Historical background: Postcards featuring Hitler interacting with the public helped to provoke admiration for his work ethic and connection to the German people. Postcards featuring Hitler with children also helped soften his ridgid political reputation. A collection of photographs from Hitler’s private life were released in a book called, The Hitler Nobody Knows. The book served as a propaganda tool to turn Hitler into a normal person in the public eye. These images celebrated Hitlers personal attributes as a way to relate to the public and show a modern perspective.

Stamp: Mi:DR-SL AS 4aK, 1938

Postmark: Red German eagle clutching a swastika in its talons. The text under the eagle read, “We have suffered, now we are free. The postmark is dated September 21, 1938.

Historical background: Postcards featuring Hitler interacting with the public helped to provoke admiration for his work ethic and connection to the German people. Postcards featuring Hitler with children also helped soften his ridgid political reputation. A collection of photographs from Hitler’s private life were released in a book called, The Hitler Nobody Knows. The book served as a propaganda tool to turn Hitler into a normal person in the public eye. These images celebrated Hitlers personal attributes as a way to relate to the public and show a modern perspective.

Historical background:

The Bolshevik radical communist party within the Russian Social Democratic Labour party emerged during the 1903 Party Congress following the split with the more moderate Mensheviks. After a period of intermittent collaboration and schism with the latter, the Bolshevik Party was formally constituted in 1912.

In October 1917, the Bolshevik Party won a majority in the revolutionary workers’ councils (soviets) which had been formed throughout Russia following the February Revolution. It subsequently organized the October Revolution, which overthrew the Provisional Government, replacing the Provisional Government with a state power under the control of the soviets, led by the Bolsheviks along with other left-wing socialists.

Bolshevism (derived from Bolshevik) is a revolutionary socialist current of Soviet Leninist and later Marxist–Leninist political thought and political regime associated with the formation of a rigidly centralized, cohesive and disciplined party of social revolution, focused on overthrowing the existing capitalist state system, seizing power and establishing the “dictatorship of the proletariat”.

Italy initially did not believe in the same eugenics ideas as Nazi Germany. By 1938 Mussolini began to support racist policies like the “Manifesto of Race”. Mussolini also declared that there was no Jewish question or antisemitism in Italy. In the beginning of World War II Italy was seen as a safe haven for Jews. However as soon as 1934 Jews and Bolshevist were being removed from state organizations and institutions. 

Artist: Gottfried Klein

���ٲ�����:��The pre-printed stamp features Adolf Hitler standing at a podium

Postmark: Two identical circular postmarks dated November 23rd, 1940 from Berlin celebrating 7 years of strength and warmth of the Nazi regime from the advertizing department.

Historical background:

This postcard was designed by Gottfried Klein and was published on July 12th, 1940. The medal was awarded principally for bravery in battle, and was open to all ranks, from the lowest to the highest in the Wehrmacht. The medal was first awarded by King Frederick William III of Prussia who established it on 17th Mar 1813 during the Napoleonic Wars. The Iron Cross was awarded during World War I and World War II. It has changed very little over the years and is still in use today. During the Second World War the Iron Cross was awarded in two classes, 1st Class and 2nd Class. The medal in the postcard is a 2nd class Iron Cross.

Artist: Richard Borrmeister

���ٲ�����:��Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934), 2^nd President.  Issued on April 4, 1938.

�ʴDz��ٳ�������:��Both postmarks are from Nuremberg, the City of the Nazi party rallies

Historical background:

Oktoberfest is the world’s largest Volksfest, featuring a beer festival and a travelling carnival, and is held annually in Munich, Bavaria, from mid- or late-September to the first Sunday in October, with more than six million international and national visitors attending the event. Locally, it is called d’Wiesn, after the colloquial name for the fairgrounds, Theresienwiese. Oktoberfest is an important part of Bavarian culture, having been held since the year 1810. Other cities across the world also hold Oktoberfest celebrations that are modeled after the original Munich event.

During the Nazi regime Oktoberfest was used as Nazi propaganda. In 1938 Hitler renamed the festival to Volksfest, translating to the people’s festival. There were no Volksfest from 1939-1945. From 1946-1948 Munich only celebrated the Autumn Fest where the stronger Oktoberfest beer was not permitted.

���ٲ�����:�� Imprinted stamp was designed by Erich Stahl. The card was issued on 21 September 1936 and remained valid until 30 June 1937.

�ʴDz��ٳ�������:��Weidhausen bei Coburg is a municipality in the southeastern portion of the Coburg district of Bavaria in Germany.

Historical background:

The official post card commemorating both the Winter Aid fund and the completion of one thousand kilometers of autobahn on 23 September 1936. The card depicts Hitler lifting the first spade beginning work on the autobahn on 23 September 1933. The scene was taken from a photo by Heinrich Hoffman. Dr. Ley, Minister of Labor, can be seen directly behind Hitler.

The autobahn is the federal controlled-access highway system in Germany. Much of the system has no speed limit for some classes of vehicles.  However, limits are posted and enforced in areas that are urbanized, substandard, accident-prone, or under construction.

Just days after the 1933 Nazi takeover, Adolf Hitler enthusiastically embraced an ambitious autobahn construction project, appointing Fritz Todt, the Inspector General of German Road Construction, to lead it. By 1936, 130,000 workers were directly employed in construction, as well as an additional 270,000 in the supply chain for construction equipment, steel, concrete, signage, maintenance equipment, etc.

During World War II, many of Germany’s workers were required for various war production tasks. Therefore, construction work on the autobahn system increasingly relied on forced workers and concentration camp inmates, and working conditions were very poor. As of 1942, when the war turned against the Third Reich, only 3,800 km (2,400 mi) out of a planned 20,000 km (12,000 mi) of autobahn had been completed. After the war, numerous sections of the autobahns were in bad shape, severely damaged by heavy Allied bombing and military demolition.

Stamp: Paul von Hindenburg, the second German President. Medallion set dates December 1933 and February 1936.

�ʴDz��ٳ�������:��From the post office of Upper Thomasdorf, Sudetenland

Historical background: The social policies of eugenics in Nazi Germany were composed of various ideas about genetics. The racial ideology of Nazism placed the biological improvement of the German people by selective breeding of “Nordic” or “Aryan” traits at its center. These policies were used to justify the involuntary sterilization and mass-murder of those deemed “undesirable”. Eugenicists had three primary objectives. First, they sought to discover “hereditary” traits that contributed to societal ills. Second, they aimed to develop biological solutions to these problems. Finally, eugenicists sought to campaign for public health measures to combat them. This postcard come from the community to cultivate the life insurance idea to encourage Germans to take care of their health in order to live to 100 because “How great is the prospect of growing old?”

Stamp: Special stamp series commemorating the 1936 Berlin Olympics, designed by Max Eschle

Postmark: August 16, 1936. A special 11th Olympiad 1936 Berlin postmark, featuring the Olympic bell and two swastikas.

Historical background:

Nazi Germany promoted the Olympics with colorful posters, postcards, and magazine spreads. Athletic imagery drew a link between Nazi Germany and ancient Greece, symbolizing the Nazi racial myth that a superior German civilization was the rightful heir of an “Aryan” culture of classical antiquity. This vision of classical antiquity emphasized ideal “Aryan” racial types: heroic, blue-eyed blonds with finely chiseled features.

Historical background:

The National Socialist People’s Welfare (NSV) was a organization during the . The NSV was originally established in 1931.  On 3 May 1933, shortly after the took power in , turned it into a party organization that was to be active throughout the country disbanding all others.

The NSV restricted its assistance from the very beginning to individuals of “Aryan descent” who met a range of conditions to be deemed worthy of support, officially stating that its aim was to promote “the living, healthy forces of the German people.” The list of those excluded was composed of “alcoholics, tramps, homosexuals, prostitutes, the ‘work-shy’ or the ‘asocial’, habitual criminals, the hereditarily ill (a widely defined category) and members of races other than the Aryan.” Within these limitations, 17 million Germans received assistance under the auspices of NSV by 1939, and the agency operated 8,000 day-nurseries, funded holiday homes for mothers, distributed additional food for large families and was involved with a wide variety of other facilities. It “projected a powerful image of caring and support” for those who were seen as full members of the German racial community, while also inspiring fear through its intrusive questioning and the threat of opening a investigation on those who did not fulfill the criteria for support.

In 1945, after Nazi Germany’s , the NSV was disbanded like all organizations linked to the Nazi Party.

Historical background: