Völkischer Beobachter Front Pages

I've gotten a start on a long-term project: Posting the front pages of the Völkischer Beobachter, the Nazi Party’s daily newspaper, for the war years. It is an interesting way to follow the trajectory of the war, beginning with victories in Poland and ending in disaster.

Since there are 1500 or so issues this will take me a while, but if you check the page occasionally new months will be added.

The Battle of Midway

Germany coverage of the war in the Pacific was never very good.  It depended on Japanese information — which was often unreasonably optimistic.

Today’s addition is an article on the Battle of Midway, which reports that the Japanese had lost one carrier and had a second damaged (the actual number was four), and that the Americans had also lost two (one in reality). The significant news in German eyes was that Japan had occupied several insignificant islands in the Aleutian chain.

Nazi Analysis of the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor came as a pleasant surprise to the Nazis, who had not been told in advance of Japan’s plans.  Today I’m adding the first reactions in the Nazi Party’s daily newspaper to the war’s extension.

The argument is that Roosevelt has gotten the war he wanted, but not when it wanted it.  As a tool of the Jews, he was planning to deal with Japan, but Japan acted first.

By the way, I got a number of requests to a recent post looking for suggestions of things to add, and I will get to some of them as time permits.

The Battle of Bougainville: A Second Pearl Harbor (December 1943)

German press reports about the war in Europe were influenced by the requirements of propaganda, but generally had a reasonable relationship to reality.  The Pacific was a different matter.  There the Germans had to depend on Japanese accounts — and those were often wildly exaggerated.

The December 1943 article I’m posting today claims enormous, and almost entirely false, American losses in the Battle for Bougainville.  Since the military news in Europe was grim from the German perspective, it was surely encouraging to believe that, at least in the Pacific, the Axis was enjoying one victory after another.