This war is a Jewsh War

Throughout history Jews have always been the scapegoats for everything. Hitler found it easy to gain support by blaming the Jews. The anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer often wrote, "The Jews Are Our Misfortune." So why not blame the Jews for Hitler's mistakes and failures during WW2?

Remember the cute story of Operation Cornflakes? If not, you can get a reminder here. However this was not the first Allied propaganda attempt. In 1943, parodies of the 6-pfennig Hitler stamps appeared instead a portrait of Heinrich Himmler. Who was Himmler, you ask? In brief he was a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany a main architect of the Holocaust. I could go on and on about him but maybe another time.

The Gestapo collected the parodies and forwarded them to Himmler. When he saw the stamp, he was personally insulted and wanted to his own back. How to get back at those insolent Brits? Hmmm, good question. Better question, how to also blame the Jews?

So Himmler meets with Hitler who was complaining that their overseas propaganda was a dismal failure. Himmler apparently replied that he remembered a report entitled showing that there were over ten million stamp collectors throughout the world! But here was an opportunity, fight fire with fire or fight parodies with parodies.

The German Propaganda Ministry jumped on the chance to lower British morale. They wanted to sell to the British that they would gain nothing by the war. They selected the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp near Berlin for the project and elected S.S. Major Bernhard Kruger to head the team. Kruger was already running Operation Bernhard out of the camp where a Jewish counterfeiter, Salomon Smolianoff, was already producing counterfeit pounds which were difficult to detect. The aim was to put billions of pounds on the British markets to weaken the UK economy and create inflation.

Kruger already had a team of Jewish prisoners of the concentration camp working on Operation Bernard and set them to work on the new project. They were selected because they had skills in composing, engraving and printing. They were separated from other inmates and were given special privileges. Clean uniforms, decent food, anything to keep morale high otherwise how would they produce good counterfeits? I suppose threats would also have worked.

Their guidelines were that genuine British postage stamps must be used and and the basic design and color must be retained. Jewish and Communist symbols must be also be incorporated into the design. The intent was to imply that Britain was under the influence of both Judaism and the Soviet Union. This was not the first time that the Nazis tries to connect Judaism with Communism.

The first project, my own favorite, was the parody of the 1/2d. Silver Jubilee issue of 1935 where they replaced the profile of King George V with that of Joseph Stalin. Two Star of Davids were added in the top corners. Instead of Silver Jubilee, it read: “This is a Jewsh War” (a missing I). Was this sabotage by the Sachsenhausen inmates? I doubt it as they would have been killed. Bear in mind that the S.S. had quality control over the propaganda parodies and somehow this slipped through. This parody was an attempt to blame the Jews for the war. 

Another cute parody was of the Coronation issue of 1937. Here Queen Elizabeth was removed and replaced with Joseph Stalin. There is a direct connection to the tripartite Teheran Conference with the text “Teheran - 28.11. 1943”.

What else did they do? They made a parody of the King George VI series of 1937. They added a Star of David in place of the Cross on the King's crown, a Hammer and Sickle in place of the pence symbol and other places. Some of these were so subtle that I didn't see them myself until someone pointed the changes out to me. The most visible one, intentionally or not, is the Star of David in the crown.

Strangely there are also overprints on the King George VI parodies. We have World Bolshevism, World Capitalism, World Judaism. There is also a series of overprints are called "Liquidation of Empire'. They added many British held territories such as Singapore, St. Lucia, Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad, Bahamas, Bermuda, Hong Kong and others. Apparently all the parodies were produced without gum.
Now the question arises, how to distribute the parodies among the enemy? One idea was to drop them over British cities, just like Operation Cornflakes (which was not yet operational) but the Luftwaffe claimed that their bombers had no space.

Himmler had hoped to impress everyone with his stamps, he actually believed that the sales to philatelists would bring wealth to the Reich. He was unable to sell them because his agents did not want to act as salesmen and get caught. But when they were given the items free, distribution started. They actually sold them to Swiss and Swedish stamp dealers because both countries were presumably neutral.

After the war the stamps, forged currency and others were dumped into Lake Toplitz, in Austria. Who is coming with me to look for some?