The Second World War Volume One: Representing World Conflict on Postage Stamps.

By Christopher B. Yardley

The Second World War transformed the world not just America and the opposing belligerent nations. Eighty years later the postal authorities of the world continue to commemorate the conflict – because the effects are still being felt. This book looks at how the conflict is remembered and its aftermath. It is essentially an annotated picture book - the challenge to the reader is to determine the message the stamp is telling.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Apr 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781982292980

Christopher B. Yardley

Christopher Yardley is a life-long stamp collector with an interest in military history shown within stamp images.

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Copyright © 2022 Christopher B Yardley.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-9822-9297-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-9298-0 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 04/12/2022

Keywords :

Cover image : Gambia 2019: The 75th anniversary of the D-Day Landings in Normandy, France.

Back cover image : A miniature sheet containing 15 stamps issued by the United States Postal Services in 2000 as part of their Millennium series Celebrating the Century – World War II transforms America.

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Table of Contents

Preface

Contents

Introduction

What is a region

North America – The United States of America

The Marshall Islands History of the Second World War

War is a defining experience in human history

Europe – Aaland

Asia - Aden now known as Yemen

Europe – Aegean Islands

Asia – Afghanistan

Oceania – Aitutaki

Europe - Albania

Europe, British Regional Post - Alderney

Africa – Algeria

Europe – Alsace

Europe - Spanish Andorra

Europe – French Andorra

North America - Antigua and Barbuda

Asia – Armenia

Africa – Ascension Island

Oceania – Australia

Australia Post Office in Japan

Europe – Austria

Asia – Azerbaijan

North America – Bahamas

North America – Barbados

Europe – Belarus

Europe - Belgium

North America – Belize formerly known as British Honduras

Africa – Benin formerly known as French West-Africa and Dahomey.

Africa – Botswana formally known as the Bechuanaland Protectorate

North America – Bermuda

Asia – Bhutan

Europe - Bosnia Herzegovina

South America – Brazil

Asia - British Indian Ocean Territory formerly known as the Seychelles

Asia – Brunei

Europe - Bulgaria

Asia – Burma occupied by Japan (Myaungmya Issues)

Asia – Burma (Myanmar) reoccupied by the British.

Union of Burma

Asia – Cambodia

North America – Canada

North America – The Cayman Islands

Africa – Cameroon

Africa - Central African Republic, formerly known as French Equatorial Africa

Asia – Ceylon now known as Sri Lanka

Africa – Chad, aka The Republic of Tchad

South America – Chile

Asia – The Peoples’ Republic of China

Oceania – Christmas Island

Oceania – Cocos (Keeling) Islands

South America – Columbia

Africa – Comoro Islands

Oceania – Cook Islands

North America – Costa Rica

Europe - Croatia

North America – Cuba

Europe – Greek Cyprus

Europe – Turkish Cyprus

Europe – Czechoslovakia

Europe - The Czech Republic

Europe – Denmark

Africa – Djibouti previously known as French Somaliland

North America - Dominica

Africa - Egypt

Africa – Eritrea previously known as Italian East Africa

Europe - Estonia

Africa – Ethiopia

South America – Falkland Islands

Europe - Faroe Islands

Oceania – Fiji

Europe - Finland

Europe – France

South America – French Guyane

Asia – French India

French Post within the Turkish Empire

Oceania – French Oceania

Oceania – French Polynesia

Africa - Gabon

Africa - Gambia

Africa – Ghana previously recognised as the Gold Coast

Europe - German Democratic Republic, DDR

Europe – The Western Allies occupation of Berlin

Europe – German Rhineland French occupation

Europe – West Germany

Europe - Reunited Germany

Europe – Gibraltar

Europe - Great Britain

Great Britain Post Offices across the World

Great Britain Post Offices in Somalia

Europe - Greece

Europe – Greenland

North America – Grenada

North America – Grenada Grenadines

North America – Guadeloupe

Europe, British Regional Post – Guernsey

Guernsey images … page 2.

Africa – Guinea

Africa - Guinea Bissau (Portuguese Guinea, Africa)

South America – Guyana formerly known as British Guinea

Asia – Hong Kong

Europe - Hungary

Europe – Iceland

Asia – India

Asia – Indochina

Asia – Indonesia / The Japanese Occupation

Asia – Indonesia

Asia – Iran

Europe - Ireland

Europe, British Regional Post - Isle of Man

Asia – Israel

Notes :

Preface

The devil’s in the detail, they say. And as far as the miniscule art form of stamp design is concerned, this couldn’t be more true. The amount of contemplation and concentration involved in creating such a diminutive image is sizeable. Every pixel counts, every micro-millimetre needs to do its bit.

But of course, a stamp can only say so much. It’s an impression, a small window to people and stories and celebrations, a cue to find out more.

By presenting (these) diverse subjects in summary and in detail, we hope to give you a fresh perspective. After all, our stamps may be small, but their scope and ambition are enormous (Editorial (2010), The big picture, Royal Mail Year Book).

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Contents

I have not followed the conventional contents format. As I have said on the back cover my study has evolved into two picture books.

The pictures are the postage stamp images from the world that reflect the impact of the Second World War. My study has essentially started with the September 1939 commencement of war when Germany invaded Poland. Images from the conflict and its aftermath have been regularly used by postal authorities for stamp issues over the subsequent years and this will continue. The postal authorities base their issuing policy upon anniversaries, particularly when the anniversary reflects a 25-year perspective.

The early issues show the immediacy of the conflict. They include ‘charity’ issues to collect money for the combatants and their families. Some images are outright propaganda, others make political statements for public consumption. The French Colonies initial war issues go through the sequence – charity requests for the French Colonial Defence Fund, stamps to introduce Marshall Petain as the leader of Vichy France, then the quick turn-around to show the changed allegiance to the Free-France ambitions advanced by General de Gaulle, eventual victory and a sequence of anniversaries / commemorations to this day. Each country of the world reflects its culture through the images they use and reflect changes in how history sees the events at the date of the stamp issue.

My picture book shows the stamp issues from every country in chronological- date order.

Here is history in the raw always remembering that it is the victor who will be recording the history not the vanquished.

I have included an introduction and explanatory notes throughout the book where I have found facts / details that I did not know. I hope these make the pictures more interesting. My first source of reference has been Wikipedia and / or the on-line ‘Stampworld’ website and the classic world stamp catalogues.

The introduction starts on the next page.

I have thought long and hard about the images I want to include. I am conscious that in 2016 the Universal Postal Union (UPU) published its revised Philatelic Code of Ethics for the issuing and supplying of postage stamps. Words like abusive and undesirable are now part of the lexicon. I do not see that the military historical images I include are in these categories. The realisations of history are going to change with time – as I prove with this monograph.

Introduction

I have been a stamp collector for 75 years.

I also have a keen interest in military history although I am a member of that lucky generation who have not had to go to war although I did spend 4 years in the Navy Reserve in the UK which included three stints at sea.

During last year I completed a six- year review of the stamps published during the Centenary of the Great War. It has been published as A Great War Study – The Centenary commemorative stamps 2014-2018. ISBN 978-0-6486671-0-0. In this book I recorded and reproduced some 1070 different stamp images from 66 postal authorities. I was confident I had found all there was to find. I was wrong. I missed finding 111 stamps – no excuse at all but I have found postal authorities whose ‘authority’ I question?

Rather than try and justify how I missed these issues I’ll list these countries / territories :

Mustique,

Union Island

Bequia Grenadines of St. Vincent,

Canquan Grenadines of St. Vincent,

Mayreau Grenadines of St Vincent,

St. Vincent and the Grenadines and

St. Vincent in the Caribbean have contributed most of the items I did not find.

So what does that tell me?

Here is a group of islands who have been convinced that they can print money and that stamp collectors will buy their issues. Does this invalidate their value as artifacts, as historical records, as time-capsules of the message that the designer representing the postal authority wants to tell? I believe they remain valid.

A postage stamp is no more than the pre-payment of a service fee to a postal authority for the movement of an article from one place to another. The different service fees correspond to the authorities published tariff of charges that generally reflect the weight, speed of delivery and destination of the item being submitted for posting. Classically the stamp must have been publicly available over a country’s post office counters for six months and sold at the face-value, the service fee, shown on the stamp. Before the stamp / service fee token is affixed to an article to be posted and delivered it is known as a ‘mint’ stamp. When the token, affixed to the article to be carried, is accepted the post office cancels it with a postmark signifying the stamp has been used.

The postal authorities fall neatly into two categories. Those who control their own processes and those that out-source their stamp production and marketing to an alternate supplier. The dominant company providing the highest level of support to postal authorities is The Inter-Governmental Philatelic Corporation, or IGPC that represents over 70 different countries in the design, production, and marketing of postage stamps. It also assists postal administrations with the running of their postal services. IGPC claim to produce nearly half of the different postage stamps issued each year but have been criticised for inappropriate and excessive issues.

It is the smaller, less established authorities who tend to seek help. The collecting public is protected from the latter as the world’s most established stamp-dealers and sales rooms concentrate upon the goods from the former group. The established dealers have guidelines to check the bona-fides of the postal authorities as described in the previous paragraph.

There are two prominent providers for the outsourcing of a postal authority’s design responsibilities. These are Stamperiga of Riga, Latvia and Montecino of New York. These companies have a style that is their own and recognisable to a collector. For each subject selected to provide the excuse to print a set of stamps they will issue four stamps, (within a miniature sheet) and a higher value stamp also within a miniature sheet. The subjects offered are those that the design-agency believes will sell the most copies. These pseudo-stamps look like stamps and are available to the collector, not necessarily from the country’s post offices but commercially, and not necessarily for the implied service-fee.

Postage stamps have existed since 1840. All countries issue stamps and many of them use stamps to publicise their culture or special occasions. Stamps are also issued on almost every subject you can think of. Military historical subjects are used for 5% of a country’s stamp images.

This book

My initial thoughts were to look at the representation of specific battles on postage stamps with a view to presentation to the local (Canberra, Australia) Branch of the Military Historical Society of Australia and / or articles for the Society publications Le Grognard and Sabretache. Other thematic organisations will also be interested.

What became apparent was that the World War 2 story was bigger than specific battles and that it should be told, could be told, more formally and comprehensively as a monograph – this book, a cohesive history of how the conflict is represented over time by world’s postal authorities.

As an ex-Pom, a Kiwi, living in Australia I had relevant material to hand. I was somewhat surprised to find that the United States Postal Services, normally very conservative with its issuing policy, had set out the US history of the Second World War on the 50th anniversary of the end of the conflict. For each of five years the course of the war was plotted on a notated world map within a miniature sheet of postage stamps containing 10 fiscally valid historical images. Significantly the service fee was for the delivery of mail items locally within the US – in other words, targeted at Americans.

Searching outside of my normal philatelic collecting I came across the stamps of the Marshall Islands. Here were stamps designed for the world collector and an obvious source of revenue for the Marshall Islands postal authority. The stamps of the Marshall Islands also set out to tell the story of the Second World War from a perspective beyond the Pacific Ocean experiences of the population of the local population.

It seemed logical to compare the two histories and the style in which they were presented. The US images are somewhat stylised without too much detail, the context is shown in words. The Marshall Islands stamps are very detailed, big and bold, in comparison. The two countries share a 50% commonality of subject – which I thought was pretty-good going. I acknowledge that the US has a strong presence in the Marshall Islands, and that may have influenced their history-telling.

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Table 1 Simple count of the number of stamps featuring the events of WW2 from the United States and the Marshall Islands.

The clustering of the issues in the early years of the decades shown illustrates the reliance the issue policy reflects upon anniversaries.

The stories told are diverse and cover the spectrum of events.

The comparative count is US : 53, Marshall Islands 241 during 1989 to today. The Marshall Islands history has a head-start in commemorating the war with 50 stamps issued before the US entry into the war. The number of politician images, confirmation of the management of the war follow a similar pattern; US : 4, Marshall Islands 17.

For the 70th anniversary commemoration of the war The Marshall Islands went back to six consecutive year issues retelling the stories through the perspective of newspaper front-pages and brief summary of the feature.

The next step will be to record how many postal authorities of the World have represented the Second World War during 1939 to the present time.

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Figure : A wonderful example of an out-sourced, miniature sheet from Tuvalu, an island

in the Pacific. The small island nation of 12,000 people relies primarily on subsistence

living. Tuvalu is considered the fourth most impoverished nation in the world. How many

Tuvaluans will be sending the post to require these stamps?

I contend this is a valid historical artefact reflecting what the designer recognises as the story he wants to tell, and sell in 2005, the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar.

I hold the belief that I can illustrate