On Cuts in the German Meat Ration (1943)

Of late I’ve been adding material intended for the guidance of Nazi speakers.  Today’s item is from May 1943, and explains the necessity for a cut in the meat ration.  This was a delicate matter to present to the public.  The Nazis used a variety of methods.  First, the issue was mentioned in newspaper articles.  Then the party’s speaker corps presented the case directly to audiences throughout Germany.

It is also interesting to consider the context.  Speaker directives both preceding and following this one dealt with a major anti-Semitic propaganda campaign that was going on in May 1943.

New Issues of the Wochenspruch der NSDAP

The GPA has a page on the Wochenspruch der NSDAP, a weekly poster with quotations intended to be inspiring.  They were posted in public places throughout Germany. According to Nazi sources, about 500,000 were issued each week. After about mid-1940, they were issued by the Reichspropagandaleitung, the Nazi Party’s propaganda office.  Before that, many were issued by the individual Gau propaganda offices, which makes tracking them rather difficult. The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek in Leipzig, for example, has only scattered holdings of the early issues.

A collector often provides me with scans of ones I have not seen before.  Today, I am adding four new ones to the page.  The most interesting is this one:

It has a particularly nasty anti-Semitic text (translated on the page — look for the one dated December 12, 1938 from Gau Saarpfalz).

I have three issues of the Wochenspruch for sale should you be interested.

Nazi Speaker Advice on the Importance of Oil

Today I’m adding advice to Nazi speakers that quotes an article by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes on the threat of the Axis dominating world oil supplies, and thereby winning the war.  It was a standard Nazi propaganda tactic — realizing that the German public did not entirely believe Nazi propaganda, the propaganda system looked for other ways of persuading people that Germany’s chances for victory were good.  It’s interesting to compare this directive with the one issued a month earlier that I added a few days back ordering speakers not to suggest in any way that victory was near.  This one is consistent — it suggests victory will happen, but makes no promises of how soon.

Icke’s article was published in the 15 August 1942 issue of Collier’s. 

The Nazis had no easy way to get current American periodicals.  I assume this one was secured in a neutral country like Spain or Portugal, which explains why the issue is dated six weeks after Ickes’s article appeared  in the U.S.