Overview
Collection of over 360 items of American anti-Nazi propaganda distributed behind German lines during World War II.
Dates
- Creation: circa 1942-1945
Creator
- Hansi, 1873-1951 (Person)
Condition Description
Items were originally wrapped in plastic within plastic sleeves held inside two binders.
Conditions Governing Access
There are no restrictions on physical access to this material. Collection is open for research.
Extent
.25 linear feet (1 box)Collection of over 360 propaganda leaflets, political cartoons and graphics, forged newspapers, postal stamps, and other ephemera distributed behind German lines during World War II.
Also with a presentation copy bound in parchment of A travers les lignes ennemies, 1922, by Hansi and Ernest Tonnelat, with an original color painting by Hansi on the front cover and painted title on the spine.
Biographical / Historical
The aim of Operation Cornflakes was “to place American propaganda on the German breakfast table each morning.” The operation entailed the airdropping of replicas of German mailbags filled with “fake” but properly addressed mail in the vicinity of bombed mail trains, so that during clean-up operations of the wreck, the letters containing fake newspapers and other anti-Nazi propaganda would get mixed in and delivered by the Deutsche Reichpost.
Gerald Mortimer Mayer, previous owner of this collection, was head of the U.S. Office of War Information in Bern, Switzerland, during World War II, and an operative for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) under Allen Dulles. Mayer and Dulles ran "Operation Cornflakes", using printing presses covertly at night to produce anti-Nazi propaganda, illegal in Switzerland.
Other collaborators who worked with Mayer in Switzerland on the propaganda operation were Raymond A. Schuhl, using the code name "Robert Salembier", a veteran artist of French propaganda efforts, and Jean-Jacques Waltz, alias "Hansi", who had designed anti-German material during World War I.
Arrangement
Arranged in order of OSS code numbers as stamped on items.
Physical Location
Harvard Depository
Other Finding Aids
Itemized list available in curatorial file.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
2024M-6. Purchased from Between the Covers with the Gore Vidal Endowment Fund for Arts and Letters, 2023 July 18.
Processing Information
This collection was processed to a basic level with minimal rehousing, organization, and preservation. (Melanie Wisner, 2023)
Creator
- Hansi, 1873-1951 (Person)
- Mayer, Gerald M., 1906-1980 (Person)
- Schuhl, Raymond A. (Person)
- Title
- United States. Office of Strategic Services. Propaganda Used in OSS "Operation Cornflakes", circa 1942-1945 (MS Am 3452): Guide
- Status
- completed
- Author
- Houghton Library, Harvard University.
- Date
- 2023 August 10
- Description rules
- dacs
- Language of description
- eng
- EAD ID
- hou03589
Repository Details
Part of the Houghton Library Repository
Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Houghton Library’s Reading Room is free and open to all who wish to use the library’s collections.
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