THE USE OF POSTAGE STAMPS PRINTED IN NAZI GERMANY FOR THE PURPOSE OF THE PROPAGANDA

The use of first postage stamps was in the first half of the 19th century. Initially, the stamps came out on the market as stickers on one side and stickers with plain simple pictures on the other to show that postage was paid. Over time, as postage stamps become more prevalent and are an important visual element in the international arena, paintings on the stamps have begun to be made by professional painters and cartoonists. In the process, the stamps have gone beyond its symbolic value and become a means of communication in which important figures are remembered, on which historical figures appear. Especially in the 20th century, the Nazi stamps were used as an important means of propaganda that allowed the ideology of Nazism to dominate the masses.In this study, it was tried to show how postal stamps printed by Nazi Germany (Drittes Reich) were used for propaganda in the 20th century. For this purpose, the six postage stamps, which wereprinted in the Nazi Germany determined by the purposeful sampling method in the scope of the study, were examined in the context of connotation and dénotation according to French Linguistic Scientist Roland Barthes' semiotics analysis methodology. Within the obtained findings; it was obtained that the postage stamps printed by Nazi Germany were intensively used in the direction of the teachings of Nazism ideology, with the purpose of gray propaganda