(The Official Stamp Issue of 18 January 1934)
Official mailing franked with Scott 084 from the StetaSteramt (Land Registry Office) of Bad Kreuznach on 11 May 1938.
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Having astutely calculated the pacifist mood in the League of Nations, Hitler linked the breach of the Versailles Treaty (by his troop movement into the Rhineland) in March 1936 to a new offer of a 25-year non-aggression pact with France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Hitler’s triumph and the considerable growth of his prestige both domestically and internationally was not only based on overestimation of German military strength by the Western powers, it is believed to have enormously fostered an overestimation of himself and his claim to infallibility. Hitler became increasingly deaf to the advice and warnings of his military and political experts.
Today, historians agree that an energetic military reaction by the West to the breach of the treaty would have led, within a few days, to the military collapse of the Third Reich.