Stamp collectors? Feeding a hobby on ebay - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

Jim B. · #1 07-09-2007, 12:26 AM

Still trying to figure out why this one was special and somehow couldn't bear to pass it up..

http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=007&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWN%3AIT&viewitem=&item=170126302425&rd=1,1

Well, I have kind of a narrow focus (you almost have to!) with this.

Since I am interested in WWII history,especially the East front from the German POV, I found this cover extremely interesting and decided to chase it.

Finally decided to get serious, as there were some German bidders after it also, and with 11 seconds left, swooped in and sniped it up today.

In 45 years I had never seen anything like this:

It's a cover with the stamps of 3 countries on it.

Occupied Ukraine, Germany and GG (General Gouvernment - occupied Poland.), cancelled May 1943. The cancellations tie all the stamps together, and the stamps were placed on the envelope in a way that suggests a "favor" cancellation (placed on it with an eye to future collectbility.)

I once won up a cover mailed from the Ostland (Kaunas, occupied Lithuania) to Warschau (Warshaw) and it was misfranked (Ostland and German stamps on it) but it was grubby and nothing like this one.

I don't speak German, but the return address looks to be from one of the people in the Organization Todt "OT" who was a Road Construction Inspector "Strassenbau inspektor" in Nikopol.

Nikopol is in the Southeastern corner of the Ukraine, near the Dniester river, and had rail junctions and a manganese industry.

Evidently it was part of the Nikopol Administration District "Bezirk Kommissariat". I have never heard of the town Rawa Ruska but evidently it must have been a town with a small post office there, because of the cancellation and registered Letter "R" stamp on it.

It was mailed via "Feldpost" (Military Mail) per the Feldpost Nr. on the envelope, which is VERY unusual because 99% of the war Feldpost mail went without postage, because the soldiers using the Feldpost got to send letters for free.

Maybe because the Absender of the letter worked for the OT he had to supply the stamps. Likely the absender and recipient of the letter were civilians, but Nazi party members and mid level managers/engineers but I don't know if they knew each other, or if one of them collected stamps and requested this cover, and how it came to bear the unusual collection of stamps from three countries on it.

There was not "Geoffnet" (opened by the censor) tape on the envelope either, which was interesting, as it suggests the correspondents were high enough in the hierarchy to avoid that, or it was viewed as a collectable envelope only with nothing worth inspecting. Can't figure it out.

The Organization Todt was formed by Maj. Gen. Fritz Todt (died in a plane crash in 1942) as a kind of hybrid civil/military engineering group, tasked with the construction of buildings, roads, bridges and airfields.

Some slave labour was employed, POWS from Poland Russia Norway France and elsewhere in addition to German workers who were rotated in and out.

The addressee was evidently a "Work Group Leader" (arbeitsgruppenleiter) attached to the Inspection arm of the OT, possibly in charge of the Constgruction at Rastenburg.

The address is of interest because Rastenburg/ostpr indicates the facility which existed then in Rastenburg, East Prussia, and was known as the "Wolfsschanze" (Wolf's Lair) which was constructed so that Adolf Hitler could go there and be close to the operations in the East Front. It was a fairly large complex, and the German workers of the OT were rotated out in waves of 20,000 at a time, so as to maintain secrecy of the location.

By 1943 Hitler was spending more and more time at the Wolf's Lair, as he did take it upon himself to micromanage the war, to the consternation of Guderian and the other Generals of the OKH and OKW.

It was also the site of the failed July 20, 1944 assination attempt on Hitler carried out unsuccessfully by Count Claus Graffen von Stauffenberg.

The cover seemed like a memorialization of an interesting time and place in history, and with the stamps of three countries linked together on it, seemed irresistable to a collector.

Having bought nothing for over a year, I finally succumbed to this. The seller and I already communicated by email this afternoon, and I will pay for it tomorrow.

I think I understand why it attracted some unusual interest from German collectors, but mostly it is speculation and mystery. I wish I knew the whole history. It's not really worththe trouble to authernticate though.

This makes up for the BuM (Bohemian and Morvavia) "Bohmen und Mahren" cover with the Protectorate Hitler stamps and the cancellation date of May 8, 1945 (the day AFTER the surrrender to the Allies) that I let get away.

A highly satisfying event for a collector. Just wanted to share, if anyone was interested.