguely after the
Germany 1938 Winterhilfe stamps. The Nazi Party maintained a winter charity,
for which there was an annual fund drive. Those who contributed received a
variety of small items in return. The "Winterhilfe" had for a motto "No one
shall go hungry or cold." Anyone could apply for aid, and according to their
needs might receive cash or food, fuel, or clothing. The parodies are PWE
No. H.292 (December 1942). Printed offset in booklet form, perforated 14
comb, in quantity 10,000 in January 1943 and delivered to the SOE on 7 and 8
January 1943. 100 additional booklets were sent to the Free French on 28
April 1943. The booklets were issued to Free Polish units operating aircraft
in the Mediterranean area. The PWE also prepared propaganda covers bearing
these labels, destined for Poland. The stamp and cover propaganda operation
was halted, and the items recalled to Great Britain and destroyed. Only a
few booklets and covers survived, retained by some of the Polish pilots. The
stamps are not exceedingly rare but the complete booklets are. Several have
been sold over the years. In 1987 a complete booklet was sold for $2,000. In
2013, another such booklet sold for $4,700.
An Envelope Bearing the Winterhilfe Stamps
A Belgian
underground newspaper, "La Voix des Belges," No. 36, January 1944, has a
short article (in French) entitled "Wintershilfswerk" that reports a
correspondent who returned from Germany with two clandestinely sold
vignettes that appear to be the British propaganda stamps. If true, this
would be the only indication of the use of the stamps inside Germany.
However, this report may have originated with British intelligence, who
often inserted propaganda misinformation to encourage the resistance. An
envelope exists dated 13 September 1943 that bears two of the parody stamps
(heavily cancelled "O.K.I. 689" by a German administrative department) and a
Belgian stamp addressed to "Headquarters in Nivelles." Philatelic
specialists believe that this envelope was prepared by the Belgian
Underground. Between 1941 and 1943, over a hundred British PWE and SOE
agents were sent to Belgium, so bringing the parody stamps in would be no
problem.
We should add that the stamps did not just appear on the scene full
blown. In late 1942, as PWE No. H235, the British produced a set of five 3x4
1/2-inch gummed leaflets using the Winterhilfswerk theme. The five leaflets
show (H.235A) Goebbels talking; (H.235B) Himmler with a businessman;
(H.235C) soldier with his face shot off; (H.235D) Himmler holding a gun and
a collection tin; (H.235E) Hitler. Leaflets (C) and (D) depict the basic
vignettes subsequently used on the stamp parodies. As a part of its
counteroffensive in February 1945, Germany dropped a related leaflet on U.S.
troops. The German leaflet bears the "face shot away" picture, as in leaflet
(C), with a message on the horrors of war. I illustrate and describe this
item in "Conversations with a master forger, "Scott's
Monthly Stamp Journal, January 1980.
Propaganda cover sent through the mail with Winterhilfe stamps
At first, this seems like an ordinary propaganda cover, but the
Poles went to great pains to make the address meaningful. According to Bert
Powell writing in Stamps, 4 March 1950:
The Italian cancellation is spurious and purposely created by the
Poles. The Polish field cancellation is thoroughly genuine. The first line
means “Honorary Sir.” The second line (name) translates to “torturer.” The
town name can be translated as “To persecute.” The street address is “17 Gas
Street,” a reminder of the German gas chambers. So, although the cover seems
to bear a normal address, it translates to:
Honored Sir
Torturer
To Persecute
17 Gas Street
Poland
Germany 50 Pfennig Railway Fiscal Stamp
Germany 50 pfennig Railway Fiscal Stamp
The British also parodied and forged a number of German stamps, labels
and ration coupons. This is one of the rarest forgeries known. The British
PWE forgery of a Germany 50 pfennig buff railway fiscal stamp, displaying a
stylized imperial eagle within a circle containing text Deutsche Reichsbahn.
The genuine stamp is No. M3a in Martin Erler & John A. Norton, Katalog
der Stempelmarken von Deutschland (Catalogue of the
Adhesive Revenues of Germany), Vol. 1: Deutsches
Reich/Bundesrepublik, ORA Verlag, Icking, Germany, 1988. The forgery is
printed in a miniature sheet of 4, perforated 14 3/4:14; the genuine stamp
is perforated 14. The forgery was presumably prepared for use on forged
Reichsbahn employee identity cards. The German identity cards required a
current "evidence stamp." (In some cases, for instance with Ostbahn evidence
stamps, there was a different colored stamp for each month.) Employees of
the Reichsbahn (the German national railway) were issued an identification
card with a stamp placed on it. A corner margin copy was offered at the 28th
Henry Passier auction on 6 July 1968, but was not sold. It was offered again
at the auctions of 28 June 1969, 31 January 1970, and 29 August 1970, before
being sold at the 41st Passier auction on 8 January 1972 for DM 180.
DBZ magazine
article reported that the buyer was C. von Schubert. This same item was sold
by the 227th Interphila / Grobe & Lange auction on 29 June 2001, in a mixed
lot of "private forgeries" that sold for DM 2100.
Forged Food Rations
Stamps
The British forged numerous types of German ration stamps and dropped
them over Germany by the Royal Air Force. Above we see blocks
of four types of the stamps: Nahrmittel (25g, nutrients such as grain,
beans, or starch); Kase (30g, cheese); Brot (50g, bread); and Fleisch
(50g, meat). These stamps were prepared in sheets of 100 and dated 6
February 1944.
Similar full sheets were from the estate of Major General Robert McClure,
Chief of the Psychological Division in WWII. They were mailed to his son by
St. Louis Post-Dispatch editor Irving Dilliard, a lieutenant colonel during
WWII who served as a psychological warfare specialist on General Dwight D.
Eisenhower's staff. Dilliard said in part:
Here are two sets of sheets of the Sykewar food stamps that I
brought back from Germany…
"Sykewar" is not a word we often see when talking about
psychological warfare, but some Americans did use it and in fact it was the
title of the Daniel Lerner book on the workings of the American Office of
War Information during WWII: Psychological Warfare Against Nazi Germany:
the Sykewar Campaign. Cambridge: The M.I.T. Press, 1971.
Lebensmittelkarte (Food ration card forgery)
One of the most
attractive of the British forgeries is the "Food ration card for the
front-line worker with the Fuehrer's thanks." These ration cards were given
to soldiers on the Eastern Front who returned to Germany wounded or on
leave. They were entitled to use the extra rations on the card along with
their regular travelers' ration coupons they received at their destination.
Sometimes, railway workers or others who had performed some special services
were issued the cards.
Kase (cheese) ration card forgery
Cheese ration coupons
were prepared in sheets of 100, each coupon allowing the buyer to purchase
30 grams. The British forgery sheet is usually dated 6 February 1944.
Apparently, many
German citizens did use the ration coupons because a report in Leaflet
Operations in the Month of December 1943 says:
Reports
continue to come in from Germany regarding the confusion caused by the
dropping of fake ration cards. Two "war economy offenders" who had tried to
use a fake card in a market were each sentenced to two years imprisonment at
hard labor.
James M. Erdmann mentions the ration stamps in Leaflet Operations of the
Second World War (edited for brevity):
The conception of producing forged German ration cards and stamps must be
credited to the British Ministry of Economic Warfare. From their long and
detailed study of the German rationing system and general food shortages,
they had concluded that German society could be subject to severe strains if
many German Hausfraus descended on their local Lebensmitteln and
"innocently" but illegally bought out the available supplies of meat and
cheese. The S.O.E. worked with the Political Intelligence Department of the
Foreign Ministry to find out how the German food rationing system worked,
and to print up the fake stamps. The forgeries were printed at secret
Political Intelligence Department printing shops. Aircrews of both the
R.A.F. and Eighth Air Force dropped these stamps "sandwiched" in their loads
of regular propaganda leaflets. Men of the Special Leaflet Squadron made
many ration card deliveries in the latter part of 1944 and, judging by their
letters, hugely enjoyed the work.
The Luftfeldpost Military Air Permit Stamp Forgery
The British
PWE forged the German 1942 blue Luftfeldpost military air permit stamp, PWE
No. H.349 (February 1943); reprinted as PWE No. H.516 (August 1943). I first
wrote about this forgery in "Allied Forgeries of the Postage Stamps of Nazi
Germany," The American Philatelist, February 1971. The
stamp was printed typographed in sheets of 20 (4x5). Perforated 12 1/2 comb
(the genuine item is perforated 13 1/4:14, rouletted, or imperforate).
Although the quality of the forgery is excellent, it may be easily
distinguished from the genuine by the presence of an open rather than closed
radio antenna and by breaks in one of the shading lines in the sky behind
the tail. (The breaks form "...-", Morse code for "V," and it has been
suggested that this was introduced as "V for Victory" propaganda.) Under PWE
No. H.349, 25,000 copies were delivered to the SOE on 23 March 1943, 37,500
on 2 April, and 62,500 on 5 April; an additional 12,500 were sent to the
Free French on 28 April. Under PWE No. H.516, 30,000 copies were delivered
to the SOE on 11 August 1943, and 50,000 on 16 August.
A Complete British Forgery Sheet of Twenty
The
original German model was used to enable soldiers in Russia and Norway to
communicate to and from their families at home by a faster method than the
normal feldpost system. An early memorandum dated 26 February 1943 from
Sefton Delmer describes the intended purpose of this and other forgeries:
Memorandum re H.349...
These air field-post stamps give soldiers the right to send mail home by air
post. Distribution of these stamps among soldiers in occupied territories
would not only prove very acceptable to the soldiers, e.g. as a bribe, but
hamper the German field postal authorities, who, as part of a campaign for
the isolation of the front from the home country, are cutting down, as far
as possible, field post in general. It would also swell the volume of
airmail, that is, burdening the German air mail to an extent undesired by
the German authorities... Every forgery of this kind that we can get
circulated increases the sense of instability and insecurity and has a
demoralizing effect.
It has been
stated that the forgery was intended to be used to mail propaganda
literature to Germany from occupied Norway. Whatever the intended uses,
there is no evidence that mail bearing this forgery was ever sent through
the German feldpost system.
The Dutch "Seagull" Forgery
The British also counterfeited the stamps of the occupied Netherlands. I
first wrote about this operation in "Those Doughty Dutch Decoys, "The
American Philatelist, October 1970.
The British
forgery of the Netherlands 1935 1½ cent slate "seagull" stamp was produced
in sheets of 20 (5x4). This was the standard pattern for the forgeries
produced by Waterlow and Sons printers for the British Intelligence service,
and thus the stamps are often called British products. The round head and
point eye of the seagull (really a carrier pigeon) and the short height of
the letters are similar to those in the redesigned series of 1941
[Mi.380-391], which does not contain a 1½ cent item.
The time of production of this forgery is not definitely known, but is
surely between April and November 1941: the redesigned series of Dutch
stamps did not come into existence until April, and the quality of the work
is too poor to attribute it to PWE's Ellic Howe, who began his work in
November. The most probable originator is Section D. A.J. Pekelharing, whose
article "British 'propaganda' forgery of World War II - The 1½ cent
'Lebeau'", is translated in The Cinderella Philatelist, October 1986, page 78,
speculates that the British assumed that the 1½ cent would also be reissued
in the new design, and mistakenly adopted the new design.
I should
add that the Dutch Government in Exile worked with the PWE and SOE in Great
Britain and Abraham Elzas, the owner of one strip of the Seagull forgeries
stated in 1974 that “These stamps were printed in England during the war by
the Dutch Government in Exile and were handed to parachutists who were
dropped over occupied Holland.” I have found no mention of this stamp being
printed by the British, but that is not definitive since there are many
black items printed by the British that were given no specific job number.
On the other hand, A Dutch specialist told me in 1970 that a large group of
about 240 copies of the forgery were sold by a former officer of British
Intelligence who had been ordered to destroy them at the end of the war. I
know that such an order was given because I spoke to Ellic Howe years after
the war when he visited me and asked to photograph my collection because the
government had destroyed all of his productions under the Official Secrets
Act at War’s end.
The Dutch Genuine and forged 1½ Cent stamp
There were
also a number of British forgeries of French stamps in the lot which does
indicate a British hand in the project. A dealer by the name of Trager
originally purchased the entire lot. A Dutch dealer named Manuskowski then
purchased about 220 of the forgeries. The Dutch forgeries were all in
vertical strips of four which indicate 12 broken sheets. No full sheets
exist as far as we know. One alleged franked postcard was in the lot and
sold to a South African collector. Some envelopes are known but considered
post-war fakes.
The Dutch Speciale
Catalogus 2016 says that this forgery was fabricated during WWII by
order of the British Ministry of War at Waterlow and Sons Ltd. Printers in
London. I have no idea where they got that information though it is
probably true. I have not seen that printed in any wartime documents. German
specialist Wolfgang Baldus commented that the forged stamps could have been
used by a parachutist to send a postcard to a contact stating that he had
arrived safely since they were legal on postcards bearing no more than five
words. Another theory is that printed propaganda was sent in envelopes
inside the Netherlands franked by the forged stamp. The British forgery of
the German Hindenburg stamp was routinely used for that purpose.
The Dutch Forgery on Cover
The forgery
is known used on cover addressed to a firm in Den Haag. A large (25x18 cm)
business cover exists from Instituut voor Individueel Onderwijs, postmarked
Gravenhage Station H.IJ.S.M. 20-5-43N, addressed to E. Rutsma-Brenks,
Voorburg (Z-Holland) Princes Mariannelaan 32.
Originating with Occupied Netherlands (pro-Allied) during World War II
There is a private patriotic overprint Houdt Goeden Moed("Have
Good Courage") on two values of the Netherlands Queen Wilhelmina issue of
1940. The stamps are known in various arrangements of canceled and
uncanceled, on and off cover, and on cover with or without address. They
were produced by Mr. Pieter Jacob van den Ban, a Schiedam stamp dealer,
using his remnants of two values of the still-valid Wilhelmina issue. To
lessen the likelihood of casual detection, the overprints are applied with a
light shade of the basic color of the stamp. I illustrated and discussed
these stamps in "Those Doughty Dutch Decoys," The American
Philatelist, October 1970. According to published data, 90
copies of the 5 cents dark green stamp with light green overprint and 45
copies of the 12 1/2 cent dark blue stamp with light blue overprint were
produced. About ten copies of each stamp on cover are known.
These
stamps fall into a gray area. They were privately produced and that makes
them suspect, but apparently van den Ban was a member of the Dutch
Underground and as far as is known he never sold a stamp for profit. The
copies on the market turned up after the war when his belongings were sold
to pay his taxes. As a result, although made by a private individual. They
probably can be considered legitimate propaganda parodies.
Allegedly,
the Dutch used the phrase "houdt goeden moed" as a test to detect German
agents, since the Dutch "g" in "goeden" is pronounced with a harsh glottal
"h" that was difficult for Germans to voice.
The Italian King Victor Emmanuel Forgery
The British
PWE forged the Italian 1929-42 25 centesimi green Victor Emmanuel III stamp
in sheets of 20 (5x4), perforated 14 3/4:14. The genuine stamp is perforated
14. Prepared by Ellic Howe, probably in 1942 or the first half of 1943, but
possibly as late as summer or fall of 1943. It is possible that this stamp
was prepared to assist in the dissemination from Italy of the so-called
"Naples letters" (PWE No. H.298) in the first week of January 1943, although
this has not been confirmed.
The British "Robert Ley" Propaganda Postcard
I believe that it is common knowledge that the British counterfeited the
3, 4, 6 and 8 pfennig stamps of Nazi Germany. I have
not
mentioned them much in this
story because they are fairly common and everyone is already
aware of them. I wrote about them as early as February 1971 in "Allied
Forgeries of German Stamps, "The American Philatelist.
The Four British Forgeries of the German Hitler-Head Stamps
A Full Sheet of the British forgery of the 3 Pfennig German Hitler-Head
A
Full Sheet of the
British forgery of the 4 Pfennig German Hitler-Head
A Full Sheet of the
British forgery of the 6 Pfennig German Hitler-Head
A Full Sheet of the
British forgery of the 8 Pfennig German Hitler-Head
The design of the
German forgeries was done by British forger Armin Hull of the Political
Warfare Executive (PWE). The Printing was done by the British firm of
Waterlow & Sons, London at the request of the British government.
The forgeries are well known and have been written about countless
times. What has not been written about so much is how they were used.
Lawrence Grand
A Major of the Royal
Engineers who became Chief of Section D
He created the first
leaflets by Great Britain for Germany in WWII
He retired as a Major
General in 1952
Walter Stoneman –
National Portrait Gallery - London
Curiously, decades later,
Malcolm Atkin says in Section D for Destruction, Pen and
Sword Military, 2017, that section D was formed in April 1938 by Lawrence
Grand, under orders from the Chief of the Secret Service. And in March 1939,
five months before war was declared, he was given formal approval to begin
action. Grand’s first question was, "Is anything banned?" to which came the
blunt reply, "Nothing at all." Its twin aims were:
1. Undertake sabotage and
create anti-German political unrest in neutral and occupied countries.
2. Provide lines of
communication from neutral countries into enemy countries for introduction
of propaganda
[produced by Section D or from other departments].
Regarding propaganda:
On 26 November 1938 expanded the
remit on Section D into black propaganda. The propaganda work would fall
into four areas:
1. Broadcasting, using
foreign radio stations.
2. Making an index of
foreign newspapers and their journalists to direct material to them.
3. Leaflets, distributed by
any and every means and written appropriately for the group that would be
distributing them.
4. Whispering campaigns of
the type that were effective in the First World War.
The author goes on to mention the counterfeiting of a German 12
pfennig stamp and its dissemination on fake letters. Notice above that the
British did not forge a 12-pfennig stamp, but the Americans did. This means
that they could have used the American forgery although that is doubtful for
several reason, or more likely, Section D counterfeited them before they
were later made part of the British Special Operations Executive.
The practical task of editing, printing, and organizing the secret
distribution of German-language propaganda leaflets abroad and at least
2,000 12 pfennig stamps were forged. Recipients were sourced from a large
card index of addresses in Germany. A team of German refugees at the Lexham
Gardens house then addressed the envelopes, using a variety of Germanic
handwriting styles. Bundles of the finished product were either distributed
to country sections of Section D for posting or sometimes suitcase-loads of
material went to Paris, from where they were distributed in Germany via the
LEX organization of German exiles in France and Switzerland. The first
leaflet produced for the new German section, appeared in June 1939. Later
pamphlets included Austrian News, Jasomirgott Letters, A Magazine for German
Women, A Magazine for Austrian Women, Letters to Austrian Railway men and a
range of subversive stickers. In all, a million leaflets were claimed to
have been distributed in Germany up to 3 September 1939 by contacts of
Section D.
Although the British worried about fooling with mail from the
United States, Section D was not shy at all (edited for brevity):
In the early summer of 1940, when the fate of Britain was in the
balance and the USA was divided as to whether it was worth bolstering the
British war effort, Section D broke the official agreement that British
intelligence would not mount operations within the USA.
Early in December 1939 Section D came up with the idea that mail in
transit to Germany from neutral countries via Britain could be tampered with
to include propaganda that would appear to have come from the original
sender.
An HQ for Operation LETTER BAGS was established in a suite of the
Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool. The base of operations became the small and remote
Postal Censorship office in Myrtle Street, Liverpool, which dealt with 2nd
class mail that had the advantage of not being sealed, including circular
material such as newspapers, samples, and greetings cards. Neither the
British nor the German censorship departments paid much attention to this
class of mail, due to its bulk and limited security interest. Rather than
tamper with the existing mail, it was decided to introduce extra mailings to
Germany, supposedly coming from the USA, using envelopes of American type
face, and bearing cancelled US postal stamps, made possible due to the US
practice of allowing the purchase of ‘pre-cancelled’ stamps, not franked by
the US Postal Service, by firms with large mailing lists. First, such stamps
were roughly cut out from their original envelopes (then ‘lost in the post’)
by three women co-opted from the Postal Censorship department. An SIS
laboratory in Section N (responsible for the secret opening of foreign
diplomatic mail) then carefully removed the stamps and provided a gum,
identical to the original, for refixing them to new envelopes. Meanwhile,
Section D had arranged the use of the Shell Addressograph facilities, which
had three USA-made stencil machines, to print address labels for recipients
in Germany using information from existing address lists.
The first mailing purported to be a New Year Greetings card from
the fictitious 'Pan American German Friendship League' based in New York but
claiming offices in Chicago, Buenos Aires, and Montevideo. A cartoon
depicted Hitler and Stalin dining off the carcasses of Finnish and Polish
children, quoting from Hitler's speech that he would never be seen ‘wining
and dining the Bolsheviks.'
Meanwhile, in Liverpool 2,000 envelopes containing fake greetings
cards were judiciously inserted into the US mail bags. Over two nights in
the cold and draughty Myrtle Street office, the mail bags were secretly
opened and the new mail inserted by the team, wearing rubber gloves so as
not to leave fingerprints. Three or four appropriately addressed envelopes
were carefully slipped into existing string-tied bundles of letters. No more
than twenty bundles in any mail bag were so doctored. The mail bags were
then resealed using forged US Mail seals. The next day the rest of the
Postal Censorship staff, not aware of what had been done during the night,
carried out their usual sample inspections of the US mail bags so that
everything seemed normal. It took two nights with an eight-person team and,
upon completion, they celebrated with a bottle of champagne.
The second mailing was intended to be leaflets deploring the
Hitler-Stalin Pact, supposedly inserted by a German worker in sample packets
of coffee and cocoa sent regularly to Germany from the German-owned grocery
firm of Leineweber in Brazil. Unfortunately, there was a pause in the
sending of suitable coffee samples and this mailing was cancelled.
Instead, a third scheme was devised, purported to come from a
fictitious New York literary agent, 'Oscar Finch'. 'Finch’ wrote to several
German doctors offering to pay them for a rebuttal of an article (a fake)
that had supposedly been published in the Literary Digest, reporting on the
poor state of health of the German people. The real intention was to
distribute the pro-allied information contained in the fake article, sent by
First Class mail (requiring a forged New York franking stamp, painstakingly
stamped by hand to look as if it were machine-stamped). In the end it was
only possible to complete 200 mailings of the fake article. Plans were under
way for a much larger shipment of over 6,000 pieces of fake mail when, in
February 1940, it was decided to abandon the operation.
We
now return to British forgeries on postcards. The British placed
the 3-pfennig forged Hitler head stamp on a number of different propaganda
cards. The Robert Ley postcard is certainly the best known and most well
referenced in the literature. I considered adding one of the rarer British
productions such as the Scheel, Halder, or Schieber postcards to this story
but the webmaster thought that we should depict the Ley card because there
is so much information known about it.
The British
PWE black Robert Ley propaganda card is known in two formats, one imprinted
Drucksache (printed matter) and the other imprinted FELDPOST. I first
illustrated these and other British postcards in "Venomous propaganda post
cards," The American Philatelist, May 1969; and later
updated the story in "Black British Propaganda Postcards," The
American Philatelist, June 1988. Also see my internet article here".
Those imprinted Drucksache were often franked with the British forgery of
the Germany 3 pfennig red-brown Hitler-head stamp. They sometimes have an
address; sometimes a forged postmark. Large numbers of the Ley cards with
forged stamps were dropped by Allied planes on 8-9 January 1944 in the
vicinity of Hombourg, Belgium. The PWE code is H.623. It was prepared
November 1943 to early 1944. 80,000 were sent to the R.A.F. on 1 December
1943. As Q24 it was balloon-dropped from 8 January 1944 to 19 March 1945.
The front features an obviously well-fed Reich Commissar Ley giving a speech
at the left and a 15-line message in German at the right:
The Normal Consumer and Reich Commissar, Reich Leader Dr. Robert Ley, said
in The Angriffof 12 October 1943: '...We
National Socialists know no such thing as diplomatic rations. Every man,
whether he is a Reich minister or a Reich leader, has to live on rations
just like any ordinary workman, mechanic, and official. The normal rations
are enough. I myself am a normal consumer and live on them... (See other
side).'
On the left
of the address side is a lengthy German text citing the regulations that
legalized diplomatic rations for Nazi officials. The text shows that
officials received special rations. It says in part:
... (1) for themselves and their families... (2) for their co-workers,
domestic and foreign... (3) for special unavoidable parties...
The text
concludes with a pun that compares a big meal to a hanging:
Good appetite, Herr Ley - the last course is the heaviest.
The Germans
were aware of the propaganda postcards and forged stamps. The Sonderausgabe
zum Deutschen Kriminalpolizeiblatt(Special Edition of the
German Criminal Police Magazine), dated 2 May 1944, number 4868 says:
Lately Anglo-American bombers have spread large amounts of propaganda
postcards with forged 3 Reichspfennig post stamps.
Description of the forgery: The printed section is just a little bit smaller
than the original. The paper of the forgery is a little bit more yellow. In
UV-light the genuine post stamps light blue, where as the forgeries light
yellow. The original post stamp has sharper edges printed. The letters of
the forgery are also of a less sharp printing. The hairs, eyes, nose chin
and moustache are different. It has to be reported when these items are
distributed or collected. No public warning should be done.
The Ley
Feldpost card does not bear the counterfeit 3-pfennig stamp. It was PWE No.
H.641 and Q30. It was reprinted as PWE Nos. H.734, H.743, H.773, and H.792.
Erik Gjems-Onstad (in charge of the British SOE Operation
Durham in Norway 1943-1945) reports that his unit received
200 copies of H.641 on 11 August 1944.
The GPS
author and expertiser Werner Bohne had a Ley card stamped with the British
Luftfeldpost forgery. He had sold it by the time I found out so there was no
way to tell if this was truly a British product, or just an interesting
conversation piece made by some collector who placed an airmail stamp on the
card to make an instant rarity. Forged reprints of the Ley cards appeared in
Europe in the late 1980s. The forgeries have darker printing of the picture
and writing, and either have no stamp or have a genuine German 3 pfennig
Hitler-head stamp.
The British Parodies (above) of the Italian-German Friendship Issue (below).
Besides the British forgery of an Italian stamp; the PWE also parodied
the Italian 1941 Italian-German friendship issue in perforated sheets of 20
(4x5). Both parodies call attention to the notion that Hitler is in full
charge of the Axis partnership. They were probably prepared in fall 1943. I
first mentioned these parodies in "More propaganda parodies, "German
Postal Specialist, April 1977.
There are
two British productions. The first is a 25 centesimi green parody, with
Hitler snarling at a surprised Mussolini. The Latin text "Duo popoli / Un
führer" ("Two peoples, one leader") replaces the original "Duo popoli / Un
guerra" ("Two peoples, one war"). Mussolini's ceremonial axe and sword are
chipped. It is known perforated 13 1/2 and imperforate.
The second
stamp is a 50 centesimi green parody of the Italian violet, with the German
text "Zwei Volker / Ein Krieg" ("Two peoples, one war") inscription
replacing the original Italian text "Poste Italiane." Otherwise, the
rendition of the parody is faithful to the original. This is a more subtle
expression of German dominance than the other parody. It is perforated 13
1/2 and known imperforate.
Fakes have
been offered for sale in bright green, described as fraudulent; and in
washed-out green with oversize margins between the perforations and the
stamp design, described as reprints.
British PWE Booklet
The British
PWE produced two propaganda booklets depicting stamps of the Italian 1941
Italian-German friendship issue. The stamps depict Hitler and Mussolini. The
16-page booklets, in Italian, are entitled “Here are your allies” and “Here
are our enemies.” It seems likely that these similar yet complementary
booklets were intended to be dropped together, so as to provide the Italian
recipients with an ironic comparison between the formal alliance of the two
leaders and the actual effect on the people of the country. I first wrote
about these items in the German Postal Specialist,
April 1977.
The 50 centesimi violet stamp is depicted on the booklet entitled
Ecco
I Vostri Alleati. (“Here are your allies”) showing Hitler and Mussolini
smiling and talking in an open car. Code I.44.
The 1.25
lira blue stamp is depicted on booklet entitled Ecco I
Nostri Nemici(“Here are our enemies”), showing Hitler and
Mussolini smiling and talking in an open car. Code I.52.
An American Mussolini Propaganda Postcard
During WWII
Verona was a hotbed of Axis propaganda. Many of the German and Italian PSYOP
items were printed there. Apparently, after the fall of the Fascist
government in Italy the Allies used the same printing plant.
This U.S.
Army propaganda postcard depicts a caricature of Benito Mussolini in an open
car with Claretta Petacci (Bibi), his 33-year-old mistress. Text on the
front in English, Italian and French is "Bibi's Escape." A suitcase in the
open truck is labeled "Shining gold."
Il Duce was
denounced at a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council on 25 July 1943 and
jailed, but rescued on the order of Adolf Hitler and returned to Northern
Italy where he ruled a Republican Fascist state. On 28 April 1945,
Mussolini, along with his mistress was caught by Communist partisans as he
tried to escape to Switzerland. He and Claretta were summarily executed
without judicial procedure and hung from lamp poles. Hitler was so shocked
by the brutality of the execution and public humiliation that he ordered his
staff to burn his body after his suicide. The back of the postcard bears the
text: "Authorized 8-6-45 Psychological Warfare Branch - Press Office -
Verona - Reproduction prohibited."
Siegfried Frontline-Service
I often add items other than purely philatelic pieces to my propaganda
collection, especially if they are in the form of postcards or air letters.
This very interesting piece was produced by the Germans and is in the form
of a postcard to be used by prisoners to notify their family of their fate.
I first wrote about and illustrated this item in "Postcards to the enemy,
"S.P.A. Journal, July 1971. The German postcard inscribed "Siegfried
Frontline-Service," was delivered by rifle grenade to British and American
troops at the Siegfried Line about July 1944. One side has space for
addressee and sender, and has a small winged shell containing the text "By
rifle-grenade mail" in the lower left corner. The other side has a space for
a 15-word message, and instructions for use. The card is code numbered SW-31
and printed in bright red, white, and black. The postcard-leaflet was
produced by the German propaganda agency Skorpion West.
British PWE Parody of German 50 Reichspfennig Auxiliary Payment Certificate
H.692B
Before we
leave the British propagandists I want to mention that it was not just
stamps and postcards that were caricatured and forged. Besides philatelists,
numismatists can also enjoy studying and collecting in this field. I always
like to point out that the very same people that were producing the postage
stamps were also producing propaganda and forged banknotes. When I exhibited
I always added a few banknotes to the display frames to show the variety and
the scope of the Allied and Axis propagandists. Just as the British produced
black propaganda banknotes along with their stamps, the exact same people
who were producing the parodies of British stamps that we illustrate below
were also counterfeiting British currency. I have written 25 articles on
propaganda currency for the International Banknote Society
Journal that discuss this thematic in great detail. More
detailed information on the banknote depicted above is found in my article
"Psywar currency against Germany", Whitman Numismatic
Journal, January 1967 and later in "Propaganda Currency of Great
Britain and the Allies, IBNS Journal, Volume 24,
Number 3, 1985.
There are
four different British PWE parodies of the German 50reichspfennigarmed
forces auxiliary payment certificate with propaganda messages in German on
back prepared under PWE No. H.692. The four notes are designated PWE No.
H.692A through H.692D. The notes were reprinted as PWE No. H.917. All are
red and brown on white paper, 12 x 6 cm. The parodies are excellent
reproductions of the original certificate, complete with watermark. 10,000
each of H.692A through D were sent to the SOE on 24 February 1944; 80,000
each were sent to the R.A.F. on 1 March 1944. 210,000 of reprint H.917 was
sent to the R.A.F. on 19 May 1944. They were also distributed by balloon
from 13 March to 16 July 1944. I selected this note to depict because the
text on the back is down to earth and very basic.
I am a piece of Hitler's ass paper. Nobody accepts me because nobody can buy
anything with me
Czechoslovakian forgery of the Czechoslovakian 5 koruna red-brown fiscal
stamp of 1938
I said at
the start of this article that I would show the reader many of the rarest
propaganda stamps of WWII.
This item
is extremely rare, and I don't think it has ever been depicted before. It
was originally in the collection of my friend Swedish Specialist Ulf
Gunnarsson. I knew Ulf well and we had talked of writing an English-language
book on propaganda stamps shortly before his sudden death. He had previously
written a Swedish-language booklet on the subject. The above sheetlet was
printed by the Czechoslovakian Government-in-Exile. The forgery is known
from a single sheet of four. The construction of this sheet is highly
unusual. The four items are separated by wide gutters, with line
perforations 13 3/4 passing through all the margins of the stamps. The
forgeries are printed on pelure paper - a thin, tough, nearly transparent
paper with a grayish cast, which allows a somewhat vague see-through view of
material printed on the back side. Two side-by-side stamps separated by
gutters are printed on each side of the sheet. For the pair of stamps on
each side, the printing seems to have been done in two passes - a light
red-brown print for the border color, and a slightly darker red-brown for
the main design. A 1948 letter attests that the stamps were produced by the
Czech government-in-exile in London during World War II in order to provide
fake passports for Czech parachutists dropped into occupied Czechoslovakia.
This sheet is probably a proof of an item whose production was discontinued.
The forgery is a faithful replica of the original 1938 Czech fiscal, except
that the colored under printing for the stamp border is done on the top side
of the stamps, rather than on the back side as in the original.
Czechoslovakian Hitler "Poo-Poo" Souvenir Sheet
As long as we are talking about Czechoslovakia we should mention another
item that my old pal Herman "Pat" Herst Jr. mentions in his book Nassau
Street. Years ago I used to visit him in Shrub Oak N.Y. and we would
discuss these stamps while sitting around his pool. I am not saying that I
believe the story, but Pat believed in and as a result I bought the sheets
years ago and wrote about them in an article entitled "Secret Czech
patriotic marks on Bohemia, Moravia stamps," Linn's Weekly
Stamp News, 30 August 1965. According to Pat, there is a secret
anti-Hitler message on the unofficial Czechoslovakian propaganda souvenir
sheet produced by the Czechoslovakian stamp trade for an exhibition in Brno
on 19 September 1942. This sheet has a photograph of the back side of a
statue of a large man with his buttocks exposed. Curiously, directly under
the exposed buttocks one finds a copy of a 1942 Bohemia and Moravia stamp
featuring the head of Adolf Hitler. Although the Germans were allegedly
delighted with the honor, the message conveyed by the patriotic designers of
the sheet was anything but complimentary. The sheet exists in green and
brown.
The Channel Islands
The German
Army occupied the Channel Islands on 1 July 1940. During the occupation, the
letters "AAAA" and "AABB" were placed in the corners of the Jersey low value
postage stamps. The letters AAAA appear in the four corners of the Jersey
1941‑42 1-pence red postage stamp and are alleged to represent the phrase Ad
Avernum, Adolphe Atrox ("Go to hell, cruel Adolf"). The letters AABB are
alleged to represent the phrase "Adolphe Atrox, Bloody Benito." The "A"
appears in the two top corners, the "B" in the two bottom corners of the
Jersey 1941-1942 1/2-pence green postage stamp.
(Courtesy of Wolfgang Baldus)
This story
sounds like absolute nonsense and I really do not want to believe it, but
the British designer and engraver of the stamps, Colonel (then Major) N.V.L.
Rybot, stated in a letter that he included the secret letters in an effort
to lift the spirits of those few patriots who were in on the plot:
I did not produce the stamps to support the enemy. The commission gave me
the opportunity to play a trick on them. I inserted tiny "A"s in the corner
meaning "Ad Avernum, Adolphe Atrox," that is "Go to Hell, Cruel Adolf" in
Latin. When I engraved the 1/2d stamp I inserted "A...A" and "B...B" in the
corner dots, meaning "Adolphe Atrox" and "Bloody Benito."
I had
always heard that the letters "AA" meant "Atrocious Adolf," but I think we
must use the meaning that Rybot intended. Wolfgang Baldus points out that
the letters are so small and often so blurred that they cannot be propaganda
because without a magnifying glass they can hardly be seen. He thinks that
propaganda that is undetectable is senseless. He concludes:
Rybot's subversive act was just for his own satisfaction. The stamps are
just a curiosity.
German Overprints of the Stamps of Jersey
Tony Hickey wrote about these overprints in The Third Reich
Study Group News Sheet, No. 187, December 2021. The overprints were not
well received by the residents of Jersey and seem to have motivated them to
resist the occupation. The overprinted stamps were ordered destroyed. Hickey
said in part:
The Bailiff of Jersey was so incensed by the defacing of the kings
head he complained to the German Commandant who then referred the matter to
Berlin. Hitler at this time was preparing a Peace Campaign and publicly made
a reconciliation speech to the Reichstag hoping that Great Britain would see
sense and negotiate now that she had lost her allies and was alone. As part
of Hitler’s campaign special Newspapers printed in English outlining his
speech were disseminated by air over Southern England declaring Germany’s
peaceful intentions towards Great Britain and her Empire.
The French "Faux Petain" forgery
A full Sheet of the
French “Faux Petain” forgery
The French underground produced a "Faux Petain" forgery of the France
1941-43 1.50 francs red-brown Petain bareheaded stamp. I first mentioned
this stamp in "World War II's Most Mistreated Postage Stamp, "S.P.A.
Journal, November 1969. The forgery is rather crudely executed and is
printed ungummed on poor-quality white paper that shows yellowing from age.
The stamp was printed on several occasions and is found in nine shades of
red-brown varying in the depth of the color and the degree of reddish cast.
The forgery was printed in sheets of 96 (12x8) consisting of 4 panels of 24
(6x4) separated by gutters. The forgery is perforated 11 1/2, rather than
the 14:13 1/2 of the original. It is also known imperforate and with various
partial perforations. The back of each quarter-sheet panel of 24 stamps
contains a hand stamp covering from 4 to 9 stamps, varying in color from red
to violet and consisting of a 37 mm circle enclosing the Cross of Lorraine
and the text "Defense de la France - Direction / Atelier des Faux" ("French
Underground - Directorate / Forgery Bureau"). It has been suggested that the
Faux Petain was produced by a Vichy-oriented resistance group in order to
avoid acquiring postage from the French PTT, which was viewed as too closely
allied with the FFI. The Faux Petain was produced in early 1944, and was
allegedly used to frank clandestine literature from 25 January to 30 May
1944. The stamps were prepared by photogravure. Allegedly, attempts to
perforate the stamps by a sewing machine and by using perforations called
"bread coupons" were disastrous. Finally, an old perforation machine was
found and used. The forgeries were left ungummed since no gumming machine
was available; a glue pot was used to stick the labels to envelopes. Despite
the poor quality of the forgery, which would seem to make actual wartime
postal usage unlikely, several covers bearing the forgery, including one
dated 22 May 1944 addressed to Madame Rollin of Paris, are in the collection
of the French War Museum.
The Faux Petain on a Post-war Brussels Souvenir Sheet
The Faux
Petain appeared on several postwar souvenir sheets for the Brussels
Exposition in November 1945. On these sheets, the Faux Petain stamps bear a
circular cancel "D.F. / Atelier des Faux." This sheet is found with either a single stamp or a block of four
stamps. Notice the comment at the bottom of the sheet, “How the French
baffled the Nazis.”
A second Brussels “Defense de la France” Exposition Sheet
These multicolored numbered sheet on heavy cardboard stock depicts
a single Faux Petain and seven Belgian stamps. The sheet includes three
paragraphs at left with title, “In Belgium” and two paragraphs at right with
title, “In France.” Each section tells of underground operations in the
named country. The exposition was held 12-24 November 1945. A similar sheet
is known, showing a block of four of the Faux Petain instead of the single
stamp.
The Faux Petain Forgery on an Envelope.
As I mention below, these stamps were often placed on envelopes
just to create a souvenir which might be sold for a sizeable amount in the
future. In this case, since it is a forgery, although a poor one, these
might have gone through the mail. The problem is that if the stamp was
identified as a forgery the letter could be followed to the recipient’s
address and that person arrested as a member of the underground. So, using
these poor-quality fakes could be quite dangerous. However, there is always
the possibility that this letter went through the mail using the forgery as
postage. This 1.50 Franc Petain forgery is on a local envelope from Paris
and addressed to Paris dated "23.4.44."
The FFI DeGaulle "profile" Sheet
I call this
the "DeGaulle Profile" because the French also prepared a DeGaulle stamp in
"full face." The French underground - Forces Frangais `
l'Intirieur (FFI) DeGaulle parody of France 1941-1943 1.50
francs red-brown Petain bare-headed depicts Charles DeGaulle in left
profile. I first wrote about this parody in "World War II's most mistreated
postage stamp," S.P.A. Journal, November 1969. The
parodies are of poor quality, printed in brown on pale cream paper or on
grayish paper, in sheets of 9 (3x3) with clear margins all around. They are
known perforated and imperforate. The denomination of the parody is 1.50
francs and the text in the central oval is "Postes Francaises," as on the
genuine stamp used as a model. They were produced in Nice by the FFI Combat
resistance group. Robert Thirin was the engraver; Georges Fonat and Mlle.
Georgette Houde did the printing; Mlle. Houde did the perforation. The
stamps were originally meant to be used in "pin-prick" operations - stuck on
shop windows, doors, and prominent objects. The parodies were successfully
used on some mail in 1944 among Nice, Marseilles, and Lyon in Vichy France,
and many covers are thought to exist, bearing the parody and genuine
postage. Canceled covers showing only the DeGaulle parody without proper
postage are probably souvenirs prepared by the FFI.
A DeGaulle Parody on Cover
As
we collect these propaganda stamps, we often find them on an envelope. That
does not mean they went through the mail. Many times, people want souvenirs
so take them to a friend at the post office and have them "favor cancelled."
Often, we see they were placed on an envelope after the war was over just to
see if they might go through the mail. Here, the 1.50 Franc DeGaulle has
been placed on an envelope postmarked postmarked "Nice, 28.9.44," addressed
to "Mr. Rahoult, Nice Town Hall, Nice."
The
FFI DeGaulle “Full Face” Stamp
The FFI DeGaulle "Full Face" Stamp
As I
mentioned above, the Forces Frangais ` l'Intirieur also
prepared a stamp showing General Charles DeGaulle in full face. This was a
much more ambitious operation and the patriotic labels were placed between
genuine stamps. Once again the propaganda stamp is a parody of the France
1941-1943 1.50 francs Petain bareheaded. It depicts Charles DeGaulle
full-face, printed 10 per sheet in the vertical gutter between the central
columns of genuine French Petain or Mercury stamps, thereby emerging
"pre-perforated." The denomination of the parody is 1.50 francs, as in the
original model; however, the text in the central oval of the parody is
"Republique Francaise" rather than "Postes Francaise." The parody appears on
4 different Mercury sheets and on 20 different Petain sheets. These parodies
are of much higher quality than the left-profile DeGaulle production. They
were prepared in May 1943 by the FFI in Marseilles. The full-face DeGaulle
parodies were heavily used on mail in the Alps-Maritimes, which was under
German occupation at the time, and in Paris, Lyon, Marseilles, and other
centers of population. However, these parodies are quite rare, and covers
are extremely scarce. One complete set exists in Europe.
The FFI M.L.N. Stamp
This is not
strictly propaganda; its ostensible purpose was to aid in the conduct of
business during the liberation of France. However, it is so closely tied
with the FFI's forgeries and propaganda parodies that I include it here. I
first wrote about this item in an article entitled "Parodies of WWII French
stamps," Linn's Weekly Stamp News, 11 April 1966.
The "stamp"
is a blue label with DeGaulle full-face and the inscriptions "Poste Speciale
/ F.F.I // M.L.N.". M.L.N. stands for Mouvement de
Liberation Nationale (National Liberation Movement). It
was prepared in Paris and used on covers to transport mail during one week
of August 1944 when the normal post was not functioning and the Resistance
took control. Many envelopes were prepared as souvenirs at that time and
later.
An FFI
document exists entitled Explications des adresses portees
sur les enveloppes ("Explanation of addresses used on
envelopes"), presenting coded addresses for 14 FFI/MLN functions. The
document further states that for reasons of security during the period of
their clandestine activities, the FFI could not use the real addresses of
service units. Some other addresses are; Credit Agricole
pour la Region de l'Eure is really the Centre
d'Action des Resistances Etrangeres, the Credit
Foncier Lyonnais is the Corps Francs de
la Liberation, and the Direction Affaires
Orientales is the Direction de l'Action
Ouvriere.
The Norwegian Stamp Collection
We have
discussed "black" postage stamps so far, those whose origin was hidden from
the finder. Sometimes the stamps are "white," or clearly marked so that the
finder will know where they came from. The Norwegian stamps are a perfect
example. They appear in the official Complete Index of
Allied Airborne Leaflets and Magazines, and the finder would have no
question but that they were British productions. I first wrote about these
stamps in "Those Scandalous Scandinavian Labels," S.P.A. Journal, July 1967.
Four different stamps exist. The British SOE (Department EH) propaganda
labels for Norway, officially known as the "Norwegian Stamp Collection,"
were issued in 132x215 mm gummed sheets, with one large label and three or
four smaller perforated postage 'stamp'-size labels. The sheets are SOE code
number EH (N) 811. They were prepared 7 June 1941, and were circulated in
Norway by agents and through two air drops. 200,000 sheets were printed by
rotogravure, probably 50,000 of each type. Proofs of the leaflets were
available on 9 May 1941. It is probable that the date of first drop was to
have been 17 May 1941, Norwegian National Day, but delivery was delayed, and
the drop was made over Bergen in daylight on 7 June 1941. The remaining
stock was to have been destroyed on 19 July, but the sheets survived, to be
used in a second drop on 19-20 September. In addition to Bergen, leaflets
were found in Askoy, Osteroya, and Fusa Fjord. All four sheets have the
common text in Norwegian "Essay for the Norwegian Postage Stamp Competition.
Three others follow by air mail." Propaganda leaflets depicting the
vignettes from the gummed labels were prepared at the same time.
EH(N).811, Alt for Tyskland
Sheet No.
1: 15 xre green, "Alt for Tyskland" ("All for Germany", a parody of the
King's slogan, "All for Norway"), showing a fat Nazi officer with a pig
under his arm, confiscating a Norwegian farmer's livestock. Includes four
small perforated labels.EH(N).811, Wir fahren gegen Engelland
Sheet No.
2: 30 xre blue, perf. "Wir fahren gegen Engelland" ("We're sailing against
England"), showing Hitler wearing a Viking helmet, swimming with the aid of
a life preserver. Includes three small perforated labels.
EH(N).811, Lofoten 4 Mars 1941...
Sheet No.
3: 20 + 20 xre orange, "Lofoten 4 Mars 1941..." ("Lofoten 4 March 1941 /
Contribution to the fine"), showing a sailor stuffing little Nazis into a
bag. Includes three small perforated labels. The label celebrates a
successful raid by British commandos on the Lofoten Islands off the
northwest coast of German-occupied Norway.
EH(N).811, Vanaere og forakt har Quislings faerd ham bragt
Sheet No.
4: 30 stk solv (pieces of silver) blue, "Vanaere og forakt har Quislings
faerd ham bragt" ("Quisling's conduct has brought him dishonor and
contempt"), showing Vidkun Quisling, the notorious Norwegian traitor, with a
noose around his head. Includes three small perforated labels.
The Azad Hind Stamps
I mention
these stamps although there is some question what we should call them. They
are not espionage forgeries or propaganda parodies, but they might be called
"unissued stamps." They were apparently produced in good faith by Germany to
be used by its Indian Legion. Hitler despised the Indian troops and was
happy to send their leader to Japan. The stamps are interesting and we just
mention them in passing and show a few of the vignettes. I first wrote about
them in "The Azad Hind Labels," The SPA Journal,
December 1971. That article was later expanded and became a booklet entitled Azad
Hind and Chalo Delhi Stamps, published by Jal Cooper, Bombay, 1972. For
those that are interested in currency, I also wrote about alleged banknotes
of the Azad Hind movement in the International Banknote
Society Journal, Volume 40, Number 3, 2001.
According
to the propaganda philately specialist Dave Ripley, the 1R + 2R image above
depicts the most well-known Indian martyrs of the time: Sukhdev Thapar at
left, Bhagat Singh as flag bearer and Shivaram Rajguru at right. All were
all hanged on 23 March 1931 for violent acts against harsh British rule and
their bodies were secretly cremated on the banks of the River Satluj.
Indian Volunteers are Sworn In
My good
friend Wolfgang Baldus found five photographs in the German Bundesarchiv by
a photographer named Aschenbroich. He photographed the swearing-in of Indian
volunteers of the Propaganda-Ersatz-Abteilung Potsdam (“Propaganda
Replacement Unit Potsdam”) in 1942. It appears that Axster-Heudtlass used
some of these photographs for the stamp.
Buyer
beware! We should also note that reproductions of these stamps in India are
known. One 2015 auction advertisement offered the above stamp (normally
priced at around $100 U.S.) for $12.50 U.S. and said:
Azad Hind Propaganda Postage Stamp on Japanese PSYOP during WWII India:
Azad Hind, 1943, 1r + 2r Soldier with Free India Flag (Michel VII. Singer
8), imperforate copy, composed of green and orange. Reproduced Copy.
he Azad
Hind (Free India) stamps were produced by Germany in 1943 for Subhas Chandra
Bose's Indian National Army movement. Under the direction of Bose and with
the approval of the German government, the noted German team of Werner and
Maria Von Axter Heudtlass designed the stamps; their "Ax-Heu" mark appears
in the upper left corner of all the stamps except the 1 Rupee, where the
mark is located at bottom left center. Twelve million stamps were printed
and gummed by the Reichsdruckerei in Berlin (in the mid-1990s, some Indian
sources have claimed Vienna as the origin). The failure of the Free Indian
Army to achieve any military success left the stamps without a reason for
use, and the entire issue was still in storage in Europe at the end of the
war..
The
denominations known are 1/2 anna yellow-green; 1 anna lilac-red; 2 1/2 anna
orange-red; 1+1 anna dark brown; 2+2 anna carmine; 2 1/2+2 1/2 anna dark
blue; 3+3 anna red; 8+12 anna blue-violet; 12 anna + 1 rupee lilac-purple;
1+2 rupee black/orange/green; 1+2 rupee black; and 1+2 rupee black/orange.
None of the stamps was ever placed in use. One million stamps of each of the
low values were printed. The 1 + 2 rupees high denomination values are much
scarcer, thought to be printed in the order shown above: 7,000 copies, 4,500
copies, and 2,000 copies. Postwar forgeries exist, printed offset rather
than photogravure, with a washed-out and somewhat unclear appearance; in
these forgeries, the "Ax-Heu" designers' mark is missing or very blurred.
So-called "proofs" were produced by Sam Tiger Productions of Thailand in the
mid-1990s.
The Chalo Delhi Stamps
The 1 Anna "Provisional Govt. of Free India" Variety
There is a
second set of stamps for the Free Indians; these known as "Chalo Delhi" ("On
to Delhi"). I wrote about them in Azad Hind and Chalo
Delhi Stamps in 1972, and later sent all of my reference
notes to Andrew Freeston who wrote a booklet entitled The
Azad Hind and Chalo Delhi Stamps of the Indian Legion and Indian National
Army of Subhas Chandra Bose in 1999. A third booklet
appeared in 2008 by Richard Warren entitled Chalo Delhi,
the Real Story. The search for the real story has been
difficult because there was very little known about the stamps and there
were two sets, either or both of which might have been fakes.
A Block of four of the 1 Pice "Provisional Government of Free India" Variety
The story
was that the issue was sponsored by the Indian National Army when the
Japanese were preparing to attack Imphal. If true, these stamps would have
been used when the INA returned to India. The denominations are 1 pice,
magenta and 1 anna, green (there is some question because other colors
exist). I pointed out back in 1972 that the stamps are extensively forged
and very expensive. The stamps have a common design showing a corner of the
Red Fort in Delhi. I also quoted W. H. Adgey-Edgar who said
"Unfortunately the two original plates are in the possession of a dealer in
Calcutta who has been producing colored prints of them for his friends."
This is not the only alleged printing plate that survived the war. Flight
Lieutenant Tom Broomhead also was known to have a plate which he said was
used to print the stamps.
A Postwar Envelope bearing five Fake Chalo Delhi stamps in Different Colors
Two
versions of the "Chalo Delhi" stamps exist; one inscribed "PROVISIONAL GOVT.
OF FREE INDIA" and the other "PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF FREE INDIA."
Curiously, although no significant proof exists, the "Government" printing
is usually considered genuine while the "Govt." printing is called a
forgery. Yet, it appears that the earliest reports of these stamps always
mention the "Govt." issue. That would lead most researchers to believe that
it is probably the original genuine issue. I have no idea. I just want the
reader to know that these propaganda stamps were probably prepared for the
return of the Indian National Army to its homeland, perhaps in two types,
perhaps in two colors, but after that everything seems to be a mystery.
Germany's Unternehmen Wasserwelle (Operation Water Wave)
While on
the subject of Germany, perhaps we should mention the three propaganda
vignettes that were produced by Jewish forgers confined in Sachsenhausen
Concentration Camp. These are the same people that forged the British 5, 10,
20 and 50 pound notes of Operation Bernhard. There are just three vignettes,
each a parody attempting to show that Great Britain is secretly ruled by
Communists and Jews and bearing such symbols in the stamps. The King George
definitive series was the main target, but several other stamps were
subjected to attempts to portray the Jews and the Soviets as the culprits in
the war. In preparation for the Allied invasion of Normandy, the King George
definitive parodies were given a long series of propaganda overprints. I
have written about these stamps extensively, as have many others. I first
mentioned them in "German wartime parodies of British stamps," S.P.A.
Journal, February 1974
A counterfeit £5 note forged by the Jewish Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
prisoners
In 1940
Hitler authorized a scheme to counterfeit British currency. The German SS
(Department VI-F-4) established a forgery operation in the Sachsenhausen
concentration camp at Oranienburg bei Berlin, using forced Jewish skilled
labor. SS officer Bernhard Krueger was in charge and from his name arose the
unofficial name of the currency forgery operation: Operation Bernhard. The
currency counterfeiting was highly successful, providing a rich source of
readily negotiable notes to pay for various German operations. Enraged by
the British propaganda parody of a German Hitler-head definitive stamp,
showing Heinrich Himmler in place of Hitler, Himmler in 1944 ordered the
Sachsenhausen unit to undertake Unternehmen Wasserwelle,
the preparation of propaganda parodies of current British stamps. The stamp
parodies were made from paper taken from old ration books with a wavy-line
watermark. All were offset printed, perforated 11 1/2 without gum. The
conspicuously watermarked paper inspired the German name for this stamp
parody operation: Unternehmen Wasserwelle (Operation Water Wave). The
parodies are also found on commemorative sheets and with cancels in both
blue and black ink.
Adolf
Burger tells us more of this plot in The Devil's Workshop:
The stamp printing was finished. It was the summer of 1944...We (The
counterfeiters) could not understand why the Nazis wanted to use the stamps,
so we asked one of the SS men:
"It is quite simple; to arouse hostility
towards Jews and Russians."
The secret service published various articles in the occupied countries in
which they blamed others for the forgeries; this was a characteristic
Goebbels ploy.
Burger
depicts some fake correspondence which appears to come from the Special
Stamp Distributing Center in Stockholm dated 15 September 1944 and says in
part:
We are in a position to offer you a special issue of stamps, which you may
consider useful and may present a business opportunity. On the day of
invasion in the West special commemorative stamps were issued to mark the
cordial relationship between the Allied forces and the soldiers of the Red
Army. The British government has documented the spirit of the alliance with
the Soviet Union with this special issue.
Apparently,
they either received or pretended to receive at least one order. Another
note dated 23 September 1944 says:
Dear Customer!
We are pleased to confirm your order and enclose the special stamps
herewith. We would be grateful for recommendations to assist further sales.
The Stockholm
Expressen dated 21 September 1944 mentions a police
investigation:
Postmaster General Ornes received a card in an anonymous letter containing
perfect reproductions of the English penny stamp with the image of King
George. The forgery can only be detected by the quality of the paper and the
watermark that shows the stamps must have been produced in Sweden.
Clearly,
the postmaster bought the story of the stamps coming from Stockholm and even
more surprising, he entirely missed all the propaganda symbols on the
stamps.
Articles
that did identify the stamps as propaganda parodies ran in the French
magazine Du Monde Entier and the Czech
newspaper Politika of 31 January 1945.
The German "Jubilee" Parody
I will mention the "Jubilee" parody first because it is my favorite and
rather nicely done. This German parody of the Great Britain 1935 1/2 pence
dark green Silver Jubilee stamp, has a bust of Stalin in place of King
George VI, and misspelled English text "This war is a / Jewsh war" replacing
"Silver Jubilee / Half Penny." The dates have been altered to read 1939-1944
instead of 1910-1935. The Star of David and the hammer and sickle appear
prominently in several places (3 times each). The parody is printed in
sheets of 120 (10x12). There has always been a question about the
misspelling of the word "Jewsh" and if this was an attempt by the
Concentration Camp prisoners to embarrass their German masters. In my
article "Conversation with a Master Forger, "Scott's Monthly Stamp Journal, January 1980,
and later published in a modified form on the Internet, Major Bernhard says
that it was simply a mistake. To purposely seek to embarrass the German SS
would have meant instant death to the prisoners.
The German "Coronation" Parody
The German
parody of the Great Britain 1937 1 1/2 pence brown-lilac Coronation stamp
has a bust of Stalin replacing Queen Elizabeth, and altered text. The text
"S.S.S.R. Britannia / Teheran 28.11.1943" replaces "Postage Revenue / 12 May
1937". The ornate script "G E R" at center has been modified to read "S S S
R". The Star of David appears at upper left and right, and the hammer and
sickle appears within the Soviet star in the right border.
The German "Definitives" Parodies
The six
German parodies of the Great Britain 1937 King George VI issue have the Star
of David and Soviet hammer and sickle inserted into the design. The Star of
David appears atop the crown at top center and in the thistle at top right.
The hammer and sickle appears in the flower at top left and replacing the
"pence" symbol in the value field. Each value was printed in sheets of 192
(two sections of 96, arranged 8x12). There are six values known; 1/2 pence
green, 1 pence red, 1 1/2 pence lilac-brown, 2 pence orange, 2 1/2 pence
blue, and 3 pence violet. Some of these parodies are found with a cancel
"LONDON / AAA O / -6 JUN / 44 / SPECIAL-STAMP". I mention the meaning of the
overprint in "The mysterious 'AAA O'," The American
Philatelist, August 1969. A short version of this story by Jerry Jenson
can be found on the Internet at http://www.gps.nu/jerry/odds02.html.
A German definitive Parody mailed from Britain to Germany
After the
war these parodies were fairly inexpensive. I mention buying them for $1
each below. Some “wise guys” tried to make instant rarities. They would
place the Parodies on an envelope next to a Genuine King George stamp and
mail it. Often the post office people would miss it and let it go through
the mails. In theory, this is a propaganda stamp on a civilian envelope
mailed well after the end of the war and should have little value outside of
being a conversation piece. Like all propaganda though, a market grows and
this cover mailed from Bexleyheath to Braunschweig, West Germany sold in
2016 for 225 Euros.
Moritz
Nachtstern talks about forging the stamps in Sachsenhausen Concentration
Camp in Counterfeiter - how a Norwegian Jew survived the
holocaust, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, U.K., 2008. The
counterfeiters talk about their work:
Maybe you counterfeit something else? Certainly! All types of important
documents, Russian identification cards and English stamps. Stamp collectors
all over the world will fight over those stamps, as we have placed a Star of
David on the royal crown and along its sides you will find the hammer and
sickle. But you have to use a magnifying glass to see it...
I found
this braggadocio amusing because although some of the German items became
very expensive as time went by, in the 1950s I would visit the Subway Stamp
Shop near Nassau Street in New York City and they would bring out a big
brown paper bag full of the definitives, dump them on the counter and let me
select those I liked for $1 each.
Examples of the Common "Liquidation of Empire" Overprints
Examples of the Rarer Political Overprints
In each case, a black overprint on orange or red background was selected for
better contrast.
These definitives were heavily overprinted with a number of different
propaganda slogans. The first is Bombs with "MURDER" and "RUIN"
between two bombs, with various place names below (6 varieties). The second
is Extremes in World Politics with various Allied, Jewish, and
Bolshevik events and legends (6 varieties). The third is Invasion
with the "AAA O" symbol at top with various slogans below (6 varieties). The
fourth and fifth series are Liquidation of Empire with a border
containing the "Liquidation of empire" legend at top, with various British
possessions at bottom (14 varieties in all). If my math is correct, one
would need to collect 192 overprinted parodies to complete the series. I
should point out that all the overprints I show are in black. However, they
also exist in red on specific values. In general, the red overprints always
appear on every stamp of the same value in a set, in some cases the 1/2, the
2 1/2 or the 3 pence denominations.
The AAA-O Overprint
I first wrote about this interesting overprint the Germans put on
the King George definitive issue in the American Philatelist of
August 1968 in an article titled “The Mysterious AAA-O.” The same AAA-O
overprint was used on many of the German parodies of the British stamps. I
first discovered that General Omar Bradly mentioned Colonel Paddy Flynn in
A Soldier’s Story.
Colonel Paddy Flynn
General George Patton
decorates Colonel Paddy Flynn with the
Distinguished Service
Cross on 19 September 1943
Colonel Darry (Paddy) Flynn was a death-defying fire-breather in
the General George Patton tradition. He had an affinity for appearing in the
front lines without a uniform shirt, a black scarf around his neck and
pistols in both hands. He commanded the 39th Infantry Regiment. To motivate
his men, he had all the helmets and unit vehicles painted with an “AAA-O.”
The letters meant, Anything, Anytime, Anywhere – Bar none
The Germans seem to have decided that the 39th would lead the
invasion on D-Day and prepared stamps to drop in front of the troops on the
beaches to demoralize them.
The AAA-O
Cancellation plates found in Lake Toplitz
As the war neared its end and the Germans were on the run
everywhere, they dropped much of their forgeries, equipment, plates, and
paper in the deep waters of quiet lakes. These were found by divers who
brought them up. Some items disappeared; others were placed in various
museums.
The various AAA-O
Overprints on the German Parodies
Notice the interesting spelling of the word “expects.” This is the
second spelling error found on the German parodies. There seems to be some
confusion between the German translators, the Jewish counterfeiters, and
German quality-control.
I spoke prematurely; the error seems to
have been noticed at some point and all the overprints offered for sale have
the correct spelling. I think this error was picked up at some point
by the Germans and the slogan changed.
German Parody with Kruger Autograph and Comment
The stamps
often bear the "AAA-O" cancel. In addition, in 1975 I had Bernhard Kruger
autograph one set of the cancelled definitives with comments in the margins.
SS Major Bernhard Kruger
We talked to the German forger, SS Major Bernhard Kruger shortly after the
end of the war. Kruger had been ordered to produce British postage stamps
with various anti-Semitic and anti-Bolshevik symbols to imply that Britain
was under the influence of Judaism and the Soviet Union. Kruger’s forgers
were a mixture of imprisoned Czechoslovakians, Poles, Norwegians, French,
Dutch, Danes, and German Jews.
Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
Kruger’s forgers were based in Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp located near
Oranienburg bei Berlin. His men were segregated in two cellblocks
isolated from the other prisoners.
Unfortunately, Kruger’s German quality control had serious breakdowns. On
his parody of the Silver Jubilee stamp, Kruger had replaced the head of King
George VI with that of Josef Stalin and changed the inscription to “This is
a Jewish War.” However, the vowel “I” was left out of “JEWISH.” I once
questioned Kruger about this, trying to find out if some patriotic Jewish
anti-Nazi forger had purposely sabotaged the operation to embarrass the
Germans:
Oh no, it was just a terrible error. The mistake was spotted after the
stamps had been forwarded to the distributors. We attempted to stop their
distribution, but it was too late. We halted production. The error was not
considered particularly important since the stamps were only meant for
propaganda. The engravers were responsible. The designers had properly
translated the words, but the engravers omitted the ‘I’.
Kruger had problems with dissemination. Many of his agents began to sell the
stamps to dealers in neutral countries. Since it was obvious to their
superiors in Berlin that the dealers could identify these operatives later,
the orders came down to cease immediately. Kruger told me that when his
superiors heard of the agents selling the stamps to dealers abroad, they
ordered the men to return and face charges of neglect of duty. Since these
same agents were in the process of spreading millions of pounds in forged
British banknotes throughout Europe to destroy the British economy, there
really was not much that could be done to punish them. Kruger had never
wanted to produce the stamps, considering the entire operation a waste of
time and valuable resources. After all, he was producing excellent forgeries
of British 5-, 10-, 20- and 50-pound banknotes at the time. He would soon be
ordered to counterfeit American banknotes. The stamp project was
time-consuming and took up valuable man-hours and materials and was of
little value.
I asked him if he had thought about parodying more stamps. He did
not:
Concerning your question in regard of the specimens I used for
copying the British postage stamps I can tell you that it really was only
the eight you know about. The six definitive from the King George definitive
issues in the values of ½; 1; 1 ½; 2; 2 ½; and 3 plus the two special
issues. Other values were not copied and there was never any consideration
of copying them.
I hope my statements are of interest for you. I have yet to decide
if I will write a book about my wartime experiences during my retirement.
Unfortunately, to my knowledge, Bernhard Kruger never wrote the book of his
wartime experiences. However, I understand that his granddaughter did write such
a book titled My Grandfather the Forger.
German Popaganda Souvenir Sheets for Great Britain
The Germans
also placed their propaganda parody stamps on souvenir sheets. The two
commemorative stamps appear on one sheet, the six definitive stamps on the
other, and rarely the six King George VI parodies overprinted "Liquidation
of Empire." The sheets bear both English and Russian text and have printed
borders for the stamps and the text "Special-Stamp in Memory of the First
Day of Invasion." The stamps often bear the "AAA-O" cancel. Some sheets are
found without attached stamps and some rare sheets are known to exist
without text.
Forgeries of the German Parodies
The two imitations of the German parodies above are clearly marked. They
are sometimes offered with "replica" or Fälschung printed
on the front or the back. However, there may be some unscrupulous sellers
who will offer these fakes without such warning marks, so let the buyer
beware. Fakes of many of the propaganda parodies are abundant.
There are
also some very colorful and blatantly fake souvenir sheets. They are so
interesting that I show two here.
Blatantly fake souvenir sheets
The German "Viktoria" Propaganda Label
During WWII
the British used the "V for Victory" sign on a regular basis, Prime Minister
Winston Churchill was often photographed with his fingers making a "V," and
the BBC propaganda broadcasts opened with the first four bars of Ludwig van
Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67 — three short Gs followed by a
long E-flat, which in Morse Code could be construed as the letter "V."
The Germans
counterattacked. They claimed that all those V symbols that were appearing
in the occupied counties of Europe were actually pro-Nazi symbols that mean
"Viktoria," or victory. It is doubtful that anyone believed the propaganda,
but it was a nice attempt at turning a very effective British campaign into
one that seemed to support the German occupation.
As part of
this operation, a "Viktoria" propaganda label was prepared in 1941 for use
in Norway by the German Ministry of Propaganda. The label, red with a large
black "V", was used on letters by Germans and their sympathizers in Norway.
It is an attractive piece and was very popular among collectors shortly
after the war.
Vlassov "Army" Stamps
In 1942,
Lieutenant General Andrei Vlassov surrendered his entire command to the
German Army and began forming a "Great Russian Army" to fight on the side of
Germany against the Communists. He called for desertions from the Soviet
armies with considerable success. His hope was to establish an autonomous
republic in the Ukraine or Byelorussia for non-Russian peoples. Hitler
showed little interest in the Vlassov Army at first, but after Stalingrad,
with the surrender of General Paulus's German 6th Army in February 1943,
Hitler renewed his interest in the project. The original force was named
Russkaia Osvoditelnaia Armiia, (Russian Liberation Army). The Vlassov Army
stamps are mundane in appearance, and perhaps were designed to give the
impression of peace and normalcy. Five stamps were prepared for Vlassov's
Liberation Army during the Soviet Russian campaign in 1943. They were
produced by the Lindacker printing plant in the Ruhr area, under order No.
412 of 12 July 1943, authorized by Propaganda Abteilung (Propaganda Section)
"W." They were allegedly delivered in September 1943. It is reported that
16,300 sets of the stamps were printed, but most were destroyed. The 10
rubles value is extremely scarce. Canceled labels from the town of Sloboda
in the Ukraine are known, but there is no reliable record of actual usage of
these stamps. The stamps in the set are:
50
kopecks green, depicting workers building a log house.
1 ruble
red-brown, depicting a farmer plowing a field with a horse.
2
rubles black-blue, depicting a rural scene in winter.
4
rubles violet, depicting a medieval city with walls and battlements.
10
rubles dark brown, depicting an aerial view of a town or barracks.
The Grand Mufti meets Der Führer
The German
propaganda services produced a number of very interesting propaganda
postcards. One series targeted the Arab nations of North Africa in an
attempt to ally them with Germany through their mutual hatred of the Jews or
their "enslavement" by the British. I first wrote about and illustrated
these cards in "Postcards to the Enemy," SPA Journal, July
1971. There are about seven such cards known. The above card is my personal
favorite from this group.
This
postcard illustrates Muhammad Amin al Husaini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,
with German Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler in
Berlin. The postcard is captioned on the right margin:
Adolf Hitler, the Führer of the German people, and His Eminence, the
honorable Amin al Husaini, the Grand Mufti, at their second meeting in
Berlin
The Mufti
was a great admirer of the Third Reich. He said in April 1944:
Salaam Aleikum, Children of Allah, Moslems of the world. This is your leader
talking to you wherever you may be. This is Amin al Husain calling on you in
the name of Allah, beside who there is no God and Mohammed is his messenger,
to take up arms in this Jihad holy war against the infidel British who want
to subdue all the children of Allah and kill all his soldiers, and against
the cunning Jews who desire to rob you of your sanctuaries and rebuild their
temple on the ruins of our Mosque of Omar in al-Quds. Children of Allah,
this is a holy war for the glory and honor or Allah, the merciful and
beneficent. If you die in this war, you will sit in Heaven at the right side
of the Prophet. Children of God, I call on you to fight. Heil Hitler.
The Nazis
considered the Arabs Untermensch (sub-human), but because they needed him,
the Mufti was medically examined and determined to be not an Arab, but a
Caucasian. He was appointed a Gruppenführer-SS (Lieutenant
General) by Himmler with Hitler's approval and helped raised an SS Division
of 30,000 Bosnian Muslims.
Decades after
I wrote this article, I found a book called To War with Whitaker,
Hermione Ranfurly, Pan Books, 1994, where the Grand Mufti was complemented.
This was the diary of a British titled woman who took part in WWII while her
husband was a prisoner of war. I thought it only fair to give both sides so
here is what she says about the Mufti (edited for brevity):
The Mufti is a
great patriot – but remember – a patriot for the Arab world. He was forced
into being an enemy of Britain because he was convinced that British policy
as regards Zionists represented a very real threat to the Arab world. Haj
Amin is not personally anti-British, but he is an intelligent man. As a
young man he served as an officer in the Ottoman Army and attended Staff
College in Constantinople. In 1917, when the British occupied Jerusalem, he
offered his services to the British and became assistant to Haddad Pasha, a
Syrian Christian who held a high post in the military administration. Among
other things he recruited Palestine Arabs for
Feisal’s army which was then fighting on Allenby’s flank.
But a year
later his troubles began: he saw that British policy as regards Zionism
might end in disaster. He resigned his post and joined Feisal’s army. This
was before the Balfour Declaration. From then on, his quarrel with England
grew, not from antipathy to your people – indeed he has always seen the
importance of Anglo-Arab cooperation – but because British policy continued
the way it did. Later he became Secretary of the Executive Committee of the
first Palestinian Arab Congress. During the disturbances of 1920 an order
was issued for his arrest. He fled to
Transjordan and Syria. Eventually he was amnestied and returned to
Palestine. On the death of his half-brother, he was appointed Mufti.
The New Jewish Kingdom
Another
very rare full-color German propaganda postcard to the Arabs depicts
American President Franklin Roosevelt holding a pointer in front of a map
that shows an expanded Palestine that encompasses the current Israel,
Jordan, Syria, a bit of eastern Iraq and a small piece of northern Saudi
Arabia. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill beams and a satisfied
Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann smiles. Weizmann had met with Arthur Balfour
in 1917, which led to the Balfour Agreement that said in part that the
British government "views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a
national home for the Jewish people." The text on the postcard is:
Roosevelt, Churchill and Chaim Weizmann divide the Arab world for the
Jews...
---- The border of the new Jewish kingdom.
Il Duce meets Der Führer
The Germans
also prepared a set of propaganda postcards for Italy. This set is larger,
about two dozen in all; and many are coded with a slashed zero similar to
the Scandinavian letter Ø. Four series of postcards were printed by this
organization, coded ØI through ØIV.
Many of the
German postcards were meant to convince the Italian people that Germany was
their close friend and German soldiers were dying for their freedom. The
cards also attacked the partisan movement and attacked the Allies with
racial slurs and claims that they were looting Italy's treasures. I selected
card ØI 109 from the group that depicts Benito Mussolini meeting with Adolf
Hitler.
The 6th of June has found them ready!
The Tripartite powers are determined to finish the war against the
Bolsheviks in the East and the Jews and Plutocrats in the West to a final
victory in order to guarantee all nations a life in a new and just order.
Führer-Duce meeting, April 22/23, 1944
Other cards
were coded N.P., PAI, PAJ, or WPr. Readers who want to know more about the
cards and their codes should read my article, "German Propaganda Post Cards
in Italy During World War II, "The American Philatelist, July
1990.
PAJ Postcard 184 - The bombed Monte Cassino
In brief, the German Propaganda Abteilung Italian (Propaganda
Department Italy) used the codes "PAI" or "PAJ." It produced three series of
propaganda postcards for Italy. Each shows the destruction caused by Allied
bombers. The series consist of 26 different postcards that are coded "PAJ
184" to "PAJ 209." The most famous postcard series is probably the Monte
Cassino series consisting of ten postcards produced shortly after the allied
attack on Monte Cassino Abbey in February 1944.
A second
series of ten propaganda postcards is called the Treviso series. They
feature photographs of the North Italian town of Treviso attacked by allied
aircraft on 7 April and 14 May 1944.
A third
series of six propaganda postcards is called the Rimini series. It featured
the town of Rimini, which was attacked by allied bombers on 29 January 1944.
Other
pro-fascist postcards were printed by the North-Italian pro-German
propaganda organization Nucleo Propaganda (N.P.), the official propaganda
organization of Mussolini's Repubblica Sociale Italiana. The N.P. was led by
the Italian Minister Mazzasoma. Cards coded WPr were produced by the
propaganda sections within the German military (Wehrmacht).
Why is Papa Dead? - 120
Just as
they did for North Africa and Italy, the Germans also produced a series of
propaganda postcards for use against France in March 1940. I first mentioned
these in "Postcards to the enemy - Part II,"S.P.A. Journal,
November 1975. There are three cards known in
this series; one showing a mother and her children, one showing a dead
French soldier ("Why, gentlemen, tell me: why?"), and the last one showing a
crippled French soldier watching a civilian "slacker" drive by with his
girlfriend ("The hero - afterwards"). The Germans printed 100,000 of each
card. The text on the above postcard coded 120 is:
Tell me, mother, why is papa dead?
Why, gentlemen, tell
me: why? – 121
The hero – afterwards
- 122
German Postcards to America
The Ave Belisha Postcard
Another
interesting German propaganda postcard mailed to America in 1940 is depicted
above. There were actually three postcards in this set, all anti-British in
nature. Typical envelopes bear a 40-pfennig Hindenburg stamp, which was the
correct postage for foreign mail up to 40 grams. The envelopes were shipped
by way of the Siberia-Japan mail route to avoid British censorship. The
German propaganda described the British government as corrupt and controlled
by Jews who had held power for many years. These postcards were meant to
convince America to stay out of a Jewish-inspired European war. This is
rather ironic considering that Hitler will eventually declare war on the
United States.
The cards
are printed black on white stock; they show no legends or codes identifying
the preparers so they are considered to be "black" propaganda. The first set
of postcards was sent in a letter from Germany to "Mr. Fermone Richardson,
246 Summer, Boston Mass., USA" and cancelled 1 March 1940. Besides the
postcards it contained a large leaflet entitled "Hitler and his friends" on
one side. The other side shows "How Hitler spent Christmas Day" with a
drawing labeled "According to the Daily Mail" showing Hitler dining alone
next to a photo labeled "in Reality" showing Hitler dining happily with his
soldiers in the field. Another postcard set was sent to W.J.C. Cosslebone,
99 Main, Woonsocket, R.I., USA. also dated 1 March 1940. A third set was
found in Avon, New York. It is likely that hundreds of such sets were mailed
to the United States.
The Ave
Belisha card depicted above is a parody of the Gladiator salute with the
text:
Hail, Belisha, we who are about to die salute you!
The
caricatured Roman nobles in the front row are Winston Churchill at the far
left, the Jewish politician Leslie Hore-Belisha, Minister for War Affairs
giving the "thumbs down" sign, and Foreign Minister Anthony Eden. The
British soldiers march into a dark tunnel inscribed "To France and death."
The British
later retaliated with a propaganda leaflet with similar vignette showing
Hitler sending Italian troops to their doom.
House of Commons Postcard
The second
postcard that was enclosed in the envelope depicts Neville Chamberlain,
dressed as a doorman; standing in the entrance of the House of Commons
inscribed "Secret Session." He holds back the public saying:
Chamberlain: "No admittance! All seats reserved for the ruling class and
their friends."
War - Times Postcard
The third
postcard features a blonde British dancer wearing a British soldier's
helmet, posing in front of a mirror. Her dress is inscribed "The Times." The
reflection in the mirror is a caricature Jewish female with black hair and
big nose. The word "Times" on the blonde girl's dress reads "Semit" in the
mirror, with an added small "e," making the word "Semite." The illustration
is captioned "War-Times." The message of all the postcards was to blame the
ruling British aristocrats and the Jews for the war.
The Germans
later produced a full-color leaflet variant of the "War - Times" postcard in
the form of a cut up puzzle showing a nude blond girl holding a copy of "The
TIMES" facing a mirror. The image in the mirror shows a nude girl with black
hair, holding a newspaper entitled "SEMIT eht." The pieces of the leaflet
were contained in an envelope entitled "Puzzle" and dropped on French
soldiers in the Maginot Line.
"Never Again" German Propaganda Leaflet to the United States
It was not
only postcards that the German sent in an attempt to propagandize Americans
and make them believe that there was justification for the military buildup
of the Third Reich. Just as the British were sending propaganda behind
German lines, the Germans sent their propaganda to America. This is one of
the most famous pre-war propaganda leaflets. It depicts a starving German
child. Nazi propaganda insisted that after the end of WWII the British
continued a blockade that killed many Germans. This leaflet shows that
German children are healthy today and this is only because they are able to
defend themselves and are immune to any British blockade.
German Envelope to United States
The letter
was mailed from Cologne, Germany, to Hudson, New York State, on November 11,
1939. I wonder if the fact that it was "Veteran's Day" in the United States
was significant. It was postmarked January 5, 1940 at some point in the
United States and forwarded to Leeds, New York. Notice that no street
address was entered on the envelope so it was stamped "Not on Routes" and
probably never delivered.
Another Propaganda Leaflet sent by mail to the United States
This leaflet
discusses the Polish Corridor, a post WWI arbitrary partition of Germany to
give land-locked Poland a seaport. The Germans hated this action forced on
them by the Allies after the war. There were about four messages sent to the
USA by the Germans as I recall. Some of them were, British Poison Gas for
Poland, The French Yellow Book, and Bombardment of Germany Planned by
Great Britain as early as 1936. At the same time Germany was mailing
color postcards to various nations showing a corridor right through some
important section of their country. The idea was to show the world how they
felt about a corridor through their country (see below).
The "New England Corridor" Postcard
Since the
Germans believed that the Polish Corridor was cause enough to attack Poland,
they produced several postcards to the powerful neutral nations to show them
what it would feel like to have a foreign corridor splitting their homeland.
Postcards were produced for the United States, Great Britain, France, and
Italy. This was prior to World War II, so Germany had not yet signed a pact
with Italy.
The cards open
to show two maps: one part depicts a map of the Polish Corridor; the other
part depicts a map showing a similar corridor dividing another country. The
cards were first produced about October 1932. There is evidence that in 1939
some cards were mailed through regular postal channels, and some cards for
England were air-dropped. The card for each country appears in two major
varieties, one with the boxed text typeset, the other with the boxed text
having the appearance of being "hand lettered." I first mentioned these
cards in "Postcards to the Enemy - Part II," S.P.A. Journal, November 1975.
The "New
England Corridor" double card for the USA shows a corridor across the
Northeastern United States. The text is in English, and the cards were first
mailed to the United States beginning in 1932. The "British Corridor" double
card shows a corridor dividing England across its narrow center. The "French
Corridor" double card shows a corridor isolating southeast France. Finally,
the "Italian Corridor" double card shows a corridor across northern Italy.
The above card
asks the Americans:
What would you
say if the United States of America were to be treated in this way and made
to look like Germany does as shown on the accompanying map? Would the United
States be willing to agree to such frontiers?
The British Corridor Card
The Fehling Churchill Postcard.
The Germans also produced a number of different civilian propaganda
postcards bearing mock stamps. I first wrote about these cards in "Those
Nasty Nazi feldpost cards, "S.P.A. Journal, April 1970. The best known are
the postcards ridiculing the Allied leaders; Winston Churchill, Neville
Chamberlain and Josef Stalin. The Stalin card is by far the most rare, but I
have chosen the Churchill because the Germans hated him the most and
produced a number of different cards to ridicule the man Hitler called "The
old Jew." In the first illustration the Germans attack Churchill and his
navy by depicting a British destroyer being broken over his head.
The cards
were designed by Heinz Fehling, with imprinted stamp-like labels bearing a
crossed-out denomination "1" and text in German Wert keinen Pfennig ("Not
worth a penny"), with caricatures ridiculing the Allied leaders. There are
also some folded letter sheets imprinted Feldpostbrief. The cards and letter
sheets have a vertical central spine on the address side that contains
imprinted text.
The Fehling Churchill Letter Sheet
Here we show another example of the Churchill imprinted parody stamp.
Note there is something a bit different from the postcard above. The
Churchill and Chamberlain images also appear on folded letter sheets.
Instead of Feldpostkarte they
are entitled Feldpostbrief. They are much rarer than
the postcards. As far as we know, there is no Stalin letter sheet.
The Fehling Chamberlain Postcard
Here is a
German propaganda postcard used in Russia. Since the unofficial imprinted
stamp had no value, a regular postage stamp was added.
The Fehling Stalin Postcard
Because the
Germans invaded Russia much later in the war, there are fewer Stalin cards
and they are more rare that the first two. The Stalin card was released
after Germany attacked Russia on 22 June 1941. The earliest known
cancellation on a Stalin card is 22 June 1941.
Many varieties exist of the Fehling items. The
"Feldpost" imprint occurs in at least six type styles, reflecting different
printings. These six "Feldpost" type styles are most easily distinguished by
the shape of the letter "F". Another variation of this card depicts
Churchill "upright with medals," in naval dress, smoking a cigar, with a
warship breaking over his head. A third variety depicts Churchill in a black
suit, with a black derby and a bow tie.
Fake German Chamberlain postcard
The reader
should know that there are a great number of postwar fakes with reprints of
the Heinz Fehling "Wert keinen Pfennig" vignettes, imprinted "Feldpostkarte"
without printer's imprint, and bearing wartime German or General Government
stamps with faked cancels. They are quite common and worth only a few
dollars as a conversation piece.
German unofficial Wertlose marke
There is also a German unofficial Wertlose Marke("Worthless
stamp") depicting Churchill smoking his cigar and looking downcast. To
Churchill's left are the letters "WC"; above and in the background is what
probably a British Spitfire is falling into flaming ruins. The label often
appears on unofficial cards imprinted "Feldpostkarte" and with the printer's
imprint "Verlag Paul R. Matthes, Leipzig, D5, Grusiusstr. 3" on the vertical
spine (known as the "Matthes card"). At least two varieties of the Matthes
card are known, differing in typeface and in orientation.
German unofficial Churchill with Derby Postcard
These items
first came on the philatelic market in 1997. There are just a few known
copies. These cards show Churchill wearing a derby. Most of the used copies
were sent by Soldat Hans Hadlich - a member of a stamp dealing family.
The Churchill Crying Vignette
This German propaganda stamp is hardly ever seen. It was
placed on this card in 1940, cancelled and went through the mail. The stamp
has the words Feldpost, and what might be translated as: Not
only Churchill will cry!
V - The Sign of the German Victory
This Churchill Feldpost card is a late entry. I had never seen it
before 2023. I do not believe it is official, probably a privately made
satirical postcard and might not go back to WWII. Still, it is interesting
to add to the Churchill propaganda cards we show already.
At the right where the stamp should be, there are three caricatures
of Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill. There is the word Feldpost, a place for
the address, and under the three caricatures a comment:
The 3, "World
happiness makers"
At the left of the card. Churchill sits with a secretary with legs
slightly open. My first thought was that the artist had him peeking beneath
the woman’s dress, but she seems well covered. On the wall hangs a picture
of Joe Stalin. The text is:
V - The sign of the
German victory:
Say, Miss, are you
part of the 5th column? I can't see you sitting like this anymore!
I think that is a joke or a pun but I do not understand it.
Wolfgang Baldus, one of the top researchers on philatelic propaganda was
also in doubt but came up with a possible meaning:
The lady´s legs look like a "V." I cannot read the title of the
book she holds but perhaps she represents Germany demonstrating a German
victory by the way she is sitting.
The Stalin-Cohen card
There are
three very interesting "double portrait" propaganda postcards prepared by
Germany for use against the Poles in the occupied territories that pictured
the "Big Three" Allied leaders as caricatures. When turned upside down, a
second portrait is seen, that of a caricatured big-nosed Jew. The cards
depict the caricatured portraits of Churchill, Roosevelt, or Stalin. The
portraits have Stars of David in the four corners and below the portraits
are short paragraphs in the Polish or Russian language. Some of the
postcards are franked with the postage stamps of the Polish General
Government. I first discussed these in "Postcards to the Enemy - Part II, "Society
of Philatelic Americans Journal, November 1975.
The Josef
Stalin card has text below the portrait:
Stalin is just a puppet of communism, wrote the Jewish weekly.
The
American Hebrew on June 8, 1938. Turn this card and you will face the true
leader of the Soviet Union.
When the
card is turned over, additional text says:
The Jews damage the Soviet Union. They are the ones who determine the
destiny of the Soviets. The Jew Cohen in 'The Communist' of April 12, 1919.
There is
also a Churchill-Hertz card with text:
This is Churchill, Prime Minister of England. The members of his government
are exclusively people of the rich upper class who gained their wealth by
brutal exploitation and deception of the simple and working men. Turn the
picture and you will see the intimate friend of these people, the de-facto
ruler of England.
Rabbi Hertz, London 1926: The British Isles are the basis for the royal
rule of Israel over the world.
The final
item is the Roosevelt-Ross card. The text is:
Roosevelt, President of the USA. He is a submissive tool in the hands of
world Judaism and surrounds himself almost exclusively with Jews. Turn the
picture and you will see the true President of the USA.
To fill influential posts with Jews, Roosevelt appointed more of them in
the administration of his country than any other government in America's
history did before." Rabin Louis Ross in the ' Brooklyn Jewish Examiner' of
October 20, 1933.
We should
mention that the exact same images appear on German 110 x 162mm propaganda
posters to the Poles. The posters bear a small safe conduct pass on the
back.
The "Spitler" Propaganda Parody
Sometimes
propaganda parodies of postage stamps are made by civilians for either
patriotic reasons or for profit. The "Spitler" is a perfect case in point. I
first wrote about this civilian parody in Scott's Monthly Stamp Journal
of September 1980. We will just discuss it
briefly here.
About 1950
or so, I bought a perforated and imperforate block of the Spitler from
Warner's Stamp Store on Nassau Street, NYC. A young salesman took me aside
and whispered that he had something special. He charged me the grand total
of $9 for the two sheetlets. In 1967, a perforated single stamp was sold at
auction for $40. A cropped imperforate sheetlet sold in 1984 for $380. In
1988, another perforated sheet sold for $575 and a postcard with the
"Spitler" tied to 1-cent card with a Berlin, OKLA cancel for $150. In 1998,
an imperforate single stamp sold for $67 and an imperforate sheet for $500.
In April 2015, a perforated sheet with the Lawrence and Graves imprint sold
for 720 Euros (US $800) in a European auction.
The Imperforate Spitler Parody
Notice by the "Lawrence and Graves" imprint that this is the original
printing
Originally
I depicted a single image of the perforated Spitler sheetlet in this
article, but recently a collector paid 1,500 Euros ($2026 US) for a
perforated single copy (Götz auction) and another paid 1,700 Euros ($2,337
US) for an imperforate single stamp (Gartner auction). In 2016 a perforated
sheet without the printer’s imprint was auctioned by Schlegel starting at
3000 Euros ($3287 US). Amazing! This is not an official government parody;
it was made by civilians for profit. It is actually what we call a
“Cinderella.” Since there is that much interest I will add some more photos
from my collection.
Herman Herst talked about these stamps in Nassau Street and
said that the government had confiscated them. I always wondered why years
later you would still see them occasionally offered for sale. It was only
after much research that we decided that most likely the dealers or their
friends had produced a second set of stamps, removing the dealer’s names
from the plates and sheets so that in theory they could not be prosecuted
for printing them. These stamps really should not be in an article about
legitimate propaganda stamps, but they are so well done and so popular that
like the Goering and Narvik stamps below I have depicted them all, though we
probably should have a different title for those stamps that are not
officially condoned by any government.
The Reprint of the “Spitler” Propaganda Parody
Notice: No “Lawrence and Graves" imprint”
A German Postcard showing the Hitler and Child Image
This "stamp
block" is a private patriotic parody of Germany 1940 12+38 pfennig brown-red
Hitler's birthday stamp, with a child spitting in Hitler's face and the
legend "Deutsches Ziel" ("German aim"). The German original shows Hitler
receiving a bouquet of flowers from a young girl, with the legend "Deutsches
Reich." The parody was produced in America by Lawrence & Graves, Los Angeles
stamp dealers, in miniature sheets of four (2x2). The sheets have full
margins bearing the small inscription "Copyright 1943 / Lawrence & Graves"
beneath the left label and "Hollywood / California" beneath the right label.
Reply from Winston Churchill's Office Acknowledging receipt of the "Spitler"
The labels
were distributed to prominent stamp dealers and collectors, including U.S.
President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
The mailing to President Roosevelt resulted in the Secret Service and postal
inspectors being notified and confiscation of the printer's Spitler stock,
plates, and production supplies. It appears that after the Secret Service
confiscated the original supplies, Lawrence and Graves (or another party)
reissued the label in the original sheet format but without their imprint on
the sheetlet. During my conversations with Raymond Lawrence in 1965 he told
me:
This wretched stamp was conceived, and executed by Mr. Graves and myself
during the last war. It cost us quite a bit of money to get it printed and
everyone but ourselves have made money out of it. Very shortly after it was
printed we received a visit from two charming gentlemen from the Secret
Service who demanded instantly the plates, make up, every copy of the stamp
we had and a list of everyone to whom we had sold a copy.
An Envelope sent through the mail with a "Spitler" Stamp
Lawrence
seems to be saying that the second printing without his imprint was made by
outsiders. That could be true, or he could have been spreading some
disinformation to assure that the Secret Service would not pay him a second
visit.
The "Spitler" postcard - Front and back
There are a
number of postcards known to exist. I have seen three; one addressed to
Hobbs Stamp Company of New York City; one to H.E. Harris Stamp Company of
Boston, MA, and one to a Billy Muir of Los Angeles, California. I have read
a report of another postcard sent to Denver. All bear a single "Spitler"
canceled "Berlin OKLA" on 20 April 1943. The back always bears the same
message:
Can this be No. B-170?
Price 10 cents per stamp, plus postage
Miniature sheet of four 35 cents
So a single
stamp cost a dime in 1943, and the most recent price for the same thing is
$2000+. Who says that fake stamps are not a good investment?
The
original Spitler is a browner red than the reprints. The original can be
distinguished immediately from the reprint by the nature of the design that
forms the red background in the top and bottom color bars containing the
lettering. In the original, the background is formed by a grid or mesh of
red with un-inked dots in the holes of the mesh. In the reprints, the
background is formed by diagonal lines of connected dots from top right to
bottom left, with un-inked areas between the lines. These distinctions do
not show in routine photocopies or in full-size halftone photographic
reproductions.
The
original printing was perforated 12. The reissue is perforated line 11 3/4.
The imprint in the bottom margin is in a silver-gray ink that does not
photocopy well.
The "Göring Imprisoned" Propaganda Parody
Like the civilian patriotic label above, the "Göring imprisoned" label
was apparently produced privately for profit. Some individual who knew of
the British propaganda stamps showing Heinrich Himmler and Hans Frank
apparently thought that he could swindle a gullible public by producing a
Hermann Göring stamp. Forty years ago at the old Interpex Stamp Show in New
York City one dealer had a brick of these sheets about an inch thick. He was
selling them for $3 each. A few years later when they became better known
they were being offered for $25. They are complete frauds, but interesting
enough that I suspect the price might approach $100 today. Stamp collectors
will buy anything! I first wrote about this parody in "Truth about stamps
that lie - forgeries, "Stamp Weekly, 28 September 1967 and later in
"Propaganda frauds, "S.P.A. Journal, November 1968.
We believe that it was privately produced in Germany after the war. The
parody is an imitation of the German 1943 Hitler's birthday issue. It
represents an unissued 54+96 pfennig denomination in deep purple, showing
Field Marshal Hermann Göring, Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe, behind a
wire fence. The wire fence is in the form of a pale pink quadrille. Printed
in imperforate miniature sheets of 4 (2x2). Around the stamps on the sheet
is a lavender border of leaves displaying, at top and bottom, the date 12
Jan 1944 - the date of Göring's 51st birthday. The original German stamp
shows the date of Hitler's 54th birthday - 20 April 1943.
The Rare Göring without quadrille "Error"
The stamps
were printed by collotype; margin and quadrille printings were added in two
separate typographic steps. Thus, stamps and sheets lacking the quadrille
and margins are remnants of incomplete printings. They are sometimes offered
to buyers as errors. The producer, a German stamp dealer, was convicted in
1959 in Berlin for selling (but not for printing!) the "Göring imprisoned"
sheet and the Narvik stamp. Curiously, there are fakes of this fake. A
variety printed crudely in green was offered for sale in Germany.
Göring meets his fate
Göring was
the second-highest-ranking Nazi official tried at Nuremberg, behind Reich
President (former Admiral) Karl Dönitz. Göring was found guilty on all four
counts and was sentenced to death by hanging. Göring made an appeal asking
to be shot as a soldier instead of hanged as a common criminal, but the
court refused. Defying the sentence imposed by his captors, he committed
suicide with a potassium cyanide capsule the night before he was to be
hanged.
The Narvik Propaganda Parody
As long as we are talking about fakes, we might as well depict the Narvik
label. This "stamp" has always caused great confusion because it has been
claimed to be both a German and an American propaganda parody. However,
Narvik was not a victory for the Germans or Allies, and especially not for
the Americans who had no part in it at all. It is clearly a fake, but a good
one and often offered for a price of well over $100. The label has been
advertised as Allied propaganda against Germany, but was certainly privately
produced in Germany after the war. It is found imperforate, and known in two
varieties, differing notably in the presence or absence of a swastika
watermark in the paper. Narvik, in far northern Norway, was the scene of
several indecisive skirmishes between the Germans and the British in the
spring of 1940. The Germans occupied the town on 9 April after a sneak
attack. A joint French-British force recaptured the town in May, but
withdrew from their untenable position on 9 June, leaving the Germans in
control. The phantasy depicts the "Narvik Shield" that Hitler awarded to
participants in the campaigns around Narvik. The fraud surfaced in the late
1950s, advertised as having been produced by the United States for use
against the Nazis. Why someone on the Allied side would wish to commemorate
the Narvik encounters, for either internal or external propaganda, is hard
to grasp. The mystery was explained in 1959, when the producer, a German
stamp dealer, was convicted in Berlin for selling (but not for printing!)
the "Göring imprisoned" sheet and the Narvik stamp. As I mention above, this
stamp was mentioned along with the Göring in "Truth about stamps that lie -
forgeries, "Stamp Weekly, 28 September 1967 and "Propaganda frauds,
"S.P.A. Journal, November 1968.
The German Narvik
Sleeve Award
The Narvik Shield (Narvikschild)
is a World War II German military decoration awarded to all German forces
that took part in the battles of Narvik between 9 April and 8 June 1940. The
decoration was instituted on 19 August 1940 by Adolf Hitler. The
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) published the order the same day. A
total of 8,577 military personnel received the award. It was bestowed by
General Eduard Dietl, the commander of Army Group Narvik.
The label
appears in two varieties. The first on plain paper watermarked with
swastikas as in Michel Deutschland-Spezial-Katalog Germany watermark 4,
printed in medium blue. The figure "19" on the Narvik shield is clearly
readable. It has been said that this label was printed on the margins of
1937 Hitler's birthday souvenir sheets. These sheets provide sufficient
space to print Narvik multiples up to 3 (horizontal) or 2 (vertical). The
second variety is on woven, unwatermarked paper, printed in dark blue. The
figure "19" on the Narvik shield is difficult to read.
The American OSS Hitler Forgeries and "Skull" parody
The United States Office of Strategic Services printed a 6 and a 12
pfennig forgery of the German 1941-1944 Hitler-head issue. They are believed
to have been produced in both Rome and Bern. The forgeries were used as part
of "Operation Cornflakes," an elaborate scheme to airdrop mailbags filled
with propaganda near bombed railway mail cars. The United States Office of
Strategic Services also printed a "Futsches Reich" Hitler skull parody of
the Germany 1941-44 12 pfennig carmine Hitler-head. All three stamps were
printed in sheets of 50 (10x5). Unfortunately, there are probably 100 fake
Hitler skulls offered for sale for every one that is legitimate. I
considered doing a brief review of the American Operation
Cornflakes here, but since I have already written about it
elsewhere on the Internet it is more efficient just to link to that article
at Cornflakes2.html.
I believe that it gives a good history of what the American Morale
Operations unit in Italy produced in the last years of the war. I first
wrote about this operation in "Allied forgeries of the postage stamps of
Nazi Germany," American Philatelist, February 1971,
and later in "Poison Cornflakes for Breakfast, "The
SPA Journal, February 1972.
The “Infamous” Cassenverein Envelope
The OSS in
Rome sent hundreds of covers stamped with the Hitler forgeries behind German
lines. Much of the mail bore business return addresses, among the better
known “The Prussian State Bank,” “The International Corporation for
Transport and Traffic Affairs,” “The New Deutschebank,” “The Credit Reform
Company,” and the very important “Wiener Giro - und Cassenverein.”
During the
war the Americans believed that none of the fake envelopes had been
discovered. They were wrong. The “Cassenverein” cover became famous because
it was the first of the OSS items to be identified as a forgery by the
German postal authorities. At the conclusion of the 16 March 1945 raid on
the train near St. Poelten, German security police found the OSS mailbags.
The bags were opened and mail addressed to citizens in the Cologne area was
discovered. As the mail was about to be forwarded, a sharp-eyed postal clerk
noticed that the return address on the envelopes was “Wiener Giro-und
Cassenverein.” The correct spelling of the final word should have read
“Kassenverein.” For the want of a “K” the game was lost. The Nazis became
suspicious, the envelopes were opened and the propaganda placed inside was
discovered.
That story about the spelling error was
believed since the end of WWII. In 2019, German specialist Wolfgang Baldus
discovered that it might not be true:
You know the old statement that some covers were allegedly
identified as forgeries because of the spelling “Cassenverein” instead of
“Kassenverein.” This statement could be wrong. The Cassenverein of Vienna is
spelled with “C” since the beginning of its existence. I have seen newspaper
clippings from 1942 announcing the termination of the “Wiener Giro- und
Cassenverein” in January 1943. In Germany it might have been considered an
error, in Austria it would have been accepted.
A 45-Pfennig Hitler-head Variant
There is an interesting variant of the OSS Hitler skull stamp that was
produced by U.S. agents in Berne. The 45-pfennig propaganda variant depicts
Hitler more crude, skull-like and horrific than the regular OSS parody
stamp, and the "45" denomination probably indicates the year 1945. The text
on the stamp is Futsches
Reich. There is what appears to be a hand-written propaganda message in
German just below the stamp that says:
New for philatelists!
45 - Third Reich with plate flaws
The German
is oddly written so was probably penned by an American. Specialist Wolfgang
Baldus thinks that the OSS might have planned to make people believe that
German stamp dealers were offering the "45" stamp. To make it look like a
real stamp they drew the perforation and added a black area around the
perforation. The German inscription was added to give the impression that
the stamp was offered by German dealers.
Specialist
Lee Richards saw a copy of the above variant in the OWI collection in the
Hoover Institution Archive. Researcher Wolfgang Baldus also found a copy
during his research. It is important to point out that although this appears
to be a stamp stuck on a piece of paper (what a philatelist calls a "cut
square" when one wants to save a stamp and cuts it from an envelope), the
stamp is actually printed on the gummed sticker as is the text. Although it
was made to look like a stamp glued to paper, it is simply an image of a
stamp printed on paper. The overall size of the label is 7 cm x 9 cm. The
stamp printed on the label is 6 cm x 7.5 cm. The stamp appears to be about
twice the size of the normal Hitler-head, and this was probably done to make
reading the text easier.
45-pfennig Hitler parody was depicted in the January 1945 United States 12th Army Group propaganda newspaper Frontpost
A black and white image of a similar 45-pfennig Hitler parody was
depicted in the January 1945 United States 12th Army Group propaganda
newspaper Frontpost. The Twelfth United States Army Group European
Theater of Operations history book entitled Publicity
and Psychological Warfare 1943-1945says about this
newspaper:
The Frontpost was made up and written like a newspaper, not a leaflet. It
contained news, a map of the western front, features, a news picture, a
column, a bit of German sport news, a riddle — but no propaganda harangues,
no editorializing, no overt preaching. The first issue also contained a
feature which continued in every subsequent copy and later was transferred
with success to the radio: a column called "Der Yankee Spricht" — "The
Yankee Speaks."
An illustration of a Hitler skull stamp almost identical to the OSS
variant above, but labeled Deutsches Reich appears
on page 4 of the propaganda newspaper. The caption of the illustration is:
This draft of a new German postage stamp for 1945 was drawn by a German
prisoner of war.
Werner
Bohne says in his May 1996 GPS Reference Manual of Forgeries that the above
variant is a postwar fraud privately produced after the war. I believe
Werner made this assumption after reading an offer by an American philatelic
dealer who offered the above red stamp with the comment:
The stamp must exist but a copy has never been found.
Wolfgang Baldus believes that the red Futsches Reich variety
was done first because the lines of the drawing are much finer. When he
placed one "stamp" over the other the perforations matched exactly so he
believes that the black and white Deutsches Reich variety was simply redrawn
with the new words and the image retouched with thicker lines to make it
stand out in the coarser newspaper printing.
Two such
labels with the image of the 45-pfennig stamp have been found with the
block-stamp code "242." The OSS filed all of their Berne productions with
large block numbers in either blue or black ink. This indicates that it was
filed in the OSS archives and although the American dealer did not realize
it, he probably had a very rare and valuable propaganda parody in his stock.
A Fake
Propaganda Stamp Image from a Genuine OSS leaflet
A Genuine OSS Propaganda gummed label coded 279
The OSS in Bern produced this gummed label making fun of Adolf
Hitler. It is just one of many similar ones. Hitler is depicted in a state
of shock and the text is a long drawn out “dawn,” the opening of a famous
sad song about a soldier before a battle.
Fake Propaganda Postage Stamp
What made it interesting is that apparently some enterprising
forger used the image to produce a brown Futsches Reich “propaganda
stamp.” I know nothing about this stamp except German researcher Wolfgang
Baldus came across it in February 2019 and it did not come from the OSS
forgery workshop. It is a good-looking stamp and I assume the forger has
been studying the propaganda websites. It is worth a few dollars as a conversation piece, but do not spend
real money for a fake stamp
The OSS Red Hitler Birthday Sheet
On 5 April 1937, Germany issued a souvenir sheet in honor of the 48th
birthday of Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler. In the center were four identical
dark green 6-pfennig stamps showing the face of the German leader. An
inscription at the bottom of the sheet read WER EIN VOLK RETTEN WILL KANN
NUR HEROISCH DENKEN("He who wants to save his people must
think heroically").
The OSS produced a propaganda parody of this sheet meant to attack and
ridicule Hitler and the Nazi Party. Hitler is shown in full face over a
field of 13 burial crosses. The 6-pfennig denomination has been replaced by
a gallows at the top of the columns at the upper right and left of the
stamps. There has been a slight addition to the text at the bottom of the
stamp. Deutsches
Reich("German Empire") has been changed to Deutsches
Reich 1944. The Berne file number for this parody was 192.
I first wrote about the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) parody of the
Hitler 48th birthday sheet in the German Postal Specialist of
August 1989 in an article entitled "The Infamous OSS Hitler Skull Sheet." I
published all the data that was currently known about the rarest and
valuable of the wartime philatelic propaganda stamps. I wrote a second
article entitled "The Hitler Sheet - Revisited," in the March-April 2002German
Postal Specialist. I am currently aware of 16 genuine red sheets, and
one or two more seem to turn up every few years.
In 2008, researcher Lee Richards learned that a collection of OSS
propaganda originally belonging to Gerald Mayer of the OWI who worked
hand-in-hand with Allen Dulles of the OSS had been donated to the University
of California, Berkeley. The collection was studied by author William Warren
Wertz Jr., who in 1949 published a dissertation about the theory of
propaganda analysis, entitled: Clandestine propaganda from Berne (1942-1945):
United States leaflets subverting Hitler. The book
illustrated and identified a good part of the Mayer collection. Just one
copy of the dissertation exists in the Berkeley library. There is an
illustration of a Hitler sheet with the official OSS hand-stamped file
number "192" on page 121 of this dissertation. No text accompanies the
illustration, just the image of the genuine German sheet and the OSS parody.
The poor photograph is in black and white and it is impossible to tell if
this is a red or green sheet, but since we know two red sheets already exist
with the hand-stamp I feel secure in saying this must also be a red sheet.
This is the third sheet to bear the "192" hand-stamp, and the first to have
the numbers totally above and to the left of the block of four parodies. The
Mayer collection is no longer at Berkeley and apparently nobody knows what
happened to it. That probably means that at some point it was sold by the
university.
Before we
leave this particular propaganda item, the Hitler birthday sheet, we should
point out the amazing difference between collectors of leaflets and
collectors of stamps. The average American leaflet dropped on Germany is
normally priced at about $20. Most Americans cannot read German and as a
result have little interest in owning a piece of paper that has text they do
not understand. If the illustration is really interesting, perhaps showing
Hitler, or the SS or even an anti-Semitic vignette, collectors might spend
as much as $50. In general, none of the WWII leaflets to Germany has any
great value.
However, if
the leaflet is in the form of a stamp or a postcard, philatelists now enter
the field. They will pay an enormous amount for a leaflet in the form of a
postal product. I have seen Russian propaganda postcards bearing fake stamps
sell from anywhere from $500 to $1300. I have watched the Hitler birthday
sheet over the years and the genuine copies have sold at auction for
anywhere from $360 (the very first one in 1946) to $42,700 in 1995 at the
height of its value. As additional sheets were discovered the price dropped
to $17,400 in 1967 and as little as $5,046 in 2009 when three sheets came on
the market. To be honest, I should point out that they were still offered
estimated at $18,300.
OSS Uncut Sheet of Two Hitler Birthday Sheets
Cherrystone
Auctions of New York City on 28 October 2009 offered an uncut sheet of two
of the American OSS Hitler birthday sheets estimated at $47,500. The sheets
were a vertical uncut pair in brown violet, never hinged, and described as
very fine.
The sheet
was accompanied by a 23 September 2009 Gerhard Krischke (Hannover)
certificate stating that:
...this is the absolutely unique complete sheet and without question the
most important rarity of the World War II Propaganda issues.
So, if this
were a simple leaflet showing Hitler in red it might be worth $25. As a
philatelic item it is worth $47,500. Go figure!
This
propaganda sheet was sold for $50,000 in October 2009. The same sheet was
apparently resold by Cherrystone in February 2012 as lot 2799, this time
realizing a price of $30,000. Apparently the slowing of the American economy
in the three intervening years cost some unlucky collector $20,000.
The OSS Green Hitler Birthday Sheet
There is
also a green version of the OSS Hitler birthday sheet. They are rarer than
the red sheets and only a little over a half-dozen are known to exist.
Unlike the red sheet, the green sheet is not perforated. Instead, the stamps
are separated by rouletting.
The green
sheet was considered to be a fake for about 40 years. Sometime prior to
1978, German Philatelic Society expertizer Werner Bohne acquired a green
sheet with staple holes in the right margin. Bohne claimed that an official
memorandum had been attached to the sheet. The memorandum allegedly
mentioned the fact that the original German sheet was green and therefore
the OSS parody also should be green. In addition, the memorandum questioned
the advisability of producing the parody, since it would not fit on a
standard German envelope while still leaving room for an address. Bohne said
he was under a constraint never to release this memo. I argued with Werner
one day in his Florida home and told him that he must show the alleged
memorandum as proof that the sheet was genuine. He refused and as a result
there was little belief in the existence of the alleged memorandum.
In 1983 a
green sheet was found in 50 kilograms of scrap paper bought by a collector
searching for postcards and autographs. Among the paper was a scrapbook that
contained documents from an OSS forger to his superior at the French 2nd
Bureau. Most importantly, the scrapbook contained pages that bore specimens
of the OSS forged Hitler stamps, the genuine German Hitler birthday sheet, a
red OSS Hitler birthday sheet, and a green OSS Hitler birthday sheet.
Researcher Lee Richards discovered a puzzling situation. Lee has
examined three almost complete collections of OSS Bern material, two at the
National Archives and a third at the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford
University. In all three collections the red Hitler’s birthday sheet (OSS
Bern code 192) is missing, with a printed label stating, “Supplies of this
item exhausted.” In all three collections there is a green Hitler birthday
sheet, but none bear an OSS Bern code – the only propaganda item in
the collections to lack a code. Lee went so far as to say:
I’m starting to wonder whether that green
Hitler death mask souvenir sheet has been “seeded” into these collections.
In addition, in all three collections the green sheet is misfiled
far from code 192, which was assigned to the red sheet probably in October
1944. In the two National Archives collections, the green sheet is placed
with code 307, the 12 pfennig Futsches Reich postage stamp parody
(March 1945), and leaflet 311. In the Hoover Institution collection, the
un-coded green sheet is separate from the main sequence of leaflets.
At
this point there is no explanation for these anomalies, but researcher Frank
Prosser has speculated that toward the end of the European war stock of the
dramatic perforated red sheet had run out, but the perceived need for
building archival and publicity collections had increased. So, around March
1945 or later, OSS Bern prepared green rouletted substitutes for the
original red perforated propaganda sheet using the red plate and placed them
in the archival collections. Since they were not a part of the “authorized”
propaganda, they bore no OSS Bern code number. If this speculation is true,
then the green sheet was produced by a legitimate governmental organization,
probably during wartime, but was not used or intended as propaganda.
Because of the latter finds of the green sheet and the sudden realization
by philatelists that it might be a legitimate OSS propaganda product,
the price of the sheet skyrocketed in 2012. Werner Bohne had originally sold
his green Hitler sheet to an Italian collector for $4,000. That collector
died in 2011. The Swedish company Postiljonen Auktion offered
Bohne's green sheet in its auction of 28-29 September 2012. The sheet sold
for an amazing 17,500 Euros ($22,605 US). Propaganda pays!
I remind the reader that this is all speculation. Very serious
study indicates that the red sheet and the green sheet were possibly made
from the same plates, so they are both OSS, but when, if, and how they were
used is still under consideration.
An OSS Berne
Propaganda Postcard
The American propagandists in Switzerland produced the above
postcard for use against Germany. It was filed by the OSS with the letter
“Y,” (“Postkarte. Photomontage of Hitler standing next to rows of graves, 2
pp. B&W”). There seem to be several versions of this card, with very minor
difference, hardly worth mentioning. Some cards bear a “1918” in the lower
left margin, others seem to have been trimmed to remove that number. Perhaps
it bore the wrong code? German researcher Wolfgang Baldus wrote this card up
so well that I shall just use his narration, shortened for brevity:
The postcard depicts a field of graves with wooden crosses of which
three in the foreground have an “SS” emblem. At left stands Hitler. An
alleged quotation of Hitler is printed above: "Each comrade of the people
has a right to his own piece of land." The source of the quote is printed
below: “Hitler in his speech at the Reichstag on March 8,
1938.” Interestingly, Hitler did not give a speech on that day. Also, the
sentence is incorrect German: the required article “eine” or “die” between
“auf” and “eigene” is missing).
The Same Image on an
OSS Leaflet
The picture was also used on a leaflet with the OSS letter code
“43.” The text is a poem:
Hitler and
Himmler were defeated in the East!
The war serves
only them.
For us, for
the people, the motto must be dare!
The immediate
peace is the victory of the people.
Pact of Steel
The OSS
prepared at least two colorful propaganda postcards attacking the Axis in
conjunction with the U.S. Office of War Information. All the reference
material says that the cards were an OWI project, but both of these cards
have been found with OSS letter file codes stamped on them, so there is some
question about whether it was the OSS or OWI really behind this project.
Both cards were prepared in Bern, Switzerland about 1943 and feature
vignettes by the famous Polish caricaturist Arthur Szyk. Syzk had authored a
book of his anti-Fascist caricatures called The New Orderin 1941.
In it, he printed 38 of his illustrations. Both Colliers and
Esquire Magazine used some of Szyk's drawings as cover illustrations.
Esquire also printed six full-color postcards featuring the drawings of
Szyk in June 1942. The set was called the "Esky Cards" I first wrote about
these in my article "The American Propaganda Postcards of WWII, "German
Postal Specialist, February, 1987. I only had black and
white photocopies of these extremely rare cards but when they were prepared
by Szyk they were printed in full color.
The first card depicts Hermann Göring, Hideki Tojo, and the Grim Reaper
leading a chained and reluctant Benito Mussolini. Notice that the Japanese
leader Tojo wears a Nazi Party swastika armband. This vignette was
originally on a 1942 Szyk Esquire Magazine 4.6 x 7-inch postcard;
(Set 6 - Esky No. 3) entitled "Il Duce." The title Stahlpakt (Pact
of Steel) is on the back of the propaganda postcard along with the code
"TDWD." The Esky cards were in English. The OWI cards have German captions,
possibly to imply that they were produced by an anti-Fascist movement within
Germany. The military "Pact of Steel" between Germany and Italy was signed
on 22 May 1939. Although these cards are usually considered to be products
of the Office of War Information, the OWI and the OSS often shared the same
printing plant in Switzerland. The OWI printed white propaganda during the
day and the OSS secretly printed black propaganda after dark. They had to be
very careful because Switzerland was neutral and the Swiss police often
raided the printing plants. These cards have an OSS file code. Usually such
codes are numeric, but this card is coded with the file letter "R."
In 2017, one of these very rare cards were offered at auction and
sold for $285. This seems to reinforce the theory that they are being
purchased by philatelists who are willing to pay much more than the leaflet
specialists.
Triumph
The second card depicts two individuals wearing swastika armbands riding
on horseback. Traditionally they have been identified as Heinrich Himmler
and Hideki Tojo but closer inspection shows that the "Himmler" figure is
wearing a Wehrmacht uniform and an Iron Cross rather than SS
paraphernalia so it is more likely that this is someone like Field Marshall
Wilhelm Keitel, head of the Oberkommando
der Wehrmacht(High Command of the Armed Forces). The Tojo
figure again wears a swastika, but the indications that he is Japanese are
the Imperial chrysanthemum crest on the horse's bridle and the samurai sword
he carries. Mussolini lags far behind on what may be a mule. In front of the
Axis leaders we see various collaborators and puppet troops being forced
toward the war zone by a Gestapo member. Hidden away on their armbands,
saddle bags, belts and even one animal's body are tiny German words that
identify the individuals and their nations: "Spain;" "Hungary;" "Romania;"
"Italian;" "Japan;" "Gestapo;" "Vichy;" and "Finland."
Overhead a symbol of death holding forth a swastika sits astride a
vulture. There is no text on the front, but the back is entitled
Triumphzug
Unter den Linden Berlin 1943(Triumph [or Triumphal Procession] under
the Linden Trees, Berlin 1943) and the code "RLD." The Unter
den Lindenis a wide boulevard in the Mitte district of
Berlin. It is named for its linden (lime) trees that line the grassed
pedestrian mall and was sometimes used by the Nazis to stage parades and
marches. The vignette was originally on a Szyz Esquire Magazine 4.6 x 7-inch
postcard (Esky Set 6 - No. 2) entitled "The New Orderlies." The OWI/OSS file
code for this propaganda postcard is "Q." In 2017, one of these very rare cards were offered at auction and
sold for $295.
Both
illustrations depict Mussolini as a weak and ridiculous leader. The OWI/OSS
selected these pictures to discredit the German-Italian alliance and to
divide both countries.
The American OSS Forgery of the "Togo" stamp
The
American Office of Strategic Services also forged the stamps of the Empire
of Japan. The stamp chosen was the Japanese 5-sen brown-carmine Hiehachiro
Marquis Togo stamp of 1942. Admiral Togo was the hero of the defeat of the
Russian Naval fleet in 1905.
The
Counterfeits were printed in sheets of 9 (3 x 3), perforated 11½ instead of
the 13x13½ of the genuine and without watermark. They were printed from
April to June 1945 by the Morale Operations Production Unit, China Theatre
of Operations, with printing performed at the OSS facility Detachment 505 in
Calcutta. About 4,800 stamps in all were printed to fill three orders from
OSS Detachment 203. Major Donald B. Monroe, in charge of the Production Unit
in Calcutta supervised the printing of the stamps. They were intended as
postage on "poison pen" letters. Unknown to the MO staff, the 5-sen rate was
no longer valid for postage in Japan, and it is possible that none of the
propaganda letters were delivered. The Japanese had raised the postage
needed for a letter from 5-sen to 7-sen on 1 April 1944. OSS files contain
two envelopes addressed to Japanese nationals bearing 5-sen stamps -
presumably the OSS forgeries.
The
propaganda envelopes were prepared at the Morale Operations Advanced Base 31
in Nanp'ing. The commanding officer of Detachment 202 (Chungking) mentions
the commander of the advanced base in a memorandum:
He mails propaganda letters and Japanese postcards to enemy troops and to
Japan.
The Togo Sheet of Nine Stamps
The
remainders were allegedly destroyed in 1945, except for a few sheets
retained for reference. I say "allegedly" because many of the stamps seem to
have survived, probably souvenirs kept by members of the OSS. For instance,
when researching in the National Archives several years ago an envelope
holding 15 of the sheets was found. The Archives had no idea of the rarity
of the stamps. Another sheet was found by a Columbus, Ohio stamp dealer in
"several bags of loose stamps, covers and rodent droppings." It is believed
that this sheet was from the collection of ex-OSS agent Jim Withrow's
father.
Dr. Paul
Michelsen told me:
I was a student at Deep Springs College, California in 1976. Of the many
colorful alumni who visited, Jim Withrow stood out. He was a high-powered
New York lawyer and had been in the OSS during WWII. He handed out sheets of
red stamps which he said had been printed to undermine the Japanese
occupation of China.
A second
student named Brian F. Lanter who was present at that same talk also
received one of Withrow's sheets. He said:
After he spoke he handed out souvenirs to the students, including several
panes of the forged Togo stamp.
A lawyer
named Eric J. Lobenfeld who worked with Withrow at the law offices of
William Donovan (Head of the wartime OSS) in New York City was given two
sheets with the note:
Eric, these were manufactured at my plant in Tollygunge (a suburb of
Calcutta) in early 1945.
To get a
better idea of how the stamps were to be used, I quote a 20 April 1945
Letter from Morale Operations in Calcutta to the Commander of OSS Detachment
203:
We are pouching you today under separate cover the 1,000 sheets of Korean
writing paper and envelopes you ordered in your letter of 21 March 1945. The
5-sen postage stamps will be delivered from Reproduction in two weeks, at
which time we will pouch them to you.
On 2 May
1945 a second letter said:
We enclose herewith 1,000 Japanese 5-sen postage stamps ordered by you on 21
March 1945.
Another
letter was sent on 22 May 1945 stating:
We enclose herewith the additional 1,000 Japanese 5-sen postage stamps which
you ordered by cable on 16 May 1945.
It seems
clear that the OSS was very active at the time in preparing the "poison pen"
letters to be sent to the Japanese. Other documents indicate for instance,
the order of 3,500 sheets of Japanese writing paper, 2000 envelopes, and
1,800 counterfeit postage stamps in May and June 1945. A second memo states
that Korean writing paper and envelopes were forwarded on 20 April 1945.
The "Free Philippines Guerrilla Postal Service" Propaganda Stamp
There are
two different items that we usually label Philippine Propaganda stamps. They
were both prepared for use in the occupied Philippines by the
American-supported partisans fighting the Japanese. The first is the 2
centavos "Free Philippines Guerrilla Postal Service" propaganda stamp,
prepared for the 10th Military District Guerrilla Forces on Mindanao in
November 1943 by Allied forces in Brisbane, Australia. The "stamps" are
printed in sheets of 25 (5x5), with roulette perforations. They were
prepared as a morale builder for the guerrilla forces. Although there are no
definite numbers for production, it has been estimated that 5,000 were
originally printed and 2,000 authorized for distribution. It is believed
that about 20 sheets or 500 of the propaganda stamps actually were delivered
to Mindanao by the U.S. supply submarine Narwhal. Covers to the United
States exist bearing the Mindanao guerrilla stamp and showing various
postmarks, censor hand-stamps, etc. Genuine covers were carried by courier,
along with other guerrilla communications, probably from Mindanao to General
MacArthur's headquarters in Australia by submarine, then to Washington in a
military pouch. The normal price range for the stamp is $300-400. However,
one particularly handsome specimen sold for $600 in 2001.
Wendell W. Fertig Cover
In the
early days of WWII, newly promoted Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Wendell
Fertig, a civil engineer by profession was sent from Bataan to Mindanao to
assist the military commander, General Sharp. Soon afterwards, General Sharp
surrendered to the Japanese. Fertig decided to fight on and took to the
hills. He believed that thousands of American soldiers and Philippine scouts
could be used as guerillas to continue the fight against the Japanese.
Fertig was a master of psychology so immediately promoted himself to the
rank of Brigadier General and began the formation of his guerilla army. Fertig hoped to collect the
numerous independent and often feuding guerrilla bands under one command and
organize them into lawful U.S. troops. He decided to bring rival chieftains under control by claiming the
rank of brigadier general and by representing himself as having come from
General Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters. Most Filipinos revered
MacArthur, and the use of his name brought immediate results. For
the next two years, "General" Fertig created and led the United States
Forces, Philippines. He built an army of over 30,000 armed men, the
equivalent of a regular Army Corps. With no formal military training and
limited supplies, General Fertig conducted commando type raids against the
Japanese to obtain weapons and ammunition, food, medical supplies, and
communications equipment. In time, General Fertig's forces became the best
equipped and most effective irregular fighting force of World War II. Their
communications became MacArthur's eyes and ears in the Philippines. When the
Americans finally returned to Mindanao, they found Fertig virtually in
control of one of the world's largest islands, commanding an army of 35,000
men, and at the head of a civil government with its own law courts,
currency, factories and hospitals. In the early 1950s, with the
intensification of the cold war, Fertig was assigned to Fort Bragg, North
Carolina, where he and another Philippine guerrilla veteran, Brigadier
General Russell Volckmann, called on their vast guerrilla experience to draw
up insurgency doctrine and manuals for the fledgling U.S. Army Special
Forces. The amazing envelope with guerrilla
postage stamp and propaganda cancel above was written by Fertig and sent to
his wife in the United States by U.S. Submarine.
A complete sheet of the Guerilla Stamps
This very
rare sheet of the Guerrilla stamps was offered for auction in October 2012
estimated at $4,500. The sheet measures 9 1/4" x 6 1/8". Owner said:
The original issue of these guerrilla stamps consisted of 20 complete
sheets, for a total of only 500 stamps. The sheets were originally given to
Col. Wendell Fertig by Commander Charles "Chick" Parsons, as he landed at
Butuan in November 1943, by the submarine Narwhal. I understand that the
idea for the stamps came from Commander Parsons.
In 1996, I contacted the Citizen's Stamp Advisory Committee, and I tried to
have a stamp made in honor of "Chick" Parsons, who Gen. MacArthur referred
to as "The Bravest Man He Ever Knew". My efforts were not adopted, but Peter
Parsons, one of Chick's sons contacted me, and through years of
correspondence, we became friends. In February of 2005, Peter Parsons gave
me this sheet, and told me that there was one other complete sheet that he
donated to the MacArthur Memorial in the Philippines.
William Wise said in Secret Mission to the Philippines, E.P.
Dutton and Company, Inc., N.Y. 1968):
By 1943, the government in Tokyo, Japan realized that a mysterious "Mr. X"
was operating in the Philippines. Arriving by submarine, he was supplying
the American-Filipino guerrilla forces with medicine, ammunition and arms.
By early 1944, Tokyo had established his identity, and from then on, there
was a reward of $50,000 for the capture of Commander Charles Parsons - dead
or alive. Through a secret organization called "Spyron," "Chick" Parsons
helped to organize and supply one of the most successful undergrounds the
world had ever seen - the American-Filipino guerrilla movement of World War
II...He was a collector of psychological and political warfare - a shadowy
will-of-the-wisp figure, who sought to remain invisible. By the end of the
war, however, he had become one of America's most decorated heroes.
The "Cebu" Stamps
The Cebu
stamps are far less clear as to origin. The 2, 4, 16, and 20 centavos "Cebu"
stamps were allegedly produced by the Southern Cebu Forces in the village of
Dumanjug in late 1942. The "stamps" show heavy lines at top and bottom,
containing "USAFFE" at top, the value in center, and "SCF" at bottom. The
"USAFFE" is "United States Armed Forces in the Far East"; and "SCF" is
"Southern Cebu Forces." The 16 centavos label shows additional text,
"Registered Mail", and the 20 centavos label shows "Special Delivery." The
labels are printed imperforate and without gum, allegedly in the enormous
quantities of about 100,000 each. The 2 and 4 centavos labels are printed in
sheets of 10 each (5x2), on thin, pink paper. The 16 and 20 centavos labels
are printed together on sheets of 8 on plain bond paper. Despite several
articles in the literature and a half-dozen interviews with wartime Guerilla
fighters attesting to the genuine nature of these items, they are still
considered dubious private collector-inspired productions by some
specialists. Covers exist bearing the handwritten comment "by Courier" over
the stamps. Most of the guerrilla stamps were ordered destroyed during and
after the war and as a result they are quite rare today and a set of all
four can sell in the range of $1000 dollars.
The Len Deighton SS/GB Fantasy Stamps
A Fake German-occupied British Postcard Produced by the Publicists of SS/GB
Note: The official postcard has text at the bottom.
This card has been trimmed for artistic purposes.
On the subject of interesting and expensive fakes and fantasies, we
should mention the 1978 Len Deighton fantasy stamps produced to advertise
his book SS-GB.
The story told of a Great Britain that had been conquered by Germany, and
the book pictured a British postage stamp bearing the head of Adolf Hitler.
Besides the book cover, the clever publicists printed a booklet of stamps
and a picture postcard to go along with the advertising campaign. The
"stamps" show a familiar right-side view of Hitler lifted from the German
stamp issue of 13 April 1938 for Hitler's 49th birthday, with "SS" and "GB"
in the upper corners and "Postage Revenue" along the bottom edge.
Denominations were 1/2, 2, and 2 1/2 pence. The parodies were printed in
booklet panes of six (3x2) and enclosed in a booklet containing one pane of
each. The British post office quickly confiscated all the booklets they
could locate. Remember, these are complete fantasies, mere conversation
pieces. However, propaganda collectors sent them through the roof. Of those
remaining in dealer's hands, two complete booklets immediately sold for 300
pounds each. In a Hanover auction in mid-1998, a booklet sold for 1250 marks
plus surcharges. Collectors will buy anything!
Courtesy of Wolfgang Baldus
What may
even be more interesting and a second reason to show these advertising
labels in this article is that they have been heavily counterfeited and
offered for sale. Whereas the original labels were printed in green, orange
and blue, the fakes also offer a red 2 1/2 denomination in a set of four
stamps. In fact, all of the labels are 2 1/2 in this reproduced set. Whereas
the genuine stamp panes had two staples (four holes), one of the fake
varieties has only one staple (two holes). There are also other variations
such as the original labels having the "SS" in normal font while on the
fakes have a fancier rune-like font. The second set of reproductions does
not have the "SS" in the upper left corner at all. So, to sum it up, the
original labels are a civilian advertising ploy of no philatelic value that
are very rare and have sold for hundreds of dollars, and as a result, some
very poor imitations were produced that have sold quite well for as much as
a hundred dollars on eBay and
similar sites. My friend Wolfgang Baldus has made a study of these labels
and reproductions and we illustrate his comparisons above. Let me say it
again. Collectors will buy anything!
OSS Counterfeit French Fiscal Stamp
The United
States also prepared fake fiscal stamps for use in France on passports and
other documents. I first wrote about this stamp in "The Rarest Forgery of
WWII?"The SPA Journal, April 1977. I was very proud
of myself at the time because the stamp espionage operation had not
previously been mentioned in the American philatelic press. Twenty-four
years later my friend W. David Ripley III discovered an entire imperforate
sheet of the forgeries in the estate of a former OSS employee.
The United States OSS forgeries of French fiscal stamps were prepared for
use by OSS agents and the French underground on various identity papers. The
genuine stamps are 35x19 mm, and depict the head of Ceres in a medallion on
the left, and "TIMBRE / FISCAL" in two lines at the right above a
denomination in another color. The forgeries are excellent reproductions,
and are perforated and watermarked. Whereas the genuine French fiscals are
perforated 13.5, the forgeries appear to be perforated either 12 (as
reported in the Yvert & Tellier fiscal Catalog) or 13 (as reported by author
Herman Herst and another owner for 5 francs specimens). The printing format
is known for the 13 francs and 15 francs forgeries: twenty-eight stamps in a
4 x 7 arrangement, with the left-hand two columns being 13 francs and the
right-hand two columns being 15 francs. An imperforate sheet of the 13
francs/15 francs is described in W. David Ripley III, "New discoveries in
World War II espionage philately, "German Postal Specialist,
March 2001.
Forged OSS Identity Card
VERITAS, the Journal of the Army Special Operations
History, Volume 5, Number 1, 2009 depicts a forged ID card bearing the Fake
13 franc stamp. The card was used by Second Lieutenant Herbert R. Bruckner
(code name Sacha) using the alias Albert Jean Brugnon.
The known
forgeries are 40 centimes (Useful for birth certificates, which required a 5
francs and a 40 centimes stamp); 2 francs; 5 francs (Used on municipal
certificates such as marriage licenses); 13 francs (Useful on identity cards
issued between 1940 and 21 April 1943, when the rate was raised to 15
francs); and 15 francs (Useful on identity cards issued after 21 April
1943).
The OSS Counterfeit
5-franc French Fiscal Stamp
In 2021 I discovered many more French forgeries that had been
forced in the OSS printing plant in Washington DC. I found sheets of the
40-centimes, 2-, 5-, and 15-franc forgeries.
An old friend, Major Willis Reddick told me about his experience
with the French stamps:
I am sure you are familiar with the O.S.S. in World War Two. Our
missions were the gathering of intelligence as well as the infiltration of
spies and saboteurs behind the enemy lines in France and Northern Italy,
usually by drops from aircraft. I was an officer in the O.S.S. and early in
1944 I was sent on a mission to Bari, Italy, from our headquarters in
Algiers. On my return I was forced to lay over in Naples and billeted with
one of our groups who was engaged in supplying all the necessary papers to
the agents who were being dropped behind the lines. We produced everything
needed, including identification cards and tax stamps for the documents that
required them. The forgeries were a marvel of perfection and as far as I
know, the Germans never caught on. On seeing the stamps, I asked for some as
souvenirs. No dice - but after much wheedling and explaining that I was a
collector, he grudgingly gave me just one specimen. I have kept it all these
years.
Another good friend, Wolfgang Baldus, has researched these stamps
in some depth and says about this one:
The 5 Francs fiscal stamp has the same design but “Timbre fiscal”
is replaced by “Taxes communales” (local taxes). Virtually nothing is known
about the propaganda forgery of this stamp. One mint copy was
allegedly in the possession of a former OSS officer who sold it to the
American stamp dealer Herman Herst in 1975. The stamp is said to be now in a
private collection of a former CIA member who bought it from Herst. Nothing
was ever published on this stamp forgery and only a few personal letters
referring to it exist. The forgery is perforated 13, fully gummed and
printed faintly with a strong red “5 Francs” print making the stamp design
look pale. It was allegedly prepared for use on marriage certificates.
Note that comment about one mint copy. Could that be the single
stamp that Major Reddick was able to cajole in Naples?A brief description of the Washington D.C. printing shop is found
in the OSS War Report:
An engraving shop was established in Washington to produce various
types of European and Far Eastern documents. Identity cards, work permits,
chauffeurs' licenses, etc., were meticulously prepared with appropriate
regard for the enormous amount of detail necessary to provide the
authenticity upon which the agent's life might depend. Through Operational
Group’s, the French Maquis was supplied with all necessary documents for
travel and activity in Germany, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
Censorships and Documents was, of course, responsible for securing the
intelligence necessary to the production of agent documentation, but
Research and Development also secured a great deal of information from other
sources and from its own personnel in the field. In fact, Research and
Development and Censorships and Documents personnel worked together in many
theaters on questions of documentation and camouflage, e.g., in London,
where a joint office was set up. Such details as the size of type, kind of
paper and ink used, methods of watermarking, etc., were of vital importance.
The 2000 edition of the French specialized catalogue of fiscal
stamps Catalogue des timbres fiscaux et Socio-posteaux de France contains
the following paragraph (edited for brevity):
Forgeries for commercial use. During the Second World War forged
fiscal stamps were used to provide false papers without alerting the
collaborationist regime through the purchase of ostentatious quantities of
such stamps. The following values have been noted: 40 centimes, 2 francs, 5
francs and 15 francs. These stamps, which appear to have been made one by
one, all have the watermark ‘AT36’ and usually have irregular perforations
at one or more corners.
OSS Counterfeit Nazi Party Stamp
The OSS
printed counterfeit Nazi Party stamps for use on Party membership cards. The
Party stamps were prepared as part of Operation Sauerkraut,
another OSS operation that occurred near the end of the war after the
assassination attempt on Hitler's life. I mention them in my Internet
article here where
I say:
The Sauerkraut printed material was prepared in two qualities; very good or
very crude. There is a reason for this. The documents, hand-stamps, Nazi
Party dues stamps and identification papers that the agents carried behind
the lines had to be perfect. They had to pass inspection by the German
military police. At the same time, the leaflets, gummed labels, and posters
had to look crude. The plan was for the German soldiers to think that there
was an underground anti-Nazi movement that existed all around them. If the
stickers on the wall were too good, it would be apparent that they were of
Allied origin. As a result, many of the leaflets had the appearance of
crudely mimeographed sheets that had been produced in a basement on a
hand-cranked machine.
Photograph from the
Official Sauerkraut Report
Note the vertical
strip of five Nazi Party dues stamps at the upper right
I first discovered these stamps by carefully studying a photograph found
in an official OSS wartime presentation booklet entitled The
Story of the Sauerkrauts, which reports on MO Rome's Operation
Sauerkraut. In this nine-page document is a photograph that shows, much
reduced, numerous forged identity documents and a perforated vertical strip
of 5 stamps with top, left, and bottom margins. For many years, the
Sauerkraut document was the only hint that the OSS had forged Nazi party
dues labels, until W. David Ripley discovered an entire imperforate sheet in
the estate of a former OSS employee.
The United States OSS forgery of German Nazi Party dues labels were
prepared for use on forged identity documents distributed to Germans
Prisoners of War in Operation Sauerkraut. The label measures 20x17 mm, and
has a violet background with un-inked design and text featuring the Nazi
spread-winged eagle atop an enclosed swastika. The text "Partei Betrag"
("Party contribution") is above the eagle's wings; "N.S.D.A.P." is at
bottom. The denomination "1.-" is at left, and "-.30" is at right,
representing 1.30 Reichsmarks. A thin, black overprint "1940" covers the
wings of the eagle. Ripley's find is a miniature sheet of 20 (4x5),
measuring 123 mm square, imperforate. Dave illustrated it in "New
discoveries in World War II espionage philately, "German Postal Specialist, March
2001.
I should
point out that readers might be confused to find many of the same items in
both the Cornflakes and Sauerkraut article.
The reason for this is that both operations were run by the same unit with
much of the same manpower. As a result, there were cases where leaflets
prepared for one operation were used by the other. It probably made good
sense at the time.
OSS Archived Genuine German Reference Stamps?
We know for
sure that the OSS printed propaganda products in Washington DC, London,
Italy and Switzerland. They also had a section in Stockholm that might have
printed products, but little is known about their actions. There could be
additional forgery sections, but if so, they are unknown. The Washington
office is known to have printed counterfeit enemy currency, but there is no
documentation that they counterfeited postage stamps.
A Research
and Development Department (Dirty Tricks) agent named Major Willis C.
Reddick was in charge of establishing the OSS printing office in a 100 x
100-foot former laboratory space at 25th and E Streets in Washington DC. He told me:
With the exception of the operation I was in charge of, printing large
quantities of Japanese occupational banknotes, we counterfeited no
additional currency. Our efforts were limited to documents for individual
agents. This was no simple task. The British were doing the same thing. I
feel that we were successful in besting our British friends.
Notice that
I did not ask him about stamps. I was interested in currency at the time and
should note here that the United States allegedly counterfeited several
currencies for the Pacific Theater of War, including four values of the
Philippines, the 10 rupees Burmese banknote, at least three Chinese "puppet"
banks, the Malayan 10 dollar note and three denominations of the banknotes
of Thailand. Others were on order, such as Japanese military notes and
French Indochina banknotes, but they were never delivered. Notice also that
Reddick did not counterfeit German currency. Rumor has it that there was a
WWII "gentleman's agreement" between Germany and the United States that they
would not forge each others currency. Reddick made friends with employees of
the Bureau of Engraving and also was able to pick draftees with printing
experience from basic training units in the Army. He retired as a Lieutenant
Colonel at the end of the war.
Reddick
also says that he prepared documents for individual agents. I assume that
many of these documents would require many different and varied NAZI Party
and official stamps.
One of the
OSS agents working in the Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment,
Strategic Services Unit, OSS, Washington DC was Master Sergeant Francis
Varacalli. His initial job in the Army was as a cook and a mess sergeant but
after almost two years he was transferred to intelligence. That seems a
strange change in military occupational specialty until you know that he had
been employed by the Truart Reproduction Company of New York City where he
engraved letters or designs on printing plates. It is clear that he had the
ability to engrave a printing plate and would be valuable in producing
propaganda material. His discharge states that he served with the office of
Strategic Services where he assisted in the preparation of propaganda to be
disseminated to enemy territories.
Upon his
death, his estate included about two dozen sheets of German stamps, Nazi
Party dues stamps and other such items. Upon inspection, all the stamps
appear to be genuine. Varacalli had implied during his later years that he
had counterfeited enemy stamps so his collection would seem to indicate that
these were reference copies meant to be used as a guide during
counterfeiting operations. We know that the OSS counterfeited some regular
and Nazi Party stamps, so it is possible that there are more forged values
that are still unknown. What is interesting is that the OSS forged sheets of
twenty of the 1+30 Nazi Party dues stamp, and in the Vacarelli file we find
two full sheets of 100 copies of the 1+30 genuine Nazi Party stamp. We also
find the 6 and 12 pfennig regular German stamps that we know were forged by
the OSS. Some other official stamps that are found in the collection are the
3 pfennig National Socialist Workers Party franchise stamp (Partei-Dienstmarken),
a 40 pfennig official stamp (Dienstmarken), and a bill of exchange
tax stamp. It has been suggested that the 3 pfennig stamp could be used for
printed matter up to 20 grams including up to 5 written words. A pair of
them could be used for postcards. The 40 pfennig could be used for special
delivery mail or small packages from 250 to 500 grams and the bill of
exchange tax stamps might be used for "stamp duty" on financial promissory
notes which could be used in lieu of currency avoiding a need for the OSS to
counterfeit or collect large sums of German banknotes.
The United
States Office of Strategic Services also considered the use of genuine
stamps and currency in a PSYOP campaign against the Third Reich. Postage
stamps and money would be placed inside envelopes along with a small 4 x
6-inch card with a propaganda message. The message would compare current
events to the hyper-inflationary period after World War One.
The plan
was first discussed at the end of June 1944 and known as Special Plan C-5 /
U.S. Postage Stamps and Coins / Target German Civilians with Cash. It called
for the printing of one million small envelopes that would contain a stamp,
a coin, or a one-dollar bill. Each envelope would be preprinted, "A Gift to
the Finder from German-Americans." The following items would be collected to
be placed in the envelopes: 40,000 5-cent stamps; 266,000 3-cent stamps;
664,000 1-cent stamps; 10,000 U.S. $1.00 bills and 20,000 10-cent silver
coins. Each envelope would state the value of the object in the value of
1923 German marks. The message on the envelope with the 1-cent stamp was:
This one-cent stamp was worth 400,000,000 marks in 1923. Participation notes
with a face value of one American cent actually circulated in Germany that
year. American money came to your rescue.
Other
suggested messages were:
When you remember walls papered with German bank notes in 1923, you
understand, do you not, why people who lived through the last inflation are
now spending what money they have on the open market where they can buy
something tangible before it is too late?
Do you know what the internal debt is in Germany today? What will it be when
you reimburse those who have suffered losses in the war? Where is the money
coming from?
Do you know how much currency is in circulation today? It increases while
production declines. Is it any wonder that prices on the black market -
which is the true measure of inflation - go up every day? Your money will
buy less and less.
This PSYOP
operation apparently never got past the planning stages.
British Propaganda Leaflet G.53
It is interesting to note that the Allies did not just produce propaganda
parodies and espionage forgeries of stamps. Sometimes they placed a regular
postage stamp on a propaganda leaflet because it illustrated their theme so
well. The
Complete Index of Allied Airborne Leaflets and Magazines 1939-1945 states
that the British Political Warfare Executive printed leaflet G.53 with a
first dissemination of 9-10 August 1943 and a last dissemination of 30-31
August 1943. The Index always gives two dates because the aircraft left
Britain on one evening and returned early the following morning. I first
wrote about this leaflet in "More propaganda parodies," German
Postal Specialist, April 1977. The leaflet is entitled Die
Erste Diktatur Gesturzt ("The first dictator has fallen"),
depicting the Germany 1941 12+38 pfennig brown-red Italian-German
Brotherhood stamp. It tells the Germans that Mussolini has fallen, and
Hitler will be next. British PWE propaganda booklets also depicted stamps of
the Italian 1941 Italian-German friendship issue. The stamps depict Hitler
and Mussolini. The 16-page booklets, in Italian, are entitled "Here are your
allies" and "Here are our enemies". The booklet coded I.44 Ecco
I Vostri Alleati ("Here are your allies") depicts the 50
centesimi violet. Booklet I.52 Ecco I Nostri Nemici ("Here
are our enemies") depicts the 1.25 lira blue on a booklet showing Hitler and
Mussolini smiling and talking in an open car.
Allied Propaganda
Leaflet ZG.101B
Allied Leaflet ZG.101 is a rather strange use of a letter for
propaganda. 3,400,000 copies of this leaflet were printed and 1,566,666 were
dropped on 20 and 21 February 1945 in Germany, France, and Belgium. It
purports to be a photographic reproduction of an envelope with Hitler-head
stamps and a letter written by a German Red Cross Nurse Lise S. The back of
the leaflet is a long propaganda text which says in part:
A Document
This leaflet is nothing but the reproduction of a document. If you
turn this leaflet over, you will find on the back a reproduction of a letter
written by the German Red Cross nurse Lise S. (Berlin-Dahlem) to Frau Maria
Putz, Kohlscheid, near Aachen.
Nurse Lise S. was captured by the Americans in the invasion battles
on August 7th. She was exchanged on August 17th. In her letter to Frau Putz
– whose husband was also captured by the Americans, and whom she cared for
herself – Nurse Lise S. describes the treatment in American captivity. She
writes, among other things:
“From the days of my captivity in American hands and from many
stories told by exchanged men, I know the Americans treat their prisoners
correctly, even in a friendly way and that they give them very good food
which by our standards is lavish. So, there is no reason to be worried.”
…Who is lying? The NAZI officer who is afraid for his life, or a
German Red Cross nurse who has been in captivity and who is now in safety?
Ask yourself this question and then act accordingly –
WHO IS LYING?
Years
later, during the Suez Crisis of 1956, the British produced a propaganda
leaflet featuring a "stamp" showing a caricature of an unhappy Gamal Abdel
Nasser in helmet and military uniform. The "stamp" is inscribed "Egypte" at
top and "Defense" at bottom. Two lines of Arabic text appear beneath the
stamp: "I am ready to fight for the canal to the last extremity, for the
liberty of Egypt and its peoples. November 1956."
The Germans liked to fake letters and drop them over American troops.
Sometimes they came with envelopes. Sometimes without. This German
propaganda leaflet has no code and looks like a letter written by a solider
to his girlfriend. It was airdropped on Allied soldiers near Brest, France
in September 1944. Its purpose is to destroy the morale of the soldier who
reads it. The text is:
16 September 1944
Somewhere in France
Dearest Mary,
Thank you so much for your lovely letter. I was so very happy to hear from
you again, and to know you are feeling tip-top once more. You know dear, we
all hope for a speedy end of this war, possibly in a few weeks or even days.
If you shouldn’t hear from me for some time, that is to say before the end
of this war, then don’t worry dearest, for I shall be alright. You can be
sure I haven’t the slightest intention of risking everything in the last few
hours of the war. It won’t be so bad, you know, to spend three or four weeks
in a camp. It will be better dear than a wooden cross always.
I know you’ll agree with me, my love. Soon we shall be seeing each other
again. Isn’t that wonderful? Lots of the other poor fellows will never see
home again.
Oh dearest, how I long to see you again.
In haste my love,
Always yours
Bob
Two things strike me about this fake letter as a historian. The Germans
loved to use the name “Bob” on leaflets to Americans. You find it on many
sexual leaflets. “Bob Harrison” appears in a series of leaflets where his
sweetheart leaves him for a Jewish draft dodger. Second, all these letters
home were censored so no writer would say he is thinking of going over to
the Germans because that letter would never be allowed to be sent home, or
if it was all the defeatist talk would have been blacked out.
The Russian Postcards
The Soviet government began producing propaganda leaflets on 22
June 1941, one day after German troops invaded Russia. The 7th Department of
the Red Army, affiliated with the political divisions of the Army located in
Moscow, was charged with the production of propaganda materials. The 7th
Department in Moscow produced all strategic leaflets, and subordinate
political units in the field distributed the leaflets and frequently
themselves produced and distributed tactical leaflets. The Russian Army
produced many leaflets in the form of postcards, largely directed at German
troops in Russia, but also, in smaller numbers, to other ethnic units
fighting alongside the Germans. The output was prodigious, and eventually
the Russians became the most prolific producer of propaganda postcards in
the war.
I chose not to do an article on this subject because it would have
simply been too long and too time consuming. However, I have studied them in
depth and right after the collapse of the Soviet Union these extremely rare
cards became available for a short time as the workers in the Russian
archives either stole or were allowed to take one handful of the stored
documents as severance pay. Their stories differed. At the Madison Garden
New York City stamp exhibition that year there were several Russians walking
around with briefcases filled with the postcards. They were being sold for
$1350 each. We bought them all. About six months later, because of the glut
of them the price dropped to about $850 each. One dealer apologized to me
and felt guilty about the price he had charged but I told him that I had
only seen two or three of the cards over the past 40 years and the price was
something we were more than willing to pay. There are over 70 postcards in
all, most aimed at the Germans, but some also targets their allies, the
Finns. Some attacked Hitler, Himmler or Goering, others promised death and
destruction. Another series depicted German Field Marshalls that Hitler had
dismissed or that had disagreed with their Fuehrer. There were some cards
that vilified Hitler as a rabid gorilla or a blood-sucking louse.
Aerial Propaganda of WWII
There are many books written about the Russian propaganda
postcards. Two in my library are Klaus Kirchner’s 1994 paperback,
Postcards Produced by the Soviets for Aerial Dissemination in WWII, and
the Buchbinder and Schuh 1974 German language paperback Aerial Propaganda
of WWII, Documentation and Analysis. By coincidence, the later book
depicts the postcard showing Hitler as a bloody axe on the front with the
text Heil Hatchet.
One
of the most popular series they produced were fake German postcards that had a forged
imprinted stamp on them. The set consisted of five postcards all with a
Christmas theme. I first wrote about them in "Postcards to the enemy,"S.P.A.
Journal, July 1971. I went into more depth in a second article,
"Russian WWII Propaganda Postcards for Germany," German Postal Specialist,
September/October 1987. We depict two of them here.
Russian Postcard Lebensraum im Osten ("Living space in the East")
The
propaganda message on this Russian postcard is:
This is the living space that the German soldier found at the Eastern Front.
Six feet under the soil and a birch cross on the ground. Like a shroud the
snow covers the fallen, the wind whistles, the crows can "K-r-r-Kraut,
Kraut." Hitler has lied to you, German soldiers. He has promised you the
capture of Moscow but gave you maiming and death. On Christmas Eve German
women weep for Hitler's victims. You, who are left alive, finish with
Hitler! Finish with the war!
The Russian postcards were imprinted on the address side with a 6 pfennig
Hindenburg stamp and the word "Postkarte." To the left of the stamp is an
imitated express label "Des Führers Weihnachtsbescherung" ("The Fuhrer's
Christmas Present"). Below the express label is a short propaganda
paragraph. All printing on the address side is in green. The picture side
contains a drawing in bluish-black. Although the Russians printed over 50
propaganda postcards with various markings, these are the only Russian
postcards with an imprinted postage stamp. 500,000 of each card were printed
in Moscow on 10 December 1941. Being strategic leaflets, these cards could
be used throughout the Eastern Front. Other cards were entitled O
Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum("O Christmas Tree..."); Sie
wird Dich suchen ("She will be searching for you"); and Brot,
Brot ("Bread, bread").
Russian Postcard Die Heimkehr ("The homecoming")
The text on
this card is:
Healthy and with whole bones he went to war on Hitler's orders. This is how
he returns; a cripple, broken, battered, a ruin of a man. For what has this
unfortunate offered his limbs, his health and his fortune? What is really
worth it? German Soldier! Before it is too late - come to your senses. Allow
yourself to be taken prisoner and the war will be over for you.
During the Cold War years these postcards were extremely rare and at one
time they sold for about $1,350 each. After the fall of the Berlin Wall a
glut came on the market as the Soviet archives were looted and the price
dropped to about $500. The prices have now leveled off as the surplus has
disappeared and as recently as October 2009, several of these cards sold for
$750 each.
The Anna Rosenbauer card
Although
there are dozens of known Russian propaganda postcards prepared for use
against Germany, two different postcards came to light in the late 1980s in
Czechoslovakia. There was some debate about their genuiness for a while
because of the late arrival on the philatelic scene, but eventually they
were accepted as legitimate propaganda. Both cards mention the Crimea
Conference held in early February 1945, so these cards were prepared late in
the war.
This card
depicts Adolf Hitler being punched from every side and the flags of the
United States, Great Britain and the USSR. The text is:
We agreed upon and planned the time, extent, and coordination of new and
even harder blows which our Army and Air forces will strike against the
heart of Germany from east, west, north, and south. (From the declaration of
the Crimea Conference.
The card
has a pre-printed address to a Frau Anna Rosenbauer, and of course, a
propaganda message from a happy husband in Russian captivity.
A similar
vignette appears on a Russian poster attesting to the combined might of the
Allies. The poster's Cyrillic text is in the form of a poem:
The devil howled, for he hears
the coming hour of our vengeance.
Blows from three sides are bringing
an end to Fascist Germany.
I could show dozens more of the Russian propaganda postcards, but I
thought I would end with just two, Hitler as a gorilla and Hitler as a body
louse.
Gorilla Adolf
This postcard that shows Hitler as a gorilla has the text:
Gorilla Adolf. Caution! Rabies!
There he belongs; there he will stay!
This card was printed on 29 August 1941, in the quantity of
1,000,000. Distribution in late October 1941 officially confirmed. There are
two varieties of this card, one without color, the other with red blood
around the mouth.
The Song of the Louse
The Song of the Louse propaganda postcard has four paragraphs of
song lyrics on the back address side. This postcard also appears in two
varieties, one with a small Hitler face and the other with a larger Hitler
face almost covering the back of the louse, with red blood at lower left.
This card was first disseminated about December 1941. The first paragraph
is:
Soldier, where is your hiding place?
In ice and snow, in dirt and mud!
With curse of people heavily laden,
you travel alone so far from home.
You travel alone with your comrade,
the poisonous fat louse.
Although
the title of this article is Propaganda and Espionage Philately, we have
arbitrarily just discussed WWI and WWII up to this point. It occurs to me
that there were so many more postal propaganda items that I am aware of,
perhaps in the hundreds, that we should mention a few of the more
interesting ones. Please
use this link to part II of the article.
As I stated
at the start of this article, this study is meant to be a very general
introduction to espionage forgeries and propaganda parodies. Readers that
wish to comment may contact the author at sgmbert@hotmail.com.
