Here is another stamp where the lead times to produce a new stamp meant the story told by the stamp was out of date. Thus the early German optimism about the war is displayed just as Stalingrad had turned the tide. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
There were two series of this style of stamp from Germany. The early issue showed German forces victorious and on the march, including this U boat. They came out on Hero Memorial Day in 1943. For Hero Memorial Day in 1944 there was a new issue that was quite different. Gone was the blitzkrieg bluster replaced by determined, well armed soldiers clearly on the defense. In 1945 there was a stamp honoring the Volksstrurm, a new army of children to resist the Russian advance from the East, as the situation went from bad to worse.
Todays stamp is issue SP189, a 3+2 Pfennig semi-postal stamp issued by Germany on March 21, 1943. It was a 12 stamp issue in various denominations showing German war fighters from the various services. The surcharge benefited the families of the war dead. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $1.25 used.
Germany had great hopes that their Navy’s submarines would help insure a German victory in the war. Great Britain after all was an island and very dependent on supplies brought in by sea. The German war effort in World War I had been greatly damaged by the mainly British naval blockade. It was now time to return the favor. Unfortunately when the war broke out the navy only had 57 seaworthy U boats, and many were small coastal types. They all were not truly submarines in the modern sense, being able to stay under water for long periods. Instead they were more surface ships that could dive underwater for short periods with their engines off under battery power. Notice the cannon on the deck of the U-boat on the stamp. This was to attack a merchant ship on the surface without ever diving.
German production was gearing up fast. By 1943, Germany was able to field the 100 U boats concurrently at sea that German Admiral Donitz believed was key to success. U boats sank 3663 ships that added up 14 million tons of shipping. The cost however was 720 U-boats sunk. The surface journey in and out of base was becoming ever more treacherous. German ship builders were innovating new battery technology that would have kept the subs underwater longer where they were much less vulnerable. They required extra crew training and were only just coming into service at wars end.
At the beginning of May 1945, Admiral Donitz replaced Hitler as head of the Third Reich. One of his first orders was that the U-boats and all other German ships except useful post war minesweepers be scuttled. On May 4th, in surrender talks that order was rescinded, but many ship Captains went ahead with the scuttling assuming the rescinding order was coerced. 238 of the 394 remaining U-boats were scuttled and 4 were turned over to Japan. This is indicative of both extremely high U-boat construction during the war and how around two thirds of them were lost.
The German technological progress with submarines was very influential post war. The West German, French and Soviet navies made submarines modeled on late war model U-boats. Even the USA started the GUPPY program that rebuilt World War II subs to incorporate German technology. Even as late as the 1980s, a Soviet Whiskey class sub was sneaking undetected into Swedish waters until underwater rocks found it rather than the Swedish Navy. The Whiskey class was a copy of the Type XXI U-boat.
Well my drink is empty and so I will wait till tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.