"Good" and "Bad" Examples of Nazi Stage Decorations

The Nazi put enormous effort into rituals and ceremonies.  The annual Nuremberg Rallies are only the most prominent examples.  The party provided a lot of material to party propagandists for organizing such events.  Considerable material on this is available on the GPA.

Today I am adding five photographs showing “good” and “bad” examples of the stage decorations for such events.

This one, for example, shows a “well-decorated” meeting hall for Advent ceremonies.  Note that there is no suggestion of a Christian element.

Goebbels Suggests Killing Allied Airmen

In 1943 as German air defense capacities declined, Goebbels began suggesting that German civilians kill captured Allied airmen.  He didn’t directly ask them to do so, but suggested that it was understandable if they took such actions.

Today’s addition to the German Propaganda Article is an article titled “A Word about Enemy Air Terror,” dated 27 May 1944.  Unlike most articles on the site, it was published in the Völkischer Beobachter, the Nazi Party’s daily newspaper, rather than in Das Reich.  It was also sent to the party’s speaker corps.  It surely encouraged them to make similar suggestions to the audiences they addressed. In the end, about 350 Allied airmen were killed by German civilians.

I'm Speaking in New York on October 14

If you live near New York City and are curious about what I look like, I’m giving a lecture on the evening of Friday, October 14.

I’ll be looking at the trans-Atlantic rhetorical duel betweeen Franklin Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler between 1937 and 1939.


  

The Thieves at Ostara Publications Lose

I have temporarily, at least, been the victor in my battle against Ostara Publications, which shamelessly stole my material.

Both amazon and lulu.com have removed their plagiarized publications.

I shall see if they behave after this.

Progress against the Crooks at Ostara Publications

My last post mentioned that I had filed a complaint with amazon against Ostara Publications, which has shamelessly stolen my work.  Amazon is good at dealing with plagiarism and has removed the publication that steals from my translation of Wolfgang Diewerge’s nefarious Nazi pamphlet The War Goal of World Plutocracy, as well as two other Ostara publications.

That leaves only lulu.com, where for some reason Ostara published a second version of the stolen material. I’ve filed the appropriate complaint and expect lulu will remove it soon.

For the benefit of those curious, here are the e-mails from Ostara that makes the astonishing claim that their alleged ”translators in Germany” somehow came up with translations identical to mine:

All e-mails dated May 10, 2016:
========================================================

Dear Sir, 

Thank you for the quick response, 

We must however confirm that all our Third Reich-era translated works -- which, we point out, are far more extensive than the two items you mention -- have been acquired and prepared by ourselves, and that nothing has been taken from your website. 

For example, we note, upon looking at your website, that our translation of the series of "Unser Hitler" speeches contains all the texts, whereas your website's collection is incomplete. 

You will therefore appreciate that we cannot remove our legitimate work from sale. 

Yours sincerely,Richard WilliamsSenior Editor

==============================================================

I responded:

It is remarkable that your “paid-for” translator in Germany translated things in exactly the same way I did.  For example, compare “The Art of Propaganda” which is the first item in your Europe in the Year 2000” with this page that has been on my web site for years:

  http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb54.htm

They are identical.  The chance of two people translating the same passage in an identical way is vanishingly small.  

Compare what you wish. You have reprinted large amounts of my material.  If you do have a translator in Germany, he or she cheated you by providing you with my material.

Please remove it from sale.

==================================================================

Ostara’s response:

 Dear Sir,

Thank you for your email.

We are unaware of which website to which you refer, but whatever it may be, please be assured that we have taken nothing from it and used our own paid-for translators in Germany.

Kind regards
Richard Williams
Senior Editor

Rather amusing, no?

Ostara Publications Steals Again

Back in May I noted that Ostara Publications had stolen my material and republished it without any credit to me.  When I wrote to them, they made the astonishing claim that they had hired a translator in Germany who just happened to translate things in exactly the way I did.

What does one say about such effrontery?

Well, amazon removed those items, apparently, since they are no longer for sale.

I broke down and bought a copy of another of their books.  Sure enough, it plagiarized my translation of  the Nazi propaganda pamphlet The War Goal of World Plutocracy. 

I filed the appropriate complaint with amazon.  If they follow their policies, they will remove the item.

More Directives for Propagandists

Thanks to the Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen I’ve added four new issues of the Redner-Schnellinformation, an irregular newsletter for the Nazi Party’s speakers.  There is no complete collection of these anywhere that I have been able to find, so I am always happy to discover new ones.  These deal with a variety of topics and provide interesting insight into the focus of the propaganda system at various times.

 The new material includes one issue of the successor to the newsletter, the Redner-Schnellbrief, which contained much less material.  I suspect it was because the staff at party propaganda headquarters had been reduced (and sent to the military), so there was less time to prepare material.