"“We have lent a huge amount of money to the U.S. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I am definitely a little worried.” "


Chinese premier Wen Jiabao 12th March 2009


""We have a financial system that is run by private shareholders, managed by private institutions, and we'd like to do our best to preserve that system."


Timothy Geithner US Secretary of the Treasury, previously President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.1/3/2009

Friday, April 20, 2007

Unlikely Birthday Party - Philatelic aside


If Adolf Hitler is alive and well and living in South America somewhere, he would be 118 today.

The site philatelist points out that a set of a block of four dark green 6-pfennig stamps was issued -"Who Would Save His People Must Think Heroically". Wer ein Volk retten will kann nur heroisch denken (Which is Ko želi spasiti jedan narod, može samo herojski razmišljati in Hungarian)

334 stamps were issued during the period of the Third Reich often bearing Hitler's head, his head never appeared on any coinage of the Third Reich. There are two versions of the block set, with and without the perforations Both blocks were issued 4/5/1937 for Hitler's 48th birthday on 4/20/1937.... 70 years to the day.

Ref :

Propaganda Art in the Postage Stamps of the Third Reich
Frederick Lauritzen
The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, Vol. 10, Autumn, 1988 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 62-79 doi:10.2307/1504019

An interesting footnote is that in 1944 the American propaganda sections of U. S. Office of Strategic Services re-issued a mocking set showing a deaths skull instead of Hilters head with the date by the Reichsmark of 1944 - they are supposed to be blood red the head stands in a field of cemetery crosses. They also issued millions of not dissimiliar stamps, sometimes using them to post to the addresses of dead soldiers.



Curiously there has been a small and modestly profitable post war industry in forging these proaganda stamps.(A set is for sale at US$25 here)

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(C) Very Seriously Disorganised Criminals 2002/3/4/5/6/7/8/9 - copy anything you wish