Collection area

German occupation / Ostland

Ostland

For general information on "Ostland", see "German occupation / Ostland" in the "Estonia" collecting area.

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General District of Lithuania

The German Wehrmacht entered Lithuanian territory as soon as the attack on the Soviet Union began on June 22, 1941. On June 24, it captured the Lithuanian capital Vilnius and the interwar capital Kaunas. The Lithuanian postal and telegraph administration obtained permission from the German Wehrmacht commander to establish a national post office as early as June 25.

The so-called national postal issues, Michel Nos. 1 to 9 (with the overprint "Nepriklausoma Lietuva" = Independent Lithuania) and Michel Nos. 10 to 18 (with the overprint "Vilnius") for the southern Vilnius area, arrived at the counters on July 5 resp. on July 16 and remained the only issues valid nationwide for the civil mail of Lithuanian citizens until the suspension of the exchange rate on August 31. As in the case of Latvia and Estonia, the national postal service was limited to domestic mail at the former Soviet domestic rates.

Similar to Estonia, but in sharp contrast to Latvia, a lively issue activity was developing at the same time at the local level, whose common characteristic is that practically there are no used postal items of these issues:

In addition, unlike there, the archives of the Lithuanian national postal service have not yet been analysed, so that detailed information on the postal characteristics within the general district is largely lacking.

Due to the Soviet advance from the east towards the coast of the Baltic Sea, the Ostland period ended for large parts of Lithuania as early as July 1944.

Timetable General District of Lithuania