Postal History Resources For France, Alsace-Lorraine From 1920-S To 1950-S

Hi all,

The son gave me an album full of covers from Alsace-Lorraine for my birthday recently. He thought I needed to work on a new philatelic area instead of just focusing on my Prexie 3c covers as I have been doing for the past few decades (he is kinda sick and tired of seeing covers with just that 3c 'purple horror').

The covers date between the 1920s and early 1950s and is a mix of civilian and military mail. Just the covers alone with no descriptions and write-ups on the services used, rates paid, markings used etc.

I understand Alsace-Lorraine's postal history is pretty complicated given its turbulent history - ceded by France to Germany in 1871 after the Franco-German War, retroceded to France in 1919 after World War I, was ceded again to Germany in 1940 during World War II, before being retroceded (again) to France in 1945 with the end of the war.

Would anybody be able to recommend a couple of resources that I can possibly acquire to find out more about Alsace-Lorraine's postal history during this period? I tried googling on the Internet but did not find any, and the son suspects all such resource are in French and or German!

Thanks in advance.

I do not collect French or German, but had a few pieces of family correspondence from Interwar Alsace that I thought I might someday look at more closely. Never got around to it, but I did become aware of some titles that might be of interest. I have not seen them myself, though.

Catalogue des timbres à date français du Haut - Rhin 1915 1940, JP Bournique, SPAL 2000 -
Catalogue des timbres à date français du Haut-Rhin 1944 - 1947 - avec millésime à 2 chiffres - Alsace Lorraine - SPAL

The SPAL is a group that is devoted to postal history and cancels of Alsace.
Not sure where you might get these in the US, but Delcampe has them for sale
See https://www.delcampe.net/fr/timbres...ace-lorraine.

Haut-Rhin is only half the region. Bas-Rhin I did not find equivalent publications, so I stopped (my correspondence originated there) .

- Jonathan

I don't know what type of postal history you are interested in.French stamps and or German?
Vast subject really. This link has a nice run down on the different epochs.From 1870 and onwards.Examples of cancels,markings on covers and cards.

https://spal-philatelie.blogspot.co...blog_23.html