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The Rattlesnake
Registered postcard, perforated on the left, in wartime forwarded by airmail from Geneva in neutral Switzerland to London, on September 13, 1941.
The explanation of the postage of 80 centimes is: foreign postcard rate 20 centimes, registration fee 30 centimes and airmail fee 30 centimes, together 80 centimes.
On arrival in Great Britain the card was provided with the typical blue crayon cross for registered mail and by an octagonal mark of the British censor.
The message on the reverse is interesting. The writer expresses his anxiety about the political situation in the world at that moment.
He writes to his family in London:
......In any case I won't die until the "RATTLESNAKE" has been killed. Is that not a fine name Roosevelt has coined for the topgangster? The latest joke "What is the difference between H. & the sun? The sun rises in the East, but H. will go down in the East. How I look forward to the day, and with me all the world. No there can be no compromise between slavery & freedom, between crime and fair-mindedness......
At the time this message was sent the German campaign against Russia still worked out fine for Hitler. He expected to end the so-called 'Operation Barbarossa' before winter. Fortunately he didn't succeed. His troops missed the right equipment to weather the strong Russian winter that followed and which was a disaster for the German Army in Russia. Therefore the Russian campaign can be seen as an important turning point in the Second World War. In spite of it the writer had still to wait nearly four years before his dream of a free world came true.
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