I have read in two separate sources that postcodes were origonally introduced in Germany, under the Nazi regime, in late 1944.

 

This seems odd, as in late 1944 it was fairly obvious to anyone, excluding the delusional in Hitler's cabinet (and even some of them saw the end was nigh by autumn 1944) that Germany had lost the war, and both the Russians in the east and the USA/UK/French forces in the west were knocking on the door of pre WW2 German territory itself. The economy was in ruins (for excellent description of life in Germany in the last few months of the war, see 'Berlin - The Downfall 1945' by Antony Beevor), although as is human nature Berlin office workers still commuted to work in trams with shattered windows down ruined streets, to do nothing all day in unheated half-bombed office buildings.

 

I was wondering,

1) With all the war shortages, why were resources diverted to such an exercise?

2) Was there that much post to deliver anyway, outside of the German Army who surely had their own delivery systems

3) Wouldn't the list of postcodes served by the German PO be shrinking almost daily rendering any postcode sorting redundant from the beginning

 

Can anyone confirm whether the postcode system, so useful to geography, actually did have such an inauspicious origin?

 

Hillary Shaw, Newport, Shropshire