WWII Forgeries - Feldpost Airmail

I've started scanning a newer area of my collection, the War and Propaganda Forgeries of WWII, and I thought I'd share the first lucky stamp!

But first, a little background...

During WWII, the Germans, British, Americans, and Russians all created forged stamps or postcards of the opposing forces. Some were strictly for local propaganda purposes, while others were designed for introduction into the enemy postal systems. The Allies went so far as to devise and implement elaborate plans to introduced forged postal items into Germany (but more on this later... ).

Here's one of the more common war forgeries, the British forgery of Germany's Feldpost Airmail stamp.

The Feldpost Airmail stamp was used by German forces to get mail home more quickly than the normal Feldpost system. The original stamp:



In 1943, the British printed these forgeries.



They delivered over 200,000 to the British Special Operations Executive and 12,500 to the Free French. However, no evidence has come to light that they were ever actually used within the German Feldpost system.

The stamps are of good quality printing, but are easily distinguishable from the original German issues. They differ in paper, perforation, and have several noticeable printing differences:

- Open loop antenna
- Dashes behind the rudder
- Incomplete door lines

What plans did the BSOE and FF have for this issue and what were the desired results?

There's no indication in the reference materials of exactly what the intent was, though it's reasonable to infer from other forgery efforts.

Most of the forgeries were either propaganda efforts to undermine faith in the Nazi regime (usually with obvious parodies or anti-Nazi messages on the face of the stamp), or attempts to replicate German postage so fake mail bearing anti-Nazi material could be introduced into the postal system. As these aren't subversive on their face, the plan was likely to use them to introduce fake Feldpost mail into the system.

There's no record of any Feldpost Airmail forgeries ever actually making it into use by BSOE or the FF.

Got this beauty in the mail today -- an entire sheet of this issue!

Thank you for the useful infomation!