America had “Rosie the Riveter” as a proto-feminist symbol of using the previously unutilized talents of American females in the war effort. Historians and stamp collectors may realize that Germans were there first, and the effort predated the war and even Hitler. 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,
Rosie in America had a distinct if unspoken lesbian vibe to her image. This RAD girl in Germany goes the other way with her Aryan master race looks. Nobody will think it proper to compare the two but perhaps both would have benefited from a dialing back of the politics.
Todays stamp is issue B281, a 6+4 Pfennig semi postal stamp issued by Germany in June 1944. There were two stamps, one for the male and one for the female sections of the National Labor Service, the RAD. There was a third section of RAD for male Jewish laborers. That would have made an interesting Nazi stamp. but no such luck. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents unused.
The Weimar government of Germany formed a national voluntary labor service the FAD, in 1931. It was designed to combat unemployment by hiring for road construction and agricultural land improvement. It came out of the work of Friedrich Syrup. He was a Saxon in the post war labor ministry assigned to finding places in industry for former soldiers. Once he had risen to Labor Minister, FAD was the result. He was not a Nazi. However when Hitler came to power, it was greatly expanded and opened up to females in separate units. Syrup was put into direct charge reporting to Goring. The organization was renamed RAD and organized along more military lines. In 1938, the Jewish section was organized and mandated work from otherwise unemployed Jewish males. This would be cited as the later war crime.
RAD units, the male ones, were busy building the Atlantic wall in France and agricultural work in the Ukraine. The Ukraine work is also thought of as a war crime as it sought Ukraine food exports to Germany thereby perhaps starving the Ukraine. That charge mistakenly assumes it was the Soviet practice to leave Ukraine farm produce for Ukrainians. Syrup himself had a mental breakdown in 1941 that pretty much ended his involvement.
As the war went on and the tide turned against Germany, the male RAD units duties became more combat centered. First there were units that maned anti aircraft flak batteries. In the last 6 months of the war, RAD units were formed into 6 infantry formations that fought on both the Eastern and Western Front as infantry. Female units did not face this fate, but there is little information on their, or the Jewish RAD units, late war activities.
Fredrich Syrup was advised to flee Berlin at the end of the war. Instead he was taken by the Soviets to the former concentration camp(well maybe not so former but under new management) in Sachsenhausen where he died in August 1945 at age 63.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast all those who are free to benefit personally from their labor. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.
