Is It Worth Adding to the GPA?

 I’m beginning to wonder if the time has come to stop adding to the German Propaganda Archive.

With the growth of AI and increasing digitization of archival material, people can find things and get good AI translations.  I foresee a declining value to the site as time goes on.

I’d appreciate your thoughts.  

Anything You Would Like to See Added?

 I haven’t added a lot to the German Propaganda Archive in recent years.  However, being temporarily incapacitated, I am looking for things to do.

If there are things you think are missing in the site, let me know.  I might just remedy the gap.

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.