#Feldpost Entropy Analysis

A digital humanities project investigating the informational content of German Second World War field post (Feldpost) letters using methods from information theory, computational linguistics, and statistical analysis.

## Overview

This project explores whether German field post letters were primarily repetitive and formulaic or whether they contained substantial new information throughout the war.

Instead of relying solely on qualitative interpretations, the project applies quantitative methods derived from Claude Shannon's Information Theory to measure the informational density of historical correspondence.

The website presents interactive visualizations and analyses of entropy, redundancy, and lexical diversity to better understand how soldiers communicated under wartime conditions.

## Research Question

> Are German field post letters predominantly repetitive communications, or do they remain informationally dense and surprising despite censorship and recurring conventions?

To answer this question, the project computes various information-theoretic measures and compares them across individual letters and chronological periods.

## Methods

The project employs several computational techniques, including:

- Shannon entropy
- Character entropy
- Text redundancy
- Lexical diversity
- Frequency analysis
- Statistical visualization
- Time-series analysis

Python was used for preprocessing, statistical calculations, and visualization.

## Dataset

The analyses are based on a corpus of digitized German field post letters written during the Second World War.

The texts were cleaned and standardized before being processed computationally.

## Key Findings

Preliminary analyses indicate that:

- Field post letters exhibit moderate redundancy but are not excessively repetitive.
- Despite conventional greetings and recurring themes, the letters contain substantial amounts of new information.
- Information density varies across the war, suggesting changing communication patterns under different military circumstances.

These findings support the interpretation that field post letters constitute valuable historical sources rather than merely formulaic correspondence.

## Technologies

- Python
- Pandas
- NumPy
- Matplotlib
- Plotly
- HTML / CSS / JavaScript
- GitHub Pages

## Website

The interactive project website is available at:

https://ducha69.github.io/Feldpost/


## Citation

If you use this project in academic work, please cite the repository and the accompanying website.

## License

This project is released under the MIT License unless otherwise stated.

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*This project combines methods from Digital Humanities, Information Theory, and Computational Linguistics to study historical wartime correspondence.*