Hans Scholl purchases stamps

It was probably January 24, 1943 – or it could have been one or two days earlier – that I purchased postage stamps at the Post Offices in area 23 [Note 1] and the main post office. I bought 2000 8-Pfennig stamps at Post Office 23, and 2000 8-Pfennig and 300 12-Pfennig stamps at the main post office [Note 2].

These postage stamps were to be used to mail the leaflets to Salzburg, Linz, Vienna, Augsburg, Stuttgart, and Frankfurt/Main. We did not mail the leaflets to Frankfurt am Main from Munich, because we wanted to mislead the police.

We had calculated that it was cheaper to put 12-Pfennig stamps on letters than it would be to travel by train to Frankfurt to post the letters [Note 3]. That is why Schmorell mailed them from Vienna.

As already stated, I purchased an additional 1200 8-Pfennig stamps from Post Office 23 on Leopold Street. The stamps were used to mail the leaflets entitled “Fellow Students!”

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Note 1: Like a zip code. “Munich 23” denoted the part of the city where the post office was located, just as e.g. Houston, 55 Texas denoted the Spring Branch area of Houston until ZIP codes were introduced in the USA.

Note 2: A handwritten note in the margins calculates amount: “320 + 36 = 356!” This was $2,848 in postage.

Note 3: 1937 Baedeker’s explains that postage for letters up to 20 grams (approximately 1 oz.) was 12-Pfennig, but the “Urban Rate” – i.e. for letters “dispatched and delivered” within the same town – was 8-Pfennig.

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Source: Hans Scholl’s fourth interrogation, February 20, 1943