These German postage stamps are from 1922 or 1923 or thereabout. That’s back when the Weimar Republic (officially named Deutsches Reich) experienced hyperinflation because of circumstances having to do with the aftermath of World War I (1914-1918). You can see that these stamps had their original values overprinted with a new value. For instance, one stamp was originally 100 Mark, but was then overprinted with 1 billion Mark (Mark was the name of the currency in the Weimar Republik). From 100 to 1 billion, this means that if something was earlier sold for one Mark, that same thing will now cost ten million Mark.
If you ever see this happening to postage stamps — or money, or just prices in general — you might do well to pay attention, because it means nothing good. When your leaders are dealing with the problem in ways similar to this, trying to convince you “don’t worry, we got this!” you ought to … well, maybe have some vegetables growing in your garden and some chickens that lay eggs.
Likely, what happens next is some strong man (or a woman, knock yourself out) will present himself and he and his followers will blame the problems on a specific group of people and say “let’s go after those people.” And a whole lot of the population will be excited about this and get behind him, and barbaric ugliness will ensue.
The type of historical events you can read from these stamps … The stamps here, probably issued at different times in 1922-1923, are overprinted with their updated value: a stamp originally valued at 200 Mark is now 30,000 Mark; a 1,000 Mark stamp is devalued to 75,000; a 100 Mark stamp is converted into a 100,000 Mark stamp, and so on. … could lead to this type of thing. The hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic obviously lead to brutal chaos and great discontent among the German population, and although the years to follow saw a partial recovery, the stock market crash in 1929 wreaked further havoc and left the country in such disarray that the way was paved for Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party: they played to the discontent, stirring up fear and anger in the population, and grabbed power. Totalitarianism, genocide, and war was next. … which again could lead to this type of thing. These are Norwegian stamps which, after Nazi Germany invaded Norway, were overprinted with a V. The Nazis had been irritated about how the allies used the V as a uniting symbol for victory. The Nazis, experts on appropriating symbols, launched a propaganda effort claiming the V stood for “Viktoria – Deutschland Siegt an allen Fronten,” which translates to “Viktoria – Germany wins on all fronts.” (Viktoria is the German name for the Roman goddess of victory.) The people who resisted the German occupation, showed their disgust with the occupiers by attaching the stamps upside down, thus subtly sabotaging the Nazi propaganda effort. The stamps were soon taken out of circulation. … and could also lead to this type of thing. After the German invasion of Norway in 1940, the Norwegian government fled the country and operated out of London. They issued stamps which were used on Norwegian military ships, trading ships, and on Jan Mayen. This is one of those stamps. It shows a graffiti — “Vi Vil Vinne” — which was painted on a Norwegian road by a resistance fighter. The words Vi Vil Vinne (We Shall be Victorious) references the V as a symbol of the allies and the Norwegian resistance. … and then later this. After Germany had been defeated in 1945, the allies divided Germany up into four sectors, each sector controlled by United States, England, France, and the Soviet Union respectively. When the Western occupation zones enacted a currency reform, introducing the new Deutsche Mark, the Soviet Occupation Zone did not participate. This caused problems with the stamp denominations: there was no time to design and print new stamps, so instead the old stamps were overprinted with “Sowjetische Bezatsungszone” (shown on the left in the image above, used by the Soviet Occupation Zone) or with two variations on a posthorn overprint (one variation is shown on the right in the image above, used by the American and British occupation zones). In 1948 the Soviet Occupation Zone became the German Democratic Republic (more commonly referred to as East Germany), and in 1949 the remaining occupation zones became the Federal Republic of Germany (more commonly known as West Germany). And thus, what we see in these stamps is the emerging Cold War.
