The United States launches "Operation Cornflakes" - February 5th, 1945

On this day in 1945, U.S. forces began a secret operation to distribute Allied propaganda through Germany’s own postal service. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show that proves there's more than one way to make history.
I'm Gabe Luzier, and in this episode we're talking about

(00:20):
an unusual case of psychological warfare from the closing months
of World War II. The day was February fifth, nineteen
forty five. US forces began a secret operation to distribute

(00:41):
Allied propaganda through Germany's own postal service. It was dubbed
Operation Cornflakes because the German mail was typically delivered in
the early morning, when most people were sitting down to
their breakfast. By the early months of nineteen forty five,
Germany's defeat seemed all but inevitable, even to many of

(01:02):
its own military leaders. That said, in official surrender was
still several months away, and in the meantime, American forces
were sustaining heavy losses. This led Allied intelligence officers to
begin brainstorming ways to hasten the war's conclusion. Propaganda had
proven an effective tool for weakening German morale, and in

(01:23):
the final stages of the war, when most German civilians
had lost any hope of victory, there was even a
chance that the right propaganda might spark a rebellion against
the Nazis. The problem was how to get the message
into the hands of ordinary Germans. The usual method of
distributing propaganda air dropping leaflets, was incredibly hit or miss.

(01:47):
Rain or wind could easily destroy the materials before anyone
had the chance to pick them up, and if the
leaflets landed in public spaces, many people would avoid picking
them up altogether lest they be seen by their neighbors
and reported to the Gestapo. The Office of Strategic Services
or the OSS, had grappled with these concerns all through

(02:08):
the war, but this time they hit upon a way
to remove the variables. By disguising the propaganda as regular mail,
they could trick the German postal service into delivering misinformation
to its own citizens. That way, people could read the
material in the privacy of their own homes. In order
for the plan to succeed, OSS operatives first had to

(02:30):
learn all the ins and outs of the Third Reich's
mail service. Most of the pertinent info was gathered from
German POWs and deserters who had once been postal workers themselves.
The operatives also studied samples of mail bags, envelopes, stamps,
and postal markings so that their replicas would be as
faithful as possible. Two million German mailing addresses were collected

(02:54):
for the project, and real legitimate businesses were used for
the return addresses. The propaganda pieces were specially printed for
the operation. One letter was from a fictitious group called
the Association of Lonely War Women. It was sent exclusively
to German soldiers and implied that their wives and girl
friends had taken new lovers while they were away. There

(03:17):
was also a whole made up newspaper which claimed to
be printed by an opposition group in Germany that wanted
the recipient to join the movement. Perhaps the most stirring
material produced, though, was a series of postcards from the
so called War Mothers Group. These hand written cards were
alleged to come from lonely mothers who wish their sons

(03:38):
would abandon their posts and come home. One such card,
translated from German, said quote, after five years of struggle
against overwhelming enemy power, you have done more than your duty.
To day, the war is lost and the enemy is
within our country. We are abandoned and helpless. Do not
leave your mothers alone in the hour of danger, come home.

(04:02):
A great deal of effort went into making the materials
look and sound convincing, but the most vital task was
reproducing the then current German stamps that were in circulation.
The operation required far more stamps than could be sourced legitimately,
so master forgers were tasked with replicating them down to
the smallest detail. The most common stamps of the era

(04:26):
featured a portrait of Hitler's face above the text deutschs
Reich or German Empire. Forgeries of that stamp were used
on the outside covers of the male but inside the
envelopes operatives included extra stamps with two small but meaningful changes.
Hitler's face was modified to show his exposed skull, and

(04:48):
the text German Empire was changed to ruined Empire. Once
all the materials were ready, it was time for Operation
corn Flakes to officially begin. The plan was to bomb
German mail trains and then drop bags of subversive mail
into the wreckage. The hope was that the phony mail
would blend in so well with the real deal that

(05:10):
German authorities wouldn't know the difference and would just deliver
it all as usual, The operation launched with its first
attack on February fifth, nineteen forty five. That morning, American
P thirty eight fighter planes dropped bombs on a German
mail train bound for Linz. Then a few minutes later,
a second wave of fighters dropped eight bags of mail

(05:33):
filled with nearly three thousand pieces of Allied propaganda. The
ruse worked perfectly, and over the next three months it
was carried out again and again on nineteen subsequent missions. Unfortunately,
the whole scheme fell apart thanks to a typo. After
the air raid of March sixteenth, a German clerk noticed

(05:55):
a misspelling in one of the return addresses, and when
the same error was found on set several other pieces
of mail, officials opened the envelopes and the jig was up.
In total, three hundred and twenty fake mail bags containing
about ninety six thousand forged letters were dropped over southern
Germany and Austria. It's believe that the vast majority of

(06:17):
that mail made it into German homes, though it's difficult
to say exactly how much impact it had on the
country's psyche. Once the war was over, about ten thousand
German POWs said they had been directly affected by OSS
propaganda at some point during the war, but it's unknown
how many of those cases were due to Operation corn

(06:39):
Flakes specifically. What we do know is that the missions
were a strategic success. The bombing of mail trains put
additional strain on German resources, forcing the repair of mail
routes and disrupting the already chaotic communications and transportation sectors.
As for the material that was dropped, most of the

(07:00):
forge stamps, envelopes, and the propaganda itself didn't survive the war.
The Post office destroyed much of it after the plot
was uncovered, and the rest was thrown away by the
people who received it. That said, a few of the
items did survive, and the ones that aren't in museums
now command a hefty price on the collector's market. In fact,

(07:21):
the Hitler skull stamps in particular, are so sought after
that some people have even started selling reproductions forgeries of
a forgery. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,
but I'm not so sure that stands when it's a
picture of your own rotting skull that's being imitated. I'm Gayblusier,

(07:45):
and hopefully you now know a little more about history
today than you did yesterday. You can learn even more
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at TDI HC Show, and if you have any feedback
to share, feel free to get in touch by writing
to This Day at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Chandler

(08:07):
Mays for producing the show, and thanks to you for listening.
I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day
in history class.