German Forgeries Of British Stamps

Here are a few neat ones...

During WWII, the U.S., Britain, and Germany all made forgeries of the other side's stamps for propaganda purposes. Here are the more common German forgeries of British stamps.

The first is the German parody version of the 1935 Great Britain 1/2 pence Silver Jubilee stamp. (Mi 1)



The Germans changed the design to replace King George V with Stalin, and to insert "This war is a / Jewsh war" in place of "Silver Jubilee / Half Penny." (Note the misspelling of Jewish) The dates have also been changed from the original 1910-1935 to 1939-1944, and the Star of David and hammer and sickle appear throughout the design.

The second is the German parody version of the 1937 Great Britain 1 1/2 pence Coronation stamp. (Mi 2)



The Germans changed the design to replace Queen Elizabeth with Stalin, and to insert "S.S.S.R. Britannia / Teheran 28.11.1943" in place of "Postage Revenue / 12 May 1937". The text "G E R" has also been replaced with "S S S R".

The Star of David and hammer and sickle also appear throughout the design.

The third is the German parody version of the 1937 Great Britain King George VI issues. (Mi 3-8)



These designs can be identified by the Star of David atop the crown at top center, and a hammer and sickle inserted in the flower at top left and in place of the pence symbol.

These issues were also overprinted in numerous varieties (Mi #9-14, with 32 varieties each), but these are relatively rare.

I would hesitate to call them "forgeries"
they are too obvious, possibly "propaganda stamps"

Interesting, but they seem hardly worth the effort expended in producing them.

[edit: What I mean to say is that it is hard to figure how much benefit the Germans could have possibly expected from these...seems like a fair amount of effort for little reward.]

The Jubilee stamp has Stalin replacing KGV, of course.

How about a bit of "Liquidation of the empire" ?

Bermuda:

I've been enamored of these since I was a wee collector.

I find it curious that the Nazis equated Josef Stalin with a Jewish War.

Michel lists two type of forgeries in the same general class -- war and propaganda forgeries. Some were designed to mimic the real stamps (kriegsfalschungen), and some were for propaganda purposes (propagandafalschungen). I probably should have used that term, as it's a little more descriptive and more indicative of their true purpose -- propaganda.

Yep, that sounds good.
Michel is generally spot on, happy to follow their lead.

"Liquidation of the empire" stamps seem to be more common than the print run suggests as they make regular appearances on ebay.

The "Jewish war" thing is based on a popular misconception from the 1920s and 30s that Bolshevism / Communism was a movement led by Jews that was somewhat made official doctrine when the nazis came into power.

If you are really interested in this subect then you must read: http://www.psywar.org/stamps.php.

Timm, thanks for the link. Very informative :-)