It took some 60 years, but the German post service finally delivered a postcard to Adolph Hitler:
It was sent to “Fuehrer Adolf Hitler, Reichstag, German Parliament, Berlin, Germany”, from an undisclosed address.
Deutsche Post marked on the card that the address was incorrect and that the unidentified sender should be informed.
Without referring to Hitler directly, it added future mail should be sent to the German Bundestag, or Parliament.
Actually, it should have been sent to his fowarding address: Hell. But we digress:
The letter was stamped with, “Mail corrected due to insufficient address – please alert sender. Ascertained address: Deutsche Bundestag, 11011 Berlin,” according to the German DPA press agency.
Deutsche Post said the delivery of the postcard was evidence of the service’s good work.
Good work? Well, yes, it DOES fit the standard of good work, compared to the U.S. Postal Service. More:
A spokesman for the postal service told German publication Der Spiegel it had no right to remove mail from circulation simply because the addressee is dead.
Makes sense to me as much as U.S. Postal Service postage increases make sense to me.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.