Safe-conduct

“[Red Army soldier], who has voluntarily surrendered, on work in the rural economy”

“POWs in the Soviet Union are no public but state prisoners, and they are treated accordingly. They work in brigades in the agricultural cooperatives and in various workshops”

“[Red Army soldiers] who have voluntarily surrendered and are working in the industry, in their leisure time”

“Surrender voluntarily! – Russian officers are welcome to the camp. They are happy to answer the questions of the POWs, and therefore they are always encircled by those who want to know more.”

The armies of the Second World War sent letters and illustrated postcards not only to home. But also to the enemy. Attentively translated to their language, and often tailored to the typography of their publications.

“Red soldier, choose: death or life!”

“If you follow Hitler’s command – you perish. If you surrender – you go home”

These postcards mostly followed the same pattern. Their illustrated side clearly informed the enemy about who is responsible for the horrors of the war: Stalin and the Jews on the one hand and Hitler on the other. And their message side, on which they called upon the enemy soldier to surrender and described the humane nature of captivity, also served as “safe-conducts” – Passierschein or пропуск, respectively. As if without it you would have not even been taken prisoner.

“Batyushka Stalin provides for his divisions…”

“Soldiers! Commanders! You have two choices: senseless death or switching over to the Germans the earliest possible”

“The Jew as a rat devours the goods of your people. Wipe out the Jews from your country, so we could finish this senseless war as soon as possible!”

“Daddy is dead! – Accuse Hitler! He did it”

Among the German Passierscheins calling upon to wipe out the Jews, the following one is of particular interest. On the one hand because its message tallies with the “comissar order” issued on 6 June 1941, specifying that the captured Soviet political commissars should not be considered POWs, but executed on the spot. And on the other hand because for the visual interpretation of the message they chose the well-known Soviet representation on which the rebel soldiers of 1917 kill or chase away their Tsarist officers.

“Hit the Jewish political commissar, his face begs for a brick!”

History of the civil war, vol. I, Moscow, 1935. Chapter 13: The army and the fleet on the eve of the October revolution

But the main message of the safe-conducts was that whoever voluntarily surrenders, will see no harm, he can work in decent conditions until the end of the war, and afterwards can return to his family.

“This is how your comrades live in the German captivity. After work you are master of your time. If you want, you can read, sleep, walk. You are not summoned to gatherings and Communist Saturdays”

“Winter on the Eastern front: 300 thousand soldiers frozen. German soldiers! The second Russian winter will kill you!”

“Winter in the POW camp: protected from bullets and cold. German soldiers! Save your lives from the second Russian winter by voluntarily surrendering!”

From the 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war 3.3 million died in German labor camps or on the way there until the end of the war. From the 3.2 million German prisoners of war about 1 million died in Soviet labor camps until 1955, when on Konrad Adenauer’s intercession in Moscow the last survivors were let go home. The fate of a further 1.3 million German prisoners of war is still unknown.

Soviet prisoners of war in the labor camp of Mauthausen. Photo of the Bundesarchiv

Illustrated front postcards

Besides the “triangular letters” and the non-illustrated field postcards, several armies of the Second World War introduced the illustrated front postcard as well. As if the soldiers preserved as a last resort of civilization the lovely habit of peacetimes of sending home photo postcards from the foreign countries visited. However, instead of the pictures of the visited places, these cards inspired the beloved ones at home mostly with the heroic representations of the steadfastness and victories of the army.




Italians also thought about the soldiers on leave.

“The enemy is listening to you”

“Germany is really your friend!”

On the Soviet front there were almost no such postcards until the very last period of the war. Probably there was no capacity to manufacture and distribute them, and as we have already mentioned by quoting Russian philately forums, the postcard genre almost completely disappeared from the inter-war Soviet Union. The latter explanation is reinforced, as a rule by an exception, by the fact that in the city preserving the most bourgeois spirit, in Leningrad they even published postcards during the blockade, although they represented peacetime subjects, as we will present it in another post. But if there had existed any Soviet illustrated front poscards, then they would have most probably taken over the representations of the posters which were continuously sent to the front to reinforce the military moral.




And indeed, when from 1943, if not the traditional illustrated postcards, but at least the postcards and envelopes with a small design started to spread, the motives of these posters were transferred to them.




Finally, a specific type of Soviet front postcards is the one called “trophy-cards” in Russian philately: the postcards issued before the occupation in the countries occupied by the Red Army, and then written and sent home by Soviet soldiers. We have already seen an example where the back of an used German card was stuck over with a blank paper and written once more, this time in Russian. But from time to time there show up others which were written in Russian for the first time.







The two last cards are especially interesting, as they belong to a First World War postcard series representing the foreign soldiers who fell in German captivity. These two cards, as the Soviet soldier notes it under the pictures, show two soldiers of the Russian army between 1914 and 1918, who thus returned home after a thirty year long captivity, though not spontaneously. These trophies will be discussed in more detail in a subsequent post.