Wednesday, March 27, 2013

A 1927 Nazi Caricature: Killing Jews with Poison Gas

In Mein Kampf, Hitler writes that Germany would not have lost World War I if 12,000 - 15,000 “Hebrew corruptors of the people” had been killed with poison gas.

There were not a lot of such suggestions in Nazi propaganda before 1933 of killing Jews en masse, but Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer did run occasional cartoons like this one that I am today adding to the page on pre-1933 cartoons from Der Stürmer.


A Nazi is pumping poison gas into a tunnel beneath an oak tree representing Germany. Dead Jewish rats are strewn about.  The caption: “When the vermin are dead, the German oak will flourish.”

Monday, March 4, 2013

2000 Years of German Culture (1937)

1937 was a big year for art in Munich.  The new Munich art gallery opened, at which annual displays of approved Nazi art were held until 1944.  And there was a festival titled “Two Thousand Years of German Culture.”

Today I add six color photographs of the event, taken from the party’s monthly art magazine, Die Kunst im Dritten Reich.