The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was an intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branches of the United States Armed Forces. Other OSS functions included the use of propaganda, subversion, and post-war planning.
Black propaganda is a form of propaganda intended to create the impression that it was created by those it is supposed to discredit. Black propaganda contrasts with gray propaganda, which does not identify its source, as well as white propaganda, which does not disguise its origins at all. It is typically used to vilify or embarrass the enemy through misrepresentation.
During World War II, the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) was a British clandestine body created to produce and disseminate both white and black propaganda, with the aim of damaging enemy morale and sustaining the morale of countries occupied or allied with Nazi Germany.
The Psychological Warfare Division of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force was a joint Anglo-American organization set-up in World War II tasked with conducting (predominantly) white tactical psychological warfare against German troops and recently liberated countries in Northwest Europe, during and after D-Day. It was headed by US Brigadier-General Robert A. McClure. The Division was formed from staff of the US Office of War Information (OWI) and Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the British Political Warfare Executive (PWE).
During the period when Heligoland was a British possession, about 20 postage stamps were issued between 1867 and 1890. There were up to eight printings of a single denomination and also a large volume of reprints which are known as the Berlin, Leipzig and Hamburg Reprints, respectively. The Berlin reprints are sometimes better quality than the originals. The reprints were done between 1875 and 1895. Consequently, many "old" collections contain reprints rather than originals. Some believe there were seven million reprints as compared to the known 1½ million originals, of which perhaps half were sold through the post office and the remainder sold to dealers when withdrawn from use. A few printings were never postally sold but nevertheless found their way into the hands of dealers. The stamps were printed by the Prussian State Printing Office in Berlin. They were denominated in the Hamburg Schilling until 1875, when both German Reich and British values appeared on each stamp issue. All are embossed with a silhouette of Queen Victoria excepting the four highest values which represent Heligoland escutcheons.
In general, philatelic fakes and forgeries are labels that look like postage stamps but have been produced to deceive or defraud. Learning to identify these can be a challenging branch of philately.
In philatelic terminology a letter sheet, often written lettersheet, is a sheet of paper that can be folded, usually sealed, and mailed without the use of an envelope, or it can also be a similar item of postal stationery issued by a postal authority. Letter sheets derive from the form in which written correspondence was made up before the mid-19th century—letters were written on one or more sheets of paper that were folded and sealed in such a way that the address could be written on the outside.
Postage stamps and postal history of Baden refers to the postal history and postage stamps of the German state of Baden from 1851 to 1871.
This is a survey of the postage stamps and postal history of Germany and philatelically related areas. The main modern providers of service were the Reichspost (1871–1945), the Deutsche Post under Allied control (1945–1949), the Deutsche Post of the GDR (1949–1990), the Deutsche Bundespost (1949–1995), along with the Deutsche Bundespost Berlin (1949–1990), and are now the Deutsche Post AG.
Germania stamps are definitive stamps that were issued by the German Empire and the Weimar Republic between 1900 and 1922, depicting Germania. They represent the longest running series in German philately and are in their many variations and derivations an essential part of German philatelic collections.
The Vineta Provisional is a German postage stamp made on 13 April 1901 on board the cruiser SMS Vineta. The postal officer had not been supplied with 3 Pfennig Germania stamps, so he bisected his 5 Pfennig stamps and stamped them by hand with a "3 PF" mark. Mail with the Vineta provisional stamp was sent from Pernambuco to Germany on 17 April 1901. Only 600 stamps were issued, making this provisional stamp one of the rarer stamps in German philately.
Barbara Lauwers, later known as Barbara Lauwers Podoski, was a corporal in the Women's Army Corps (WAC) and a recipient of the Bronze Star after one of her operations led to the defection of 600 soldiers from behind Italian lines and the withdrawal of their support from the Germans. She was stationed at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Morale Operations (MO) headquarters in Rome, Italy.
This is a survey of postage stamps and postal history of the German colonies and part of the postage stamps and postal history of Germany, as well as those of the individual countries and territories concerned.
Temple Hornaday Fielding was an American travel writer from in the Bronx who published the Fielding Travel Guides starting in 1948.
Morale Operations was a branch of the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. It utilized psychological warfare, particularly propaganda, to produce specific psychological reactions in both the general population and military forces of the Axis powers in support of larger Allied political and military objectives.
Forgery is used by some governments and non-state actors as a tool of covert operation, disinformation and black propaganda. Letters, currency, speeches, documents, and literature are all falsified as a means to subvert a government's political, military or economic assets. Forgeries are designed to attribute a false intention and aspirations on the intended target. They force the targeted government to spend a large amount of resources to refute the forgery. Forgeries are an effective tool because of their ability to hold influence even after being proven false.
Wolfgang Baldus is a German graphic designer, artist, and philatelic writer. He is known for authoring and publishing books on cinderella stamps in the series History and Background Stories of Unusual Stamps and for his works on the philatelic forgeries and propaganda parodies produced by both sides during the First and Second World Wars.
The Rohrpostin Berlin, was a pneumatic tube postal service, which existed from 18 November 1865 until 1963 in West Berlin and in East Berlin until 1976.
The Sauerkraut missions were secret service operations planned and carried out by the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the Second World War from July 1944 to at least March 1945. The aim was to enable rapid dissemination of Allied propaganda material by the use of German prisoners of war.
Operation Pig Iron was a secret service measure planned and carried out by the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) from the summer of 1944 onwards during the Second World War. The aim was to indoctrinate the enemy by using "bombs" containing miniature editions of the propaganda magazine Das Neue Deutschland. These bombs were dropped by plane over enemy territory. With more than 8.9 million printed copies of the journal, the miniature edition was the most massive way of distributing this propaganda tool.
