SGM Herbert A. Friedman (Ret.)
This article was originally published in Scott's Monthly
Stamp Journal, January 1980. It was written for philatelists who had an
interest in espionage forgeries and propaganda parodies of postage stamps. I
have done some minor updates to the story to correct some comments where
further information has surfaced, but it is still 25 years old. It is
embarrassing to see how excited I was about talking to government forgers at
the time, but the reader should understand that in those days all of this
forging and parodying work was very secret. Readers should understand that
much of the information is dated and the text should be considered a starting
point for further research, not a conclusive reference work.
I have studied the propaganda stamps, currency, and
leaflets of World War II for over thirty years and published well over one
hundred articles on the subject in newspapers, magazines and on the Internet.
For twenty years I searched for the British master forger who directed
Britain's philatelic forgery operations during World War II. I was always
fascinated by the forged and parodied stamps produced to attack the enemy's
economy or ridicule his leaders.
The realization that philatelic research can be a very
difficult undertaking will come as no great shock to the advanced collector.
Facts are often hidden in out-of-print books, classified documents, dated
magazines, worn letters, or tattered newspapers. When we attempt to study
wartime forgeries and propaganda parodies, the problem becomes even more
acute. The fact of the matter is that few governments are willing to admit
that they ever counterfeited or parodied the stamps of another sovereign
nation. Even when faced with incontestable proof, these governments refuse to
admit that they could have been guilty of so heinous a crime as forgery.
We do have a number of literary admissions. In 1962, the
Viking Press published a book entitled Black Boomerang. To my
knowledge, this was the first book written by a former government official to
admit that stamps had been forged and parodied during World War II. The
author, Sefton Delmer, was a highly placed operative in the British
"Special Operations Executive" (SOE). In the book he mentioned Armin
Hull, a printer who had made a study of German typography and printing
techniques. Hull had "an unrivalled knowledge of where to look in Britain
for the printing types we needed in our operations." Delmer admitted that
he had asked Hull to produce a German postage stamp with the face of Adolf
Hitler replaced by that of Schutzstaffel (SS) Leader Heinrich Himmler.
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 |
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| The British Himmler
Parody - H.279 left, H.388 middle, and German Hitler original right. |
Delmer made numerous errors in his statement about the
Himmler stamp. He said, "We had a set of German postage stamps which
depicted a portrait of Himmler instead of Hitler." In fact, there was no
"set" of stamps. There was just the 6-pfennig denomination. Delmer
actually told me, "I could swear that there was also a stamp in
green." There was not. Delmer also said in Black Boomerang, "Himmler's
head was engraved in exactly the same way as Hitler's head on the usual German
stamps." This comment is incorrect. Hitler is facing left on the genuine
stamp while Himmler looks out at the viewer on the parody. I think this kind
of error occurs (and Butler made the same mistake) because these individuals
are agents and not philatelists. They simply don't have an eye for the small
details that most stamp collectors have.
The original British parody of the Himmler stamp was poorly
drawn. A 16 December 1942 memorandum entitled "Reference H.279 Himmler
stamp" says, "The forgery makes Himmler look as if he has erysipelas
[a skin disease] but I expect these blemishes will be removed from the stamps
in their final form." Howe reported on 7 January 1943, "H.279
Himmler postage stamp. This was submitted to SOE for quantity order on 19
December. They seem to be taking rather long to make up their minds."
Another memorandum dated 5 April 1943 is entitled, "Material for the
Himmler stamp posting job for Stockholm." It details the consignment of
400 Himmler stamps, postmarks, censorship strips, and rubber stamps from the
United Kingdom to Sweden for propaganda purposes. The Himmler stamp was later
corrected. The blemishes were removed from Himmler's face and the new project
was coded H.388. I later wrote about the Himmler parody in depth in The
American Philatelist, February 1970, "A Philatelic View of Heinrich
Himmler."
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| The British Von Witzleben Parody |
A year later, in 1963, W.W. Norton and Co. published Amateur
Agent by Ewan Butler. In this book, Butler, another SOE operative,
mentions that London had provided him with a stamp showing Field Marshall
Erich von Witzleben in place of a Nazi storm trooper.
Butler said, "After the failure of the plot against
Hitler's life, on July 20, 1944, and the subsequent execution, by slow
hanging, of the principal conspirators, London provide us with another set of
forged stamps. These bore the head of Field-Marshal von Witzleben, who headed
the military element in 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 of November 1923, 'And despite all, you were victorious'." Notice
that Butler errs in stating that he was provided with a "set" of
forged stamps. The Witzleben parody was a single stamp printed in small sheets
of twenty. The Psychological Warfare executive (PWE) delivered 5000 sheets of
the Witzleben stamp to the SOE on 7 December 1944. The project was coded
H.1227. I wrote about the Witzleben parody in more depth in an article
entitled "More Propaganda Parodies," The Society of Philatelic
Americans Journal, June 1976.
Butler also mentions smuggling British agents into Germany
and says, "Among the small items of equipment which each man took with
him was a sheet of postage stamps of 20-pfennig denomination. These were sewn
into the collar of a shirt or the lining of a jacket, and their discovery by
the Gestapo would have had deadly consequences for their bearer. For these
stamps, although at first glance identical with those, which could be bought
at any German post-office, differed from any others in Germany in one
important respect. They bore an effigy of Himmler instead of Hitler's
portrait." Notice that Butler thinks the Himmler parody was a 20-pfennig
stamp. He errs. It was a 6-pfennig stamp. Butler concludes, "These
beautiful forgeries had been sent from London to all neutral posts which
operated lines into Germany."
I had tried to gain further knowledge over the years by
writing to the authors mentioned above, as well as others that I had reason to
believe were involved with the production of forged stamps. The British
Government's "Official Secrets Act" was my greatest obstacle,
effectively stopping any free flow of information on the subject of forgeries
or parodies.
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British Master Forger Ellic Howe
aka "Armin Hull" |
I also spent a considerable amount of time trying to track
down the elusive Armin Hull. His "cover" and code-name seemed
impossible to break. All inquiries were returned with the same general reply;
Hull was dead and his documents destroyed. Through some good luck and a lot of
devious detective work I was able to determine that Hull was alive and living
under his true name, which was kept secret at the time. I was unable to make
contact with him. However, all correspondence to him was returned with an
explanation that he was deceased and his papers were either being catalogued
or studied and edited prior to publication. It seemed to be the end of the
road for this area of research.
You can imagine my surprise when I answered the telephone
one day and a mysterious voice said "I am the man who was in charge of
Britain's forgery operation during World War Two." It was Armin Hull,
whose real name I protected at the time I originally this article in 1980, but
who I can now identify as Ellic Howe.
Ellic Howe was in this country on a brief research visit. He was
about to write a book about his wartime activities, which was later published
in 1982 by Michael Joseph, London, as The Black Game. He told me that
just two days after the end of the war, he had been ordered to destroy all of
the files in his office. An incredible amount of irreplaceable material on the
subject of wartime philatelic operations had gone up in smoke. Now, certain
officials in Her Majesty's Government were unwilling to let him study his own
archived official reports and memoranda, which were still classified. As a
result, he was having a difficult time documenting all of the work he had done
during the war.
After searching for the master forger for twenty years, he
was here to gather the information from me that I had hoped to obtain from
him. I gave him about a dozen articles I wrote on the subject of British
forgeries and parodies and nine photographs of his wartime work. Ellic Howe was kind
enough to acknowledge my efforts by stating in his book, "I am grateful
too, to Mr. Herbert A. Friedman for lending me copies of the American
philatelic publications in which he so carefully described and analyzed some
of our more exotic productions."
It would be nice to report that I was able to discover many
new and exciting facts about wartime forgeries and parodies. In fact, most of
our time together was spent cataloguing philatelic productions of Great
Britain, Germany, and the United States for his book. I did discover that this
scholarly-looking gentleman had been a sergeant major in the British Army
during the early war years. Curiously, I also obtained the rank of sergeant
major in the United States Army.
Howe said that since he had been a professional printer
before the war with both forgery and type recognition as a hobby, he had
approached his superiors with suggestions about the proper way to produce
anti-German propaganda. "I was in exactly the right place at the right
time" he said. At that moment the British government was looking for an
expert to train counterfeiters to produce documents for agents going behind
enemy lines.
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| SS Major Bernhard Kruger |
We talked of the German forger, SS Major Bernhard Kruger
who was Hull's opposite. Kruger had been ordered to produce British postage
stamps with various anti-Semitic and anti-Bolshevik symbols in an attempt 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.
I asked Hull about his forgers. Did he have any prisoners
released from jail for patriotic reasons, any criminals or counterfeiters
referred from Scotland Yard? "Heavens no" he answered. "My
staff was entirely respectable. We wouldn't have known how to act around that
sort."
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| Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp |
How about housing? 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.
Howe told me that his men lived in normal surroundings and were given total
freedom. His printing was done at "Fanfare Press" on Saint Martin's
Lane in London. I asked Hull about those special things that a stamp producing
company might be able to do with greater efficiency. What about watermarks,
perforations, etc.? "We used Waterlow and Sons when special problems
occurred in the production of the forged stamps." What about the Thomas
de la Rue Company? Author Murray Teigh Bloom says in his book on currency
counterfeiting, The Man Who Stole Portugal, that both Waterlow and de
la Rue forged stamps for the British government in the First World War.
"To my knowledge," Howe said, "only Waterlow worked for us in
the last war." However, Marion Mcfadyean, who was in Howe's Unit in 1944,
said that they were used. When historian Lee Richards contacted de la Rue,
they claimed that all of their WWII stamp records were conveniently destroyed.
Which goes to show how the passage of time can affect the memory and the
spectre of the British Official Secrets Act blur the facts.
How about quality control? "Our work was excellent,
very few problems." Sefton Delmer agrees in Black Boomerang.
Talking about the Himmler stamps he states: "But no one noticed the
stamps. The trouble was that Hull's counterfeit was far too good, the Himmler
stamp much too similar to the Hitler stamp, and the public - including the
philatelists - far too unobservant."
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| German "This is a Jewsh
War" stamp error |
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
at a later time, 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. Actually, Kruger
had never wanted to produce the stamps, considering the entire operation a
waste of time and valuable resources.
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Forged stamp with Kruger's
annotation
"By order of Himmler - B. Kruger." |
During one of my conversations with Kruger I gave him a set
of six margin copies of the British definitives that his crew had parodied in
Sachsenhausen as a gift. I thought he might enjoy having some of his old
products as souvenirs. By surprise, he wrote a brief different saying on each
of the six margins and returned them all to me. The stamp above says in
German, "By order of Himmler - B. Kruger."
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| Allan Dulles - OSS Berne |
Howe was rather proud of his forgeries and counterfeits. Of
course, he had good reason to be. While digging through some old Office of
Strategic Services official radiotelephone transmission dispatches recently, I
found one dated 10 June 1944, numbered 155, from Allan Dulles in Berne to
Director Donovan in Washington. It says in part:
Some months ago I reported briefly about the
mysterious Himmler stamp, which has turned up here in Switzerland. Since
then, I have had someone investigate some stamp dealers in regard to the
situation with this stamp and the mystery deepens.
The Stamp Collector's Journal, published here in
December, 1943, had a brief article with regard to this stamp, with a
facsimile and a full description. The next issue printed in 1944 had a
further article about the stamp and stated that it was not an official issue
of the German Post Office. As far as I can tell, pressure was brought to
bear on the editors of this stamp journal by the German authorities to play
the matter down.
It 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 that it might be nice to honor Himmler in
this way, possibly in connection with some charitable drive. In any event,
the mystery of the stamp has not been cleared up.
What is particularly interesting here is that the American
agent preparing this report had no inkling that the stamp is a British
production. He believed the "Himmler for Fuhrer" operation of the
SOE that failed to fool the Germans. It also gives us fair idea of the
cooperation between the British and ourselves in regard to clandestine
operations.
On the subject of Himmler, another interesting fact
recently turned up. I have often written about the "Winter help"
stamps produced by Great Britain to parody the German Winterhilfswerk semi-postals.
In The American Philatelist, February 1970, I illustrated all the various
Himmler parodies in my article, "A Philatelic View of Heinrich Himmler."
At that time I had mentioned the second in a pair of stamps as showing a Nazi
soldier with half his face shot away. I didn't know much about that particular
stamp at the time. In fact, some specialists said that it was a caricature of
Reich propaganda minister Goebbels "talking his head off." Continued
research has led to some information about this parody that will interest
readers with a mind for the curious.
The photograph of the mutilated Nazi originally appeared in
a 1924 German anti-war book Krieg dem Kriege! ("War Against
War!"). The photograph is identified as "Das ganze Gesicht
weggeschossen" ("The entire face shot away"). Curiously, the
photograph was reprinted after the Great War in Great Britain with
acknowledgment to the original book.
In World War II, the British used the image twice. The
Political Warfare Executive (PWE) produced a series of stickers in late 1942.
They were in the form of Winterhilfswerk or "WHW" ("Winter
help") labels. This German organization supported the poor during the
cold German winters. The WHW sold various items to raise money to be used for
charity. The British produced five gummed stickers in the form of a WHW
labels. One of these labels used the image of the soldier with his face shot
off. Another label showed Himmler holding a pistol and demanding money for the
charity. The code number of all five labels is H.235. The code does not appear
on the labels; it was found in declassified British wartime records.
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| British Face Shot
Away Stamp Parody |
Howe used the image a second time when he designed a pair
of very realistic looking postage stamps in late 1942 and early 1943. These
were coded H.292. The stamps were prepared in booklets of two sheets of 10
stamps, twenty stamps in all. Once again, one stamp showed Himmler, the other
stamp showed the man with no face. Behind him are two happy Germans, sometimes
described as Julius Streicher (editor of the anti-Semitic newspaper Der
Sturmer) and Hermann Goering (Reichsmarschall of the Luftwaffe). They are
smiling and holding champagne glasses. The message is clear. The Party bosses
drink and have a good time while the front-line soldier is killed or
mutilated.
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Geman "Face
Shot Away" Leaflet
(Click to Enlarge) |
The story does not end there. In February 1945, the Germans
dropped a leaflet on the American troops on the Western front coded 9802 45/91
that showed the same image of a mutilated soldier. The text on the leaflet
states:
This picture is taken from LIFE. It shows how
excellent medics can work. Maj. Gen. Norman T. Kirk, Surgeon General of the
Army, reported to the annual meeting of the Association of Military Surgeons
that 60,000 World War II American soldiers live today, although, had they
received the same type of injury in the last war, they would have died.
The soldier on the picture probably is one of those
60,000 'lucky ones.' But take one more look at the picture. We don't want to
belittle the skill of modern medics, but what good is it for this
unfortunate human being?
And what happened to him and 59,999 others may happen
to you. Then people will read 'one more wounded' and will perhaps think of
six weeks in a hospital, a furlough, and a Purple Heart. But they will not
know of some broken hearts.
Of course, the Germans were lying. The photograph had appeared
in the 1924 German anti-war book, in the British gummed labels, and in the
British stamp booklet, but not in Life Magazine!
You may have noted that I have not mentioned the United
States or the Soviet Union insofar as propaganda stamps are concerned. This is
because both of these super powers refuse to admit that they ever did such a
thing.
For example, when questioned about forged stamps and
postcards the official Soviet reply states: "In reply to your letter of
so-called forged German postcards I wish to advise you that the policy of the
Soviet Union in issuing stamps and postcards excludes any forging of any kind.
I am not aware of any forgeries."
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Russian Propaganda
Stamped Postcard |
This is all very well, but during World War II the Russians
often bragged of their operations in Soviet War News. For instance, in
the issue dated January 7, 1942, they described how Soviet planes dropped
parcels behind the German lines, containing millions of leaflets and picture
postcards bearing German stamps, all ready for soldiers to send home. The
picture on one of them shows a field with wooden crosses, and vultures
fluttering above them. In the foreground lies one lone helmet. The caption
reads: "Lebensraum in Osten" ("Living space in the East").
Another card shows a fir tree. Beneath it, almost buried in
deep snow, lies a German soldier frozen to death. The inscription reads
"Oh Tannenbaum! Oh Tannenbaum!" (Oh Christmas tree! Oh Christmas
tree!").
The United States Government is less helpful. Back in
November 1978, I wrote a short piece for the Society of Philatelic
Americans, "A Spy Hunter's View of Wartime Philately." I briefly
mentioned my difficulties with our government at that time. If I might be more
concise, let me start by saying that in April 1977, I wrote the Central
Intelligence Agency under the Freedom of Information Act, asking for any data
in their files on the production of propaganda stamps. Several weeks later I
received a reply that said "As you may know, the heavy volume of Freedom
of Information requests received by the Agency has resulted in processing
backlogs."
A week after receipt of the CIA letter, I received material
from the Department of the Army on the distribution in China of the stamp
produced by the United States to mark the fifth anniversary of Chinese
resistance to Japan. Nice information, but not exactly what I had asked for.
In June I wrote the CIA again asking about progress on my
request. They answered in July: "while the Agency has diverted
considerable resources into answering these requests, a serious backlog
developed nevertheless. Rest assured that I will notify you just as soon as
the search is completed." Shortly afterwards, I received eight documents.
One half dealt with the distribution of the Chinese commemorative stamp
mentioned earlier. The others were on the subject of surveillance of stamp
dealers as possible foreign agents. I later wrote this fiasco up for
Scott's Monthly Stamp Journal, June 1980, in an article entitled "How
They Read Your Mail."
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| Operation Cornflakes
6-Pfennig Forgery Sheet |
Nowhere did I find material on the subject of the thousands
of German postage stamps that the United States forged and parodied. I was
tempted to send the Agency some of my material since I obviously have better
files than they do. One document in my possession is the final report of
production and distribution from July 15, 1944, to May 15, 1945. This Office
of Strategic Services document tells us that "Hitler Heads" were
produced in the number of 1,138,500. There were 70,000 "Sex cards and
envelopes," 726,550 "German stamps," and 6,500 "numbered
stamps."
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| Operation Cornflakes
12-Pfennig Forgery Sheet |
Another interesting document sadly missing from the OSS
files is a booklet giving the complete background of "Operation
Cornflakes." Robson Lowe of London auctioned off this document several
years ago. He explained its origin thus: "I have absolutely no doubt
about the validity of any of the papers. The tenant of the apartment from whom
I obtained these two volumes apparently found them in the attic. The apartment
had been used by American officials since the occupation of Rome and it would
appear that one of the predecessors left these two volumes together with a
third volume in the attic. My guess is that the owner was one of the main
officials in the report."
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| Operation Cornflakes
Hitler-skull Parody Sheet |
The "Cornflakes" booklet was a printed report of
"a complicated operation devised by Morale Operations to bring subversive
propaganda to the German breakfast table through the infiltration of the
German mail system." Some of the actual propaganda mounted in this report
included complete sheets of the American forgeries of German 6 and 12 Pfennig
stamps and a complete sheet of the Hitler-skull parody. I first wrote about
this operation in The Society of Philatelic Americans Journal, February 1972,
entitled "Poison Cornflakes for Breakfast." The article was
reprinted by the German Postal Specialist in February 1973. Readers who want
to read a more current report should peruse my Operation
Cornflakes article on the Internet.
Corey Ford also described this operation in his book Donovan
of the OSS. Ford did not mention the classified name
"Cornflakes," but he told how "Fake German mailbags were
prepared and filled with subversive letters stamped, postmarked, and inscribed
with real addresses from local directories. These bags were dropped by the
fifteenth Air Force in strafing missions over marshalling yards and railway
stations, in the hope that they would be picked up as stray mail pouches lost
from wrecked railroad cars, and would be sent on by regular mail."
 |
German prisoner of
war Willy Hanseneier
drew this charcoal sketch of Eddie Zinder |
I once asked one of the Rome OSS agents, who I will protect
here by using his code-name of Eddie Zinder or "Blitzkrieg Eddie,"
if Rome produced propaganda parodies of German postage stamps. He answered:
We in Rome were concerned with postage stamps that
could be used legitimately in the German postal service which we thusly
infiltrated. The stamps were applied to pre-addressed envelopes and we even
stamped over them the appropriate cancellation of the post office, just as
such letters would ordinarily go into the big mail bags. Our letters, of
course, contained subversive materials which had been printed in Rome. We
did not share our engraving plates with anyone and we didn't use anyone
else's plates.
As far as Hitler skulls are concerned, we did use
original "skull art" for underground leaflets of various types. No
stamps though. They would have been inappropriate.
It is interesting to note, in conclusion, that whether the
government is British, German, Russian or American, they all agree on one
point. Not one of them forged stamps. Each year the evidence becomes more and
more overwhelming as former agents tell all and old spies put stamps and
parodies up for auction that they have kept hidden for almost thirty-five
years.
Will we ever make a clean breast of it? Probably not, for
as one CIA agent told me, "the methods used to print and distribute our
propaganda are as valid today as it was then. Why should we tell anyone what
our methods might be tomorrow should we desire to mount another campaign
against an enemy?" Then he said, "By the way, they had a great
exhibit of wartime forgeries and parodies outside the main cafeteria at CIA
Headquarters in Virginia. Too bad only company employees were able to see
it."
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| Operation Cornflakes
OSS Parody Hitler
Birthday Souvenir Sheet |
By the grace of God and good luck I was called to a seminar
at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia soon afterwards and did see the
exhibit. Two CIA agents that happened to be stamp collectors put the exhibit
together. It consisted of four glass shelves of stamps, postcards and
newspapers. The highlight of the collection was a WWII OSS parody of a Hitler
birthday souvenir sheet. These sheets have sold for well into five figures in
the past. They are extremely rare. Other items on exhibit were full sheets of
the U.S. forged Hitler stamps, and a forged German newspaper, Das Neue
Deutschland.
Do the great powers forge postage stamps? Not according to
them. I have already quoted the Soviets who publicly disclaimed all knowledge
of postal forging at the same time that they were bragging about their fake
stamped postcards in their internal propaganda magazines. Even Sefton Delmer
who was Howe's boss and knew exactly what was being produced told me in early
private correspondence, "SOE had no business to be producing forged
stamps. We did not produce any Witzleben stamps. I would have refused to do
so. No operational value. Just joke stuff." This from the man who oversaw
the forging of German 3, 4, 6 and 8 Pfennig Hitler stamps, and the
parodying of a number of others. About the same time, Howe wrote to me that,
"It seems that we were very busy with philatelic nonsense at the end of
1942 and the beginning of 1943."
No, nations don't forge postage stamps. But their agents
do!
Readers who care to comment on any aspect of this article are encouraged to write the author at sgmbert@hotmail.com.
09 March 2004
