[Below: Prepaid postcards with Adolf Hitler stamps are usually a 'dime a dozen', although there are a few types which are actually pretty rare, this one being one of the rarest. These were for a pneumatic postal network of tubes, which could go up to 400 kilometers! It reached its greatest expansion in the Third Reich in 1940. It ceased to exist in 1963 in West Berlin and 1976 in East Berlin. It was many times more expensive to use the Rohrpost than regular mail, but it was a lot faster. Fascinating old technology!]
[Below: Close-up.]
[Below: Reverse of postcard. Exciting huh?]
[Below: Here is an envelope which advertises the Rohrpost, or pneumatic mail. It says: 'Rohrpost bringt Zeitgewinn' (Pneumatic tube saves time).]
[Below: Close-up.]
[Below: Here is an envelope that was used on the Rohrpost, canceled on April 25, 1939. It's route was through France 'via Le Havre par Normandie' (via Le Havre by Normandy) and to the USA.]
[Below: Here is an envelope which rode on the famed and tragic 'Hindenburg' airship. Airships were huge in the 1930s, nearly every country issued special postage stamps specifically for postage aboard them. Most of these stamps and envelopes are quite expensive today and very desirable.]
[Below: Reverse. The Hindenburg would crash roughly a year from the time this letter was sent, on May 6, 1937. Aboard the Hindenburg were approximately 17,000 pieces of mail on its final voyage. Only 176 pieces of mail, which were kept in a protective container survived the crash.]
[Below: Another Hindenburg airship envelope from July 6, 1936. I wonder what "Driftways" is?]
[Below: Reverse.]
[Below: Another Hindenburg airship envelope. This one is from October 7, 1936. ]
[Below: Close-up.]
[Below: Close-up.]
[Below: Reverse.]
[Below: Another Hindenburg airship envelope. This one is from August 5, 1936. ]
[Below: Close-up. What is it with these postage stamps that they are always stained? Acid gum? Acid gum has been known on German stamps before, but it literally eats the paper.]
[Below: Close-up.]
[Below: Reverse.]
[Below: A large Hindenburg envelope sent from Frankfurt, Germany to Boston, USA.]
[Below: Envelope reverse.]
[Below: Another airship envelope. This one is from July 31, 1929. I wonder what "% Plain Dealer" means? I looked it up and apparently 'plain dealer' means 'Someone who interacts or does business straightforwardly and honestly'.]
[Below: Close-up.]
[Below: Close-up.]
[Below: Close-up.]
[Below: Another Hindenburg airship envelope, this time from the USA. This one is from May 11, 1936. It's interesting that the sender gave an incomplete address and therefore it was returned to sender.]
[Below: Close-up.]
[Below: Reverse. This has various receiving stamps and a cool ink stamp of the Hindenberg. The strange green bordered stamp says 'Unbekannt/inconnu' which means 'unknown'. I've oddly never seen the post office use such a stamp. It's interesting that there are Frankfurt cancels here, it was addressed to 'Frankford', which apparently doesn't exist, so they sent it to Frankfurt. Frankfurt couldn't deliver it because there was no street address. At the start of WWII Frankfurt had a population of 553,000. So obviously they didn't know where Mr. Levy's house was, which they used to be able to do in small towns. I've seen lots of envelopes addressed with just a name and a city and state. Now here is another angle: note that the sender is William Levy... but look on the back of the envelope to see who sent it... William Levy. It looks like he sent it to himself, but perhaps gave a bad address in order for it to be sent back. Why would he do this, you ask? To get not only a Hindenburg cancel, but also get the 'return to sender' and the strange German 'unknown' stamp, etc. All of this would make the envelope more valuable. Think of it this way, if 1,000 of these were sent via the Hindenburg, how many of them would be sent back? Probably just a small handful, which would make the sent back ones pretty rare. Why does any of this matter? Well stamp collectors are very meticulous about details, some more than others.]
[Below: Close-up. Note the airship says D-LZ 129, this is the code for Hindenberg.]
[Below: Many countries had their own airship stamps/service, this one is from Hungary. March 27, 1931.]
[Below: Close-up.]
[Below: Close-up.]
[Below: This airship envelope is from Paraguay and is from July 10, 1936.]
[Below: Close-up.]
[Below: Reverse.]
[Below: Not an airship envelope, but the cancel features one. This is an airmail envelope, canceled on May 3, 1935 and sent to Brazil.]
[Below: Close-up.]
[Below: Reverse.]
[Below: Here is special commemorative sheet (July 8, 1938) celebrating the 100th birthday of Ferdinand Zeppelin. This sheetlet was produced by the Strength Through Joy organization.]
[Below: Close-up. Here are two German stamps also celebrating the 100th birthday of Ferdinand Zeppelin.]
[Below: This postcard, postmarked January 8, 1938, is in German and English. It celebrates Day of the Stamp and also shows the Hindenburg tragedy, with a pheonix rising from its ashes.]
[Below: This SS-feldpost card says:
'Das letzte widerstandsnest wird zermalmt'
(The last nest of resistance is crushed).]
[Below: Postcard reverse. This was sent from Majorenhof, Lettland (Latvia), on March 14, 1944. This is using some sort of shorthand, very odd.]
[Below: This is a rarely seen philatelic sheet that says 'Helden-Gedenktag 1944' (Heroes' Memorial Day 1944). It has the complete set of stamps honoring the different branches of Germany's military.]
[Below: Close-up.]
[Below: Here's a rather strange modification. They took the '4' from a 1943 sheet and glued it over the '3'. So they destroyed another sheet to do this, I suppose. Odd.]
[Below: Here is the 1943 version without the pasted '4'.]
[Below: The is an Feldpost envelope from Stalag XIIIB camp, canceled on August 10, 1941. This was sent to Prague from Weiden/Oberpfalz, from 'Sonderführer Schwarz' (interpretor). Front.]
[Below: Reverse.]
[Below: This is an envelope for a German prisoner of war in Ottawa, Canada, canceled in Friedrichshafen, southern Germany. It is censored by both Canada and Germany. It was sent from Germany on February 18, 1943 and wasn't received until three months later on May 21, 1943.]
[Below: Reverse.]
[Below: Another interesting P.O.W. envelope, this one sent to a German Obergefreiter named Karl Kramer, imprisoned in a hospital in West Virginia. It's addressed to 'An den Kriegsgefangenen' (To the prisoner of war) and was canceled in Germany on December 18, 1944. It has an interesting German machine censorship stamp (with no eagle) and had also been censored by the USA.]
[Below: Reverse. Sent by Emmy Fleckenstein. Interestingly, Kramer and Fleckenstein are Jewish surnames.]
[Below: An envelope sent from London, England to a P.O.W. in Stalag camp XXA, September 5, 1940. It has been opened by Allied censors.]
[Below: Reverse.]
[Below: A postcard sent from a P.O.W. in Tarpoley/Cheshire, England to (British Zone) Germany. The P.O.W. is in a place called 'Racecourse Camp', October 16, 1946.]
[Below: Reverse.]
[Below: An envelope sent to the Red Cross in Switzerland from Stalag XII C, The word 'Postüberwachung' means 'Mail Surveillance', February 13, 1941.]
[Below: An envelope sent from a P.O.W. in Droitwich/Worcester, England to (Russian Zone) Germany, January 8, 1947. He is sending this to his mother in Dresden. You can imagine what rubble and hell Dresden was then...]
[Below: Reverse.]
[Below: Inside message.]
[Below: An envelope postmarked in Gent, Belgium and sent to a P.O.W. in Oflag IX B, August 20, 1940. An Oflag is an officer camp, while a Stalag camp was for enlisted men. It says 'Écrire lisiblement afin d'éviter les retardement' (Write legibly to avoid delays).]
[Below: An envelope from Serbian camp Stalag VI J and sent to the United States, November 3, 1942. It's been censored by both the Germans and the Americans.]
[Below: Reverse.]
[Below: An envelope to Stalag XVII B and postmarked on April 24, 1942 in Baden. It's been sent via Feldpost, and since it isn't addressed to anyone I presume it is official business.]
[Below: This is interesting... a P.O.W. camp in Roswell, New Mexico. The small town of Roswell is now world famous, since the 1947 'Roswell incident'. The camp was established southeast of Roswell. On January 1, 1943 the first prisoners of war arrived from the German Africa Korps. The camp would eventually house around 4,800 prisoners. This was canceled in the Roswell post office on December 20, 1943.]
[Below: Envelope reverse.]
[Below: Close-up of vignette stamp.]
[Below: Iron Cross made by German prisoners, while being used for manual labor projects. Some of the locals got angry at this and poured concrete over it, but years later the concrete washed away! Here it is today.]
[Below: An envelope to Stalag IV and postmarked on June 12, 1944 in a POW camp in Germany. It's been sent to another POW camp in Italy.]
[Below: Reverse.]
[Below: An envelope from an inmate at Camp II C in Italy and postmarked on October 1, 1944 in a POW camp in Germany. It's been censored by Italian authorities and you will also note the blue smear in the upper right hand corner, this is a chemical applied by the censor to detect secret writing.]
[Below: Reverse.]
[Below: This was sent from Stalag II-D, a German P.O.W. camp which held various soldiers from a large number of Allied countries up until nearly the end of the war. It was located near Stargard, Pomerania. You can't quite read the date on the cancel, but we know it is post December 20, 1942, since that is the date of the cancel on a stamp beneath the paper glued on to reuse the envelope. I'm not sure why it was sent Feldpost, perhaps a soldier stationed there for work? But since this is addressed to the Red Cross it is usually either a prisoner or their family writing, but that obviously isn't the case here.]
[Below: Beneath the glued on label shows this was originally cancelled in Belgard, a former district in Eastern Pomerania that existed from 1818 to 1945, before being stolen by Poland after WWII.]
[Below: Close-up of Stalag II-D stamp.]
[Below: This is sent from Andalusia, a concentration camp in South Africa during World War II that housed German-speaking citizens of South West Africa. Isn't that democracy for you? The camp was located on the Farm Andalusia and by the end of the war the official statistics listed a total of 6636 civilian internees. It was sent to Keetmanshoop, South West Africa.]
[Below: Close-up of ink stamp. Note it is in English and Afrikaner]
[Below: Reverse of envelope. This was postmarked in Keetmanshoop, South West Africa in May 1942.]
[Below: This postcard was sent from the German P.O.W. camp, Stalag II A, near Neubrandenburg, Western Pomerania. After the war the Soviets took over the camp and proceeded to murder over 5,000 German men, women and children who were interned in the camp. Like many places in Germany today, there are three mass graves where these innocent Germans are buried. This was sent from Sarthe, France in November 1940, probably to a French P.O.W.]
[Below: Postcard reverse.]
[Below: This was sent to German P.O.W. camp Oflag VI B from Kalk Bay, South Africa, postmarked in April 1942 and censored in South Africa. The difference between Oflag camps and Stalag camps is Oflags were for officers. It was located near today's Warburg, North Rhine-Westphalia and held French, British, Polish and other Allied officers.]
[Below: Envelope reverse - note the South African censor tape sealing the envelope.]
[Below: This is interesting, it is made from notebook paper. This was sent from Montpellier, Herault, France, from a German P.O.W. in March 1946. It was sent to Württemberg, Germany.]
[Below: Envelope reverse.]
[Below: Inside letter.]
[Below: This is an interesting airmail envelope from July 1936 that was sent/canceled on a train. You can always spot the train cancel by the words 'Bahnpost' (which translates into rail mail). But you can spot a train cancel even easier than this because it is always an oval cancel. But anyway, this is the first time I've seen an airmail envelope that was on a train, kinda defeats the purpose of 'airmail' speedy delivery.]
[Below: Here's a neat looking postcard from the central German city of Fulda (a town in Hesse, located on the river Fulda). It was sent on December 15, 1943 and says:
'Der schwarze Walfisch'
(The Black Whale).
This is apparently a 'gentlemen's society' that celebrated 125 years (1869-1994) in the early 1990s. I wonder if it is still around?]
[Below: Reverse.]
[Below: Beautiful WHW (Winterhilfswerk des Deutschen Volkes, or Winter Relief of the German People) envelopes. The first one was canceled on February 28, 1937. The cancel advertises an international automobile and motorcycle show.]
[Below: Stamp close-up.]
[Below: Eagle close-up.]
[Below: Second WHW envelope, this one canceled on November 26, 1938.]
[Below: Eagle close-up.]
[Below: Here is a postcard from Bremen sent on March 7, 1933 which features a rare SA donation stamp (it says 'Hilf auch du' {You too can help}). It was sent to Frau Major A. Quedenfeldt. It's too time-consuming for me to try and translate this, maybe a German would help us? I for one would appreciate any effort! From what I can read it looks to have an interesting message and is only a little over a month into Adolf Hitler's appointment as chancellor on January 30, 1933.]
[Below: Stamp close-up.]
[Below: Postcard reverse.]
