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Soldiers’ Packages ( Liebesgaben) In the specific German context, gifts to soldiers from the home front, including homemade woolens and underwear, confectionery, handmade articles, and tobacco products, conveyed by the million to the front by the German Army Postal Services during the First World War. At the same time, the term Liebesgaben embraced the involvement of the German female population in particular in a comprehensive system of wartime welfare, “voluntary loving action,” creating an “army of love” behind the “army of weapons.” Organize…

Soldiers’ Letters Soldiers’ letters conveyed by the German field post mail formed the only means of communication permitted to First World War soldiers for carrying on regular contact with their relatives, friends, and colleagues at home – at least in writing. In the period of the modern mass army, soldiers’ letters became themselves a mass phenomenon. For the soldiers, contact by letter was psychologically just as essential for survival as for their relatives; they were also an object of interest…

Army Postal Service Besides the arrangements made by civil and military authorities to provide for the transmission of mail between the battlefront and home, as well as within the army, the term also applies to the various items of mail themselves: postcards, letters, packets, parcels, newspapers, and other printed material, and not least the written exchange of information between military command posts and headquarters. In the age of modern mass armies, the army postal service was especially important. The advent of total war required not only comprehensiv…