Visual Material for the May 1986 GDR Election

Elections were always major events in East Germany, even though the outcome was never in doubt. It was a kind of performative politics, where the government accepted the obedience of its citizens. 

 The GDR system provided material for Wandzeitungen, bulletin boards that appointed agitators maintained. Today I am adding material prepared for the May 1986 election. 

This image shows happy children looking forward to the election that will bring peace, while cheerful construction workers look on.

Still Working on the Coding

I have not added much new material for months. I thought I was done last fall, but then AI agents came along that made it possible to make major coding changes much more easily. Since some of the site's code went back to 1996, things happened during the updating process. In several cases with long pages, AI got lazy and cut material which I didn't notice for a while. Thank goodness for backups. I think I am almost done now. Today I even added new images to two existing pages. But again, if you notice anything amiss, please me me know.

If You See Something, Say Something.....

I have finished a major update of the site. Some of the pages date back to the earliest days of the Internet, and most did not meet current HTML standards. Whenever I update the coding, errors inevitiably creep in. Should you be browsing the site and see something amiss, please drop me an email.

Goebbels Speaks after the 1944 Assassination Attempt on Hitler

Goebbels used the 20 July 1944 attempt on Hitler's life to assert that God had preserved his life and that new weapons would shortly transform the war. His speech was delivered on 26 July, six days later.

Goebbels meets with Hitler shortly after the assassination attempt

East German Agitation in 1955

The German Democratic Republic distinguished between propaganda and agitation. Propaganda treated matters in depth, whereas agitation was intended to reach people with the party’s message. There was an enormous amount of material on both. A problem is that most of it was done on a “volunteer” basis. Finding and motivating agitators was a constant challenge. Today I'm adding material on agitation from 1955.

My Talk on Nazi Propaganda at the Harold Deutsch Roundtable

Back in November 2023 I gave a lecture to the Harold Deutsch Roundtable in Minneapolis on Nazi propaganda that is avilable here. My talk starts at 16:15.

On Solving the Jewish Question (May 1941)

Shortly before the invasion of the Soviet Union, Walter Groẞ, the head of the Nazi Party's Racial Policy Office, wrote an article titled “On Solving the Jewish Question.” His proposed solution is to expel all Jews from Europe, though he makes no suggestion as to where they should be sent.