Comparative Living Costs: GDR vs. FRG

I tend to translate whatever is interesting to me at the moment, but a while back I asked for suggestions on things to add to the site.  I got a number of requests for more material from East Germany. It is true that I’ve rather neglected the GDR over recent years.  I’ll see what I can do over time.

Today I’m adding a piece from WAS und WIE, the GDR monthly for agitators.  In this 1978 article, agitators how told how to deal with the disparity in living standards between East and West Germany.  Agitators are told that although things like cars and televisions are less expensive in West Germany, costs for food, child care, and transit fares are much higher.

Germans to be Exported (1931)

Fritz Reinhardt was a significant figure in Nazi propaganda.  Before 1933 he instituted a correspondence school that trained about 6,000 Nazi speakers.  He issued a barrage of material to support those speakers.

In 1929 he issued a pamphlet claiming that under the Young Plan, an international agreement on German reparations, Germans would be sent abroad to work for the French.  This is a follow-up pamphlet that appeared in October 1931, making the same claim.

Although like all good propaganda it provides enough evidence to make the argument at least superficially plausible, he does make the astonishing (and completely unsupported) statement that twenty to thirty million Germans would have to be sent abroad under the Young Plan.

Gauleiter Hugo Jury Article (1939)

After the Nazi takeover of Austria in 1938, the Gau system was established, and the governmental structure was reorganized.  As part of my slowly growing page on speeches and articles by the various Nazi Gauleiter, I’m adding a 1939 article by Hugo Jury that discusses his plans for Gau Niederdonau. The article is translated from ANNO, a project to digitize Austrian newspapers.

Gauleiter Hugo Jury

Gauleiter Eigruber’s Economic Plans

As part of my slowly growing section of material by Nazi Gauleiter, I’ve added a 1939 article by Gauleiter August Eigruber of Oberdonau (Upper Danube) on economic policy. Eigruber was executed in 1947 for crimes against humanity.

Gauleiter August Eigruber

Another 1939 Speech by Josef Bürckel

I tend to translate things that strike me as interesting as I'm working on my research (currently the uses to which the Germans put American rhetoric during the Nazi period). I've been going through newspapers from Austria after the Anschluß to see how, for example, FDR's speeches were handled. I also recently started a page of rhetoric by Nazi Gauleiter, the party's regional potentates. Their material is rather hard to find. Today, I'm adding a March 1939 speech by Gauleiter Bürckel of Vienna which takes on economic issues. He basically announces price controls. I'm interested in this kind of material because it illustrates what the Nazis were doing at the local level, as opposed to the national level that we know more about.

The illustration is a newspaper cartoon published shortly after Bürckel's speech.

The cartoon claims that German commerce must become honest. Jews are being swept away.

Nazi Economic Propaganda (May 1932)

Of late, I've been interested in Nazi propaganda material from 1932. Today, I am adding a May 1932 pamphlet titled the Economic Emergency Program of the NSDAP. Largely based on Gregor Strasser's work, it outlines in broad terms what Nazism proposed to do to rescue Germany from the Great Depression. Although it doesn't provide much detail on how the proposals will be implemented, many of the proposals would have sounded good to Germans at the time. It proposes a huge program of job creation, land reclamation, help for farmers, import reductions, taxing the rich, helping the middle class, nationalizing the banking system, reducing interest rates, and building large numbers of private homes, among other things.

Nazi Economic Propaganda: 1938-1940

The latest addition to the German Propaganda Archive is a variety of charts from Die wirtschaftspolitische Parole, the official Nazi bimonthly on economic matters. It covered a wide range of topics.

Two images are below. The first is part of the Nazi anti-smoking campaign, claiming that the equivalent of two million Volkswagens have gone up in smoke, or that for the amount spent on tobacco, enough gas could have been purchased to drive 50 billion kilometers. The second image asserts that Jews are being driven out of the German economy, to the benefit of everyone else.

Propaganda from the 1936 Reichstag Election

 I've added a small flyer issued during the March 1936 Reichstag election campaign, during which the Nazis made substantial propaganda efforts even though there was no opposition. It summarizes the economic achievements of the first  three years of Nazis rule. 

The first picture is of the front cover the second of an interior page showing the increase in employment after three years of Nazi rule.