Accession Number: 2022.02.10.4.4

Stamp: Green Deutsches Reich 6 mark stamp

Postmark:

September 13th, 1935
Reichsparteitag der NSDAP in Nürnberg vom 10. Bis 16. Sept. 1935

Historical background:

This postcard is signed by Heinrich Gottfried Otto Richard von Vietinghoff genannt Scheel. He was a German general (Generaloberst) of the Wehrmacht during World War II, as well as a recipient of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves. Vietinghoff took part in the invasion of Poland under Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb. He was promoted to General in June 1940 after which he led the German XLVI Panzer Corps in the invasion of Yugoslavia.

During Operation Barbarossa, his Corps was part of Army Group Centre under Field Marshal Fedor von Bock. As did all commanders of the German corps on the Eastern Front during the invasion, Vietinghoff implemented the criminal Commissar Order. The Commissar Order instructed the Wehrmacht that any Soviet political commissar identified among captured troops be summarily executed as a purported enforcer of the so-called Judeo-Bolshevism ideology in military forces.

From 1941-1945, Vietinghoff commanded German troops in German-occupied France and Italy. He made contact with the Allied Forces and surrendered at the end of April 1945. After the war, he spent two and a half years in British captivity at Bridgend Island Farm (Special Camp XI) among high-ranking German prisoners.

Based on the date on the postmark and the message on the back, Vietinghoff bought the postcard at the 1935 Reichsparteitag (Nuremberg Rally) and sent it to those from his brigade who could not make it.

The 1935 Reichsparteitag was the 7th Nazi Party Congress, and was called the Rally of Freedom (Reichsparteitag der Freiheit). Freedom referred to the reintroduction of compulsory military service and thus the German “liberation” from the Treaty of Versailles.

The Nuremberg Laws, an infamous set of antisemitic discriminatory policies, were introduced at the 1935 Reichsparteitag. The legislation comprised two measures: The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour prohibited marriages and sexual relations between Jews and Germans and barred Jewish households from employing German women under the age of 45; The Reich Citizenship Law restricted citizenship to people of “German or related blood”, reducing others to state subjects without full rights. To avoid international criticism, prosecutions under the laws were delayed until after the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.

Front:

A depiction of a stone carving of Hitler staring straight ahead flanked by two soldiers gazing into the distance with the Nazi eagle above the three figures. Text reads “Reichsparteitag 1935 Nürnberg 10.–16. September.”

Back:

[Address]
An die
S.A Brigade 39
Dessau-Anh. [Anhalt]
Zerbster Strasse

Euch daheimgebliebenen,
Kameraden von hier die besten grüße,
Heil Hitler
Otto Heinrich von Vietinghoff

To those who stayed at home,
Your comrades over here send you best regards