The Final Stamps of the Third Reich

Among the most arresting artefacts of the Third Reich’s collapse are its last official postage stamps, issued as Nazi Germany crumbled. One depicts a Waffen-SS machine gunner with the ghostly figure of Jakob Grimminger in the background, bearing the infamous ‘blood flag’ of the failed 1923 Munich Putsch. A sacred relic of Nazi mythology, it vanished in 1945. Grimminger, who carried it through rallies and state funerals, never revealed its fate. Rumour has it he burned it on orders as the Allies closed in.

The companion stamp in the pair is no less charged: an SA man holding a torch, evoking both the regime’s early days and its carefully staged symbolism. These two stamps are more than postal history. They’re artefacts of a collapsing ideology still clinging to spectacle.

Also pictured: two Austrian stamps that were later defaced during the Allied occupation. With Hitler’s face obliterated by overprints or heavy censor bars, these overprints weren’t just practical – they were part of the denazification effort. The stamps could still be used, but the dictator’s image had to go.

From torchbearers to black bars, these small rectangles of paper trace the trajectory of a regime: its rise, pageantry, and final erasure.