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25th April 1941 Oflag VI-B 25th April 1941 Oflag VI-B Screenshot 2021-11-27 at 09.29.50.png Screenshot 2021-11-27 at 09.29.50.png 1/1 Oflag VI-B Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

9th December 1946 9th December 1946 09.12.1946 Willi van Haaren Mi.918 reverse.jpeg 09.12.1946 Willi van Haaren Mi.918 reverse.jpeg 1/1 Commercial postcard from stamp dealer Willi Van Haaren in Frankfurt to a client in Stuttgart. Featuring postage stamps Mi.912 and Mi.918. Ref: 09.12.1945 - 13/107 Contact Brief History to inform us of additonal information regarding this page

Postcard sent from Fassberg to an address in Bremen, depicting the Heinkel He 70 'Blitz'. Note: There appears to be no record of aircraft identification code 'D-U 60 R'. Ref: 01.11.1935 1st November 1935 Heinkel He 70 'Blitz' 1/1 Postcard sent from Fassberg to an address in Bremen, depicting the Heinkel He 70 'Blitz'. Note: There appears to be no record of aircraft identification code 'D-U 60 R'. Ref: 01.11.1935 Further information and variations Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regrding this page

27th June 1943 Paul Hörbiger 27th June 1943 Paul Hörbiger 1/0 Paul Hörbiger (1894 - 1981) Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

22nd July 1943 Vorpostenboot V 315 'Bris' 22nd July 1943 Vorpostenboot V 315 'Bris' 1/0 See 22.07.1943 - 23/51 Appeared to have used forced labour - Vosswerke On board 20 July [1943] Dear workmates I think it's about time I wrote you a few lines again. First of all, I would like to thank you for the mailings, which I was very pleased about, especially about the pay book bag, because I have been missing something like that for a long time. I also received the anniversary edition of the Voßpost, for which I would like to thank you once again. Now to come back to the “marvellous life of a sailor”. As we all know, there are two sides to everything, including the life of a sailor. We also have our difficult days from time to time, but we soon forget them. However, we still have it better than the Landser out in Russia. We have our regular meals and our warm bunk, which the Landser sometimes has to do without altogether. When we have wind force 8-9, that's when our hard days begin. When everything goes haywire in the radio room, you sometimes don't know what to hold on to at the same time. If you're not quite seaworthy and want to jump overboard, then the marvellous life of a sailor is over. But as I said, you forget all about it straight away. Unfortunately, I have to finish now, because my watch is about to end and I want to do some more filing. Many greetings to all my comrades. [Landser = slang for German soldier] Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

18th March 1946 Mi.P314 IIa Obliteration 18th March 1946 Mi.P314 IIa Obliteration 18.03.1946 Mi.P314 IIa Obliteration reverse.jpeg 18.03.1946 Mi.P314 IIa Obliteration reverse.jpeg 1/1 Tübingen, French Zone. Postal stationery Mi.P314 IIa (1944), with 'home-made' obliteration of the propaganda slogan ('Der Fuhrer kennt nur' on four lines) and postage stamp (Mi.6) covering the Hitler head 6 Pf imprint. Featuring 'CIVIL MAILS' military censorship hand-stamp '15451'. Ref: 18.03.1946 - 7/58 Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

Postcard depicting 'Der jubelpapst PIUS XI'. Ref: 16.07.1935 16th July 1935 Pope Pius XI 1/1 Postcard depicting 'Der jubelpapst PIUS XI'. Ref: 16.07.1935 Pope Puis XI (1857 - 1939) Pope Pius XI, born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti (1857-1939), was the Bishop of Rome and supreme pontiff of the Catholic Church from 6th February 1922 to 10th February 1939. He also became the first sovereign of the Vatican City State upon its creation as an independent state on 11th February 1929. He remained head of the Catholic Church until his death in February 1939. His papal motto was 'Pax Christi in Regno Christi', translated as 'The Peace of Christ in the Reign of Christ'. Vatican City postage stamp (Mi.31) issued 31st May 1933. Ref: Prophila5 The pontificate of Pius XI coincided with the early aftermath of the First World War. Many of the old European monarchies had been swept away and a new and precarious order formed across the continent. In the East, the Soviet Union arose. In Italy, the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini took power, while in Germany, the fragile Weimar Republic collapsed with the Nazi seizure of power. His reign was one of busy diplomatic activity for the Vatican. The Church made advances on several fronts in the 1920s, improving relations with France and, most spectacularly, settling the Roman question with Italy and gaining recognition of an independent Vatican state. From 1933 to 1936 Pius wrote several protests against the Nazi regime, while his attitude to Mussolini's Italy changed dramatically in 1938, after Nazi racial policies were adopted in Italy. Pius XI watched the rising tide of totalitarianism with alarm and delivered three papal encyclicals challenging the new creeds: against Italian Fascism Non abbiamo bisogno (1931; 'We Do Not Need [to Acquaint You]'); against Nazism Mit brennender Sorge (1937; 'With Deep Concern'), and against atheist Communism Divini redemptoris (1937; 'Divine Redeemer'). He also challenged the extremist nationalism of the Action Française movement and antisemitism in the United States. The Nazis, like the Pope, were unalterably opposed to Communism. In the years leading up to the 1933 election, the German bishops opposed the Nazi Party by proscribing German Catholics from joining and participating in it. This changed by the end of March after Cardinal Michael Von Faulhaber of Munich met with the Pope. One author claims that Pius expressed support for the regime soon after Hitler's rise to power, with the author asserting that he said, 'I have changed my mind about Hitler, it is for the first time that such a government voice has been raised to denounce Bolshevism in such categorical terms, joining with the voice of the pope.' A threatening, though initially sporadic persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany followed the 1933 Nazi takeover in Germany. In the dying days of the Weimar Republic, the newly appointed Chancellor Adolf Hitler moved quickly to eliminate political Catholicism. Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen was dispatched to Rome to negotiate a Reich concordat with the Holy See. Ian Kershaw wrote that the Vatican was anxious to reach an agreement with the new government, despite 'continuing molestation of Catholic clergy, and other outrages committed by Nazi radicals against the Church and its organisations". Negotiations were conducted by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII (1939–1958). The Reichskonkordat was signed by Pacelli and by the German government in June 1933, and included guarantees of liberty for the Church, independence for Catholic organisations and youth groups, and religious teaching in schools. The treaty was an extension of existing concordats already signed with Prussia and Bavaria, but wrote Hebblethwaite, it seemed 'more like a surrender than anything else: it involved the suicide of the [Catholic] Centre Party... '. 'The agreement', wrote William Shirer, 'was hardly put to paper before it was being broken by the Nazi Government'. On 25th July, the Nazis promulgated their sterilisation law, an offensive policy in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Five days later, moves began to dissolve the Catholic Youth League. Clergy, nuns and lay leaders began to be targeted, leading to thousands of arrests over the ensuing years, often on trumped up charges of currency smuggling or 'immorality'. In February 1936, Hitler sent Pius a telegram congratulating the Pope on the anniversary of his coronation, but Pius responded with criticisms of what was happening in Germany, so forcefully that the German foreign secretary Konstantin von Neurath wanted to suppress the response, but Pius insisted it be forwarded to Hitler. The pope supported the Christian Socialists in Austria, a country with an overwhelmingly Catholic population but a powerful secular element. He especially supported the regime of Engelbert Dollfuss (1932–1934), who wanted to remould society based on papal encyclicals. Dollfuss suppressed the anti-clerical factions and the socialists, but was assassinated by Austrian Nazis in 1934. His successor Kurt von Schuschnigg (1934–1938) was also pro-Catholic and received Vatican support. The Anschluss saw the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in early 1938. At the direction of Cardinal Theodor Innitzer, the churches of Vienna pealed their bells and flew swastikas for Hitler's arrival in the city on 14th March. However, wrote Mark Mazower, such gestures of accommodation were 'not enough to assuage the Austrian Nazi radicals, foremost among them the young Gauleiter Globocnik'. Globocnik launched a campaign against the Church, confiscating property, closing Catholic organisations, and sending many priests to Dachau. Anger at the treatment of the Church in Austria grew quickly and October 1938, wrote Mazower, saw the 'very first act of overt mass resistance to the new regime', when a rally of thousands left Mass in Vienna chanting 'Christ is our Fuehrer', before being dispersed by police. A Nazi mob ransacked Cardinal Innitzer's residence, after he denounced Nazi persecution of the Church. The American National Catholic Welfare Conference wrote that Pope Pius, 'again protested against the violence of the Nazis, in language recalling Nero and Judas the Betrayer, comparing Hitler with Julian the Apostate.' The Nazis claimed jurisdiction over all collective and social activity and interfered with Catholic schooling, youth groups, workers' clubs and cultural societies. By early 1937, the church hierarchy in Germany, which had initially attempted to co-operate with the new government, had become highly disillusioned. In March, Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge accusing the Nazi Government of violations of the 1933 Concordat, and of sowing the 'tares of suspicion, discord, hatred, calumny, of secret and open fundamental hostility to Christ and His Church'. The Pope noted on the horizon the 'threatening storm clouds' of religious wars of extermination over Germany. Copies had to be smuggled into Germany so they could be read from church pulpits. The encyclical, the only one ever written in German, was addressed to German bishops and was read in all parishes of Germany. The text is credited to Munich Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber and to Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII. There was no advance announcement of the encyclical, and its distribution was kept secret in an attempt to ensure the unhindered public reading of its contents in all the Catholic churches of Germany. The encyclical condemned particularly the paganism of Nazism, the myth of race and blood, and fallacies in the Nazi conception of God: 'Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community – however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things – whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.' The Nazis responded with an intensification of their campaign against the churches, beginning around April. There were mass arrests of clergy and church presses were expropriated. While numerous German Catholics, including those who participated in the secret printing and distribution of the encyclical, went to jail and concentration camps, the Western democracies remained silent, which Pius XI labeled bitterly a 'conspiracy of silence'. As the extreme nature of Nazi racial anti-Semitism became obvious, and as Mussolini in the late 1930s began imitating Hitler's anti-Jewish race laws in Italy, Pius XI continued to make his position clear. After Fascist Italy's Manifesto of Race was published, the pope said in a public address in the Vatican to Belgian pilgrims in 1938: 'Mark well that in the Catholic Mass, Abraham is our Patriarch and forefather. Anti-Semitism is incompatible with the lofty thought which that fact expresses. It is a movement with which we Christians can have nothing to do. No, no, I say to you it is impossible for a Christian to take part in anti-Semitism. It is inadmissible. Through Christ and in Christ we are the spiritual progeny of Abraham. Spiritually, we [Christians] are all Semites'. These comments were reported by neither Osservatore Romano nor Vatican Radio. They were reported in Belgium on 14th September 1938 issue of La Libre Belgique and on 17th September 1938 issue of French Catholic daily La Croix. They were then published worldwide but had little resonance at the time in the secular media. The 'conspiracy of silence' included not only the silence of secular powers against the horrors of Nazism but also their silence on the persecution of the Church in Mexico, the Soviet Union and Spain. Despite these public comments, Pius was reported to have suggested privately that the Church's problems in those three countries were 'reinforced by the anti-Christian spirit of Judaism'. In 1933, when the new Nazi government began to instigate its program of anti-Semitism, Pius XI ordered the papal nuncio in Berlin, Cesare Orsenigo, to 'look into whether and how it may be possible to become involved' in aiding Jews. Orsenigo proved ineffective in this, concerned more with anti-church Nazi policies, and how these might affect German Catholics. On 11th November 1938, following the Nazi Kristallnacht pogrom, Pius XI joined Western leaders in condemning the pogrom. In response, the Nazis organised mass demonstrations against Catholics and Jews in Munich, and the Bavarian Gauleiter Adolf Wagner declared before 5,000 protesters: 'Every utterance the Pope makes in Rome is an incitement of the Jews throughout the world to agitate against Germany'. On 21st November, in an address to the world's Catholics, the Pope rejected the Nazi claim of racial superiority, and insisted instead that there is only a single human race. Robert Ley, the Nazi Minister of Labour declared the following day in Vienna: 'No compassion will be tolerated for the Jews. We deny the Pope's statement that there is but one human race. The Jews are parasites.' Catholic leaders, including Cardinal Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster of Milan, Cardinal Jozef-Ernest van Roey in Belgium and Cardinal Jean Verdier in Paris, backed the Pope's strong condemnation of Kristallnacht . Pius XI died at 5:31 a.m. (Rome time) of a third heart attack on 10th February 1939, at the age of 81. His last words to those near him at the time of his death were spoken with clarity and firmness: 'My soul parts from you all in peace.' Some believe he was murdered, based on the fact that his primary physician was Dr. Francesco Petacci, father of Claretta Petacci, Mussolini's mistress. Cardinal Eugène Tisserant wrote in his diary that the pope had been murdered, which was a statement that Carlo Confalonieri later strongly denied. Source: Wikipedia Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

4th June 1939 6th Apothekertag 4th June 1939 6th Apothekertag 1/1 Commemorative postcard celebrating the 6th Deutscher Apothekertag and 2nd Großdeutscher Apothekertag, Dresden 2nd - 6th June 1939. Featuring a poor example of special cancellation JB:Dresden89/232 - 'Reichsapothekertag Dresden 2.-6. Juni 1939'. Ref: 04.06.1939 Nazi views on public health developed within the context of German cultural traditions and medical science in the early 20th century. Many of the regime's public health priorities—such as eugenics, group exercise, and warnings against alcohol and tobacco—were first popularised during the years of the Weimar Republic. For example, in the 1930 film, 'Born out of Necessity', young Germans are urged to fight the negative health effects of life in modern cities by exercising together and engaging in wholesome social activities instead of drinking and smoking. These themes were later reflected in public health policies after the Nazi rise to power in 1933. Nazi public health officials adopted many of these traditions and ideas, but the Nazi regime’s public health policies were concerned solely with promoting the health of so-called 'Aryan' Germans. According to Nazi ideology, every member of the so-called ' Volksgemeinschaft ' (German racial community) was like a single cell in the larger national body. Each individual had a duty to stay healthy and strong so that the German nation could conquer other peoples and colonise their lands. These theories about individual health and national strength were influential throughout Europe and the United States in the early 20th century. However, Nazi Germany's policies were much more extreme than those of any other nation. Source and for more information: https://perspectives.ushmm.org/collection/public-health-under-the-third-reich Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

Mi.701 (25.08.1939) Nuremberg Rally (inscription) Mi.701 (25.08.1939) Nuremberg Rally (inscription) 1/0 Cover featuring Mi.701 (as per Mi.694 but with added inscription 'REICHS-PARTEITAG/ 1939'). Also featuring Mi.714 and 715. Cancellations JB:Berlin315/123. Ref: 06.10.1939 Mi.701 Intended Nazi Rally in Nuremberg (as Mi.694) but with further inscription 'REICHS-/ PARTEITAG/ 1939'. Notes: Design: ? - after a photograph by Heinrich Hoffmann. Photogravure printing. Sheets 10 x 5. Swastika watermark. Perf. 14¼:13½. Quantity issued: unknown. Valid until 31.12.1940 Mi.701 (6+19 Pf - Adolf Hitler addressing the Reichstag 30th January 1939. The 'German Day' speech. Ref: 06.10.1939) Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

15th August 1942 1/0 Red Cross letter-sheet sent via, 'The War Organisation of the British Red Cross and Order of St. John' from an unknown address (possibly in the Channel Islands), to an addressee in Guernsey. Featuring various hand-stamps, including, the German Red Cross in France, the International Red Cross in Genève, and the British Censor. Ref: 15.08.1942 Contact Brief History to inform us of additonal information regarding this page

13th June 1943 Cartolina Postale 13th June 1943 Cartolina Postale 13.06.1943 In pubblico EYES reverse.jpeg 13.06.1943 In pubblico EYES reverse.jpeg 1/1 CARTOLINA POSTALE PER LE FORZE ARMATE. Italian propaganda postcard sent from a soldier of Comando truppe Servizi R, P.M.M. Messina, to a recipient in Rome. Featuring the image of an 'all-seeing-eye' above a message for vigilance. Ref: 13.06.1943 'In pubblico e davanti a sconosciuti sorvegliate i vostri discorsi. Non accennate mai a cose di servizio. Il nemico ha informatori dovunque!' (In public and in front of strangers watch your conversation. Never mention service matters. The enemy has informers everywhere!) Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

Official publicity postcard for the film 'Hitlerjunge Quex' (1933). Ref: 09.09.1933 (Fleurs & Papillons) 9th September 1933 Hitlerjunge Quex 1/1 Official publicity postcard for the film 'Hitlerjunge Quex' (1933). Ref: 09.09.1933 (Fleurs & Papillons) Hitlerjunge Quex (1933) Hitlerjunge Quex , (Hitler Youth Quex), is a 1933 German film directed by Hans Steinhoff, based on the similarly named 1932 novel Der Hitlerjunge Quex by Karl Aloys Schenzinger. It was released in the United States as Our Flag Leads Us Forward. Synopsis Heini Völker is a teenage boy, living in poverty with his mother and father. Heini's father, a veteran of the Great War, is an out-of-work supporter of the Communist Party. The organizer for the local communist chapter, a man named Stoppel, befriends Heini and invites him to an outing in the country, promising him swimming, camping and games. Heini accepts and duly turns up at the railway station the next day. The Hitler Youth are also there, taking the same train. When the communists arrive at their own camp, there is only smoking, drinking, and dancing. Boys and girls play games like cards, unlike the games which Heini expected. Heini doesn't feel welcome, and wanders away. In another part of the forest, Heini comes across the Hitler Youth camping by a lake where they are holding a midsummer bonfire. Heini watches them from a distance, but is caught by them, and taken into the camp, but they recognised him as having travelled with the communists, and so they send him away as well. Heini sees them doing all the things that he hoped to participate in, i.e. camping and swimming. He is enamored by their singing. In the morning, Heini watches the Hitler Youth's morning activities, but Stoppel comes looking for him. He hides from Stoppel and instead catches a ride into town from a stranger. When Heini returns to his home, he tells his mother about the Hitler Youth, and sings one of their songs to her, but his father overhears it and beats him for it. Heini wants to join the Hitler Youth and visits one of the Hitler Youth members' home, promising to come to the opening of their new club house. However, he arrives late, just as the communists are attacking the Hitler Youth members. Even though he had nothing to do with the attack, he is among those arrested by the police. The police arrest some of the Hitler Youth, but no communists. When the police let him go, he is recognised by the Hitler Youth members, who accuse him of colluding with the communists during the attack. Stoppel is impressed by the fact that Heini didn't tell the police that the communists were the ones who started the ruckus. He confides in him that the communists plan to attack the Hitler Youth later that day, but Heini is distraught and threatens to tell the Hitler Youth about the attack. He attempts to warn Ulla by telephone, but Fritz dismisses the matter. Heini also informs the police, but they do not believe him either. In the end, Ulla seems to have convinced Fritz to do something, as the communists' weapons store is blown up. Stoppel realises that Heini must have warned the Hitler Youth, and he goes to Heini's house and hints to his mother that he is going to kill him. However, later Stoppel has a change of heart and orders the communists not to retaliate against Heini. Heini's mother is so distraught that she decides to kill her son and herself by shutting the windows and leaving the gas on in their apartment at night. She is killed, but Heini survives. Heini's father happens to meet Heini's Hitler Youth troop leader, Kass, when both men go to see Heini at the hospital. It is here that Heini's father reveals that he was injured in the war, and that that is the reason he could not work. Kass attempts to convince Heini's father to join the Nazis. Heini decides to move into a hostel run by the Hitler Youth, where he discovers to his dismay that not all members of Hitler Youth have such high moral values as he had thought. They call him Quex, originally as an insult, a shortening of 'Quecksilber' (quicksilver). The Hitler Youth leader takes care not to send Heini to the district where the communists live, but they find out where he is staying. Stoppel seeks Heini out on the street, and tries to convince him to return to the communists. Heini refuses, and Stoppel warns him not to return to the communist district. One day, one of the Hitler Youth is beaten up by the communists while putting up posters, and Heini convinces his leader to allow him to visit the communist district to hand out flyers. However, his fellow Hitler Youth Grundler has been taken in by the communist girl Gerda, and throws all the flyers in the river. Heini then offers to reprint all the posters during the night and puts up the posters before the morning. The communists hear about this and chase him and stab him. The Hitler Youth find him lying face-down dying. The character of Wilde was played by Karl Meixner, of whom Jay Baird said that he looked like 'a Nazi version of the incarnation of the 'Jewish-Bolshevik' will to destruction'. The film allows some sympathy for communists. Heini's father, though violent and drunk, has become a communist because of his, and the workers', desperate condition. In one scene, his argument for his son being with him revolves around his sufferings in the war and his unemployment. Stoppel, the communist who invited Heini to a Communist Youth outing, while saying that he has to be eliminated, takes no part in the killing, Quex having made a strong impression on him. Hitlerjunge Quex was approved by the censors on 7th September 1933, presented to Hitler at the Ufa-Phoebus Palace in Munich on 12th September, and premiered at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin on 19th September. Thousands of Hitler Youth members lined the streets during the Munich showing. Rudolf Hess, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Robert Ley, Ernst Röhm, and other high Nazi functionaries also attended the Munich showing. It was premiered in the United States as Our Flag Leads Us Forward at the Yorkville Theatre on the Upper East Side of Manhattan on 6th July 1934 and in March 1942 in Paris as Le jeune hitlérien. Over 20 million people saw the film and it was still being show at the Hitler Youth's jugendfilmstunden [de] by 1942. Goebbels reflected on the film as follows: 'If Hitler Youth Quex represents the first large-scale attempt to depict the ideas and world of National Socialism with the art of cinema, then one must say that this attempt, given the possibilities of modern technology, is a full-fledged success.' By January 1934 it had been viewed by a million people. It was banned in Germany after World War II. 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