Operation Cornflakes

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Album Info

Release Date: 2007

Label: Umbrella Noize Collective

The United States Office of Strategic Services printed a "Futsches Reich" Hitler skull parody of the Germany 1941-44 12 pfennig carmine Hitler-head. These forgeries were used as part of "Operation Cornflakes," an elaborate scheme to airdrop mailbags filled with propaganda near bombed railway mail cars. This name was the natural result of the aim of the campaign, to place American propaganda on the German breakfast table each morning. This stamp is normally identified as "the Hitler skull stamp" or "the Hitler deaths-head stamp." The text at the bottom of the stamp was altered from DEUTSCHES REICH to FUTSCHES REICH ("LOST EMPIRE"). The OSS printed 1,138,500 of these parody postal stamps and shipped them to their agents all over Europe. The skull stamps were sometimes placed inside envelopes and mailed into Germany.

"At the Ravensbrueck concentration camp for women hundreds of Polish inmates--the "rabbit girls" they were called--were given gas gangrene wounds while others were subjected to "experiments" in bone grafting."

- The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich, by William L. Schirer.

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