Operation Cornflakes

Operation Cornflakes began with OSS officials collecting any and all German prisoners of war (POWs) that had experience with the Reichspost (Germany's postal service).

[6] With this information the OSS and German exiles scoured the telephone directories and pulled over two million, randomly selected names registered within the Reich to send forged letters to.

However, all the prior planning was almost for naught after the Reichspost altered their franking machines on the domestic mail in August 1944, making the thousands of letters previously written void.

By September the next blow to the OSS operation was intelligence gathered that no domestic mail would be delivered due to wartime internal power struggle within Germany.

[5] The 15th Air Force and fighter group detachment were tasked with the destruction of the mail train and the planting of the mailbags of propaganda (Cornflakes) amongst the debris.

Bags containing a total of about 3,800 propaganda letters were dropped at the site of the wreck, which were subsequently picked up and delivered to Germans by the postal service.

While some cities continued its services of mail delivery, the allied bombing had turned many residences into piles of rubble; millions of people without a home were displaced and forced to leave and seek refuge elsewhere, in many cases with relatives.

Another oversight was simply the fact that when people received mail from an unknown source they would usually destroy it, especially if the letters contained allied propaganda, either out of loyalty or fear of punishment.