Gauleiter Hugo Jury is Optimistic (December 1943)

I have a slowly growing page on speeches and essays by Nazi Gauleiter, the party’s regional chieftains. Today I’m adding Christmas-Day 1943 essay by Hugo Jury, Gauleiter of Niederdonau.  1943 had been a disastrous year for the Nazis, but Jury attempts to put the best face on the situation, suggesting that things were going to get better.

German Press Coverage of Stalingrad

If there was a turning point of World War II in Europe, it was the Battle of Stalingrad.  Before that battle, the average German had every reason to believe that the war was going well.  Afterward, there were two long years of retreat.

After Hitler confidently announced that Stalingrad was almost entirely in German hands on 9 November 1942, the Soviets attacked and quickly surrounded the German forces around Stalingrad.  That went unreported in the German press. The Soviet attacks themselves were covered — but Germans were not told how successful those attacks had been.

In December, Stalingrad almost disappeared from the German press.  There was substantial press coverage of the Eastern Front that acknowledged that heavy defensive battles were in progress, but that coverage suggested that Germany was defending its gains of the summer and preparing for renewed offensives in the summer.

Much press coverage focussed on submarine warfare in the North Atlantic, which was at the time going very well (that would shortly cease to be the case).  Beginning in January, the press began to prepare Germany for grim news.

A January 1943 Sketch

I’m adding a page of translations from the Volks-Zeitung, a Viennese newspaper, covering December 1942 through early February 1943.  It follows the trajectory of news reporting on Stalingrad.

Nazi Uses of the Word “Nazi”

Every now and then someone claims that the Nazis never used the word “Nazi” to refer to themselves.  This is simply untrue.  They did not use the term often, but I’ve come across a variety of references over the years.  Here are eight examples (in the original German). If the source is on the GPA I’ve included a link.  The posting below this one has a ninth example.  Since the Nazis kept that pamphlet in print until at least 1931, they can’t have objected to the use of the term too much...

1. “Mit großem Stimmaufwand und viel Tintenverschwendung verkündeten die roten Volksbeglücker, die Nazis sind Reaktionäre.”  Source: Heinz Franke, Die Journaille lügt!  (1932)
2. “Aber wir Nazis werden immer sehr schnell einig, da wir an solche Fragen mit gesundem Menschenverstand herangehen.”  Goebbels Diaries, entry for 15 March 1933.
3.  “Er [Streicher] ist ein Original, aber ein richtiger Nazi.”  Goebbels Diaries, entry for 26 March 1939.
4. “(Ich freue mich eigentlich über jenes Gerücht, das ich höre. Gibt es doch für einen Redner keine besser Gelegenheit, ‘abzurechnen.’ Dies Wort hat für uns Nazi-Redner seinen eigenen, besonderen Reiz.)” Source: Kurt Rittweger, Der unbekannte Redner der Partei (Tagebuchskizzen eines Redners) (Munich: J. B. Linde, 1939), p. 27.
5. “...in den Betrieben bekamen die jungen Nazis allmählich die Oberhand….”  Source: Die Kieler Hitlerjugend, p. 14.
6. “Für uns Frankfurter Nazis  knüpft sich an den Namen die Erinnerung an einen der heißesten Kämpfe im politischen Ringen um die Macht.” Source: Adalbert Giebel,  So kämpften wir! Schilderungen aus der Kampfzeit der NSDAP. im Gau Hessen Nassau, p. 38.
7. “Gewiß haben die alten Nazis von der Kampfzeit her ein dickes Fell, und sie sind nicht prüde, es kann sie auch nicht so leicht etwas unterwerfen.”  Source: “Das Gerücht,” Der Hoheitsträger, September 1943, pp. 3-8.
8. “Der alte Nazi nickt und denkt einen Augenblick zurück. Wie war es doch, als seine Ortsgruppe aus wenigen Männern bestand, die als hoffnungslose Irre galten?”  Der Sprechabenddienst, March/April 1944, p. 15.  This was a publication for party propagandists. 

I could give more examples, but the range is sufficient to demonstrate that the term “Nazi” was used by the Nazis.

The Nazi-Sozi: A Goebbels Pamphlet from 1926

I’ve been rather remiss in adding to the GPA for the past several months, given other things going on.  Today, I’m adding an early effort by Joseph Goebbels titled The Nazi-Sozi.  It first appeared in 1926, before Hitler sent him to Berlin.

It takes the form of a dialogue between Goebbels and a rather dense German who has difficulty understanding what the Nazis are about.

It’s a good look at early Nazi thinking.

New Book on Erich Retzlaff

A while back I provided some images for an exhibition on German photographer
Erich Retzlaff, active during the Nazi era.  That book on the exhibition has just appeared, and should be interesting for anyone interested in photography during the Third Reich.

The author is Christopher Webster van Tonder, and the book is published by Aberystwyth University’s School of Art.

Celebration of Hitler’s Takeover in the USA

In the course of gathering material on my main interests curious things sometimes show up.  This is the program for an event organized by the German consulate in New York City on the occasion of the one-year anniversary of Hitler’s takeover of power.                  

Goebbels on the Political Situation (August 1931)

Before Hitler’s takeover in 1933 Joseph Goebbels wrote a monthly essay for Unser Wille und Weg, the party periodical for propagandists, that outlined the Nazi take on current events.  Today I add his essay from August 1931, an interesting period.  There were no national elections that year, and there was frustration within the Party since things seemed to be moving slowly.  Goebbels laid out the propaganda line that the party was following.

He makes the claim that Germany would long-since have collapsed had it not been for the restraint of the Nazi Party.