The images and the entire text used on this and all other USMBOOKS web pages are the copyrighted property of USM Inc.  Those images and the text may be used by others ONLY AFTER completion of a formal international licensing agreement and payment of a licensing fee! It is therefore, illegal for anyone to take any of the material found on USMBOOKS.com and use it for their own purposes without our written permission, irrespective of any excuse they may feel they have for doing so.

This is a very rare and unusual two-piece lot of 100% original Third Reich ephemera that offers great insight into the workings of Nazi Germany and proof of how well-regulated and organized the German prison system was!

The unique paperwork deals with an order for official prisoners transport forms ordered to be printed by Der Reichsführer-SS und Chef der deutschen Polizei Heinrich Himmler for Der Reichskommissar für die Wiedervereinigung Österreichs mit dem Deutschen Reich (The State Commissioner for the Reunification of Austria with the German Reich), Gauleiter Josef Bürckel.

Many Third Reich historians and collectors recognize the name Plötzensee as the prison where the lives of many opponents of Hitler and the Nazi regime ended. The infamous Strafgefängnis Plötzensee in Berlin was opened in the late 1880s and during the Third Reich prisoners were kept at work producing doors, door mats, brooms, and there was a prisoner staffed printing and book binding operation (see image above) there as well. Plötzensee prison is still remembered as the final stop of some of the men involved in the 1944 plot to kill Hitler, and the prison is still in business today.

It is a rare Lieferschein or Delivery Ticket for four packages of forms (100 in each package) with official regulations for the transport of prisoners (Dienstvorschrift für den Gefangenentransport). The shipment was sent by the Formularlager (Form Warehouse) at the Plötzensee prison in Berlin to the office of the State Commissioner for the Reunification of Austria with the German Reich in Vienna, which had become the second largest city of Adolf Hitler’s Greater Germany after the Anschluss in April 1938.

The shipment of the four boxes of prisoner transport forms departed the printing department at Strafanstalt Berlin-Plötzensee on 8 November 1939 and arrived in Vienna on 15 November 1939, according to the official receiving stamp of the Highest SS and Police Leadership Office on the piece of paper stapled to the one-sided Lieferschein.

It is interesting that while Reichsführer-SS Himmler had ordered 1800 prisoner transport forms on 27 October 1939, only 400 pieces could be delivered by the Form Warehouse at Plötzensee at that time. The remaining 1400 forms were scheduled to be sent a week later.

The one-sided Lieferschein measures 4-1/4 x 7-7/8 inches and the note stapled to it measures 8-1/4 x 5-3/4 inches. Both were neatly filed in a binder with punched holes. Very rare Nazi ephemera rescued years ago from the original city archives of Vienna. See picture below for additional provenance.

It is very rare that anything connected with Plötzensee during the Third Reich comes on the market in the 21st century!