East German Propaganda Material

I usually post news here that has to do with my own site, but every now and then I find something else on the web that is relevant.  Today, I include links to two interesting collections of material coming from the German Democratic Republic.

This first link is to a collection of propaganda leaflets fired over the border and intended for West German border guards.  There was a "burst" of this kind of material in the 1960s.

The second is some material from Contra, a periodical I was not previously familiar with.  It was also aimed at West German border guards.

Interesting and unusual material, for sale, apparently, should you be interested.

A Nazi Cartoon from 1943 on Lynching in the USA

As I look for one thing, I sometimes come across other interesting material to add to existing pages. Today I’m adding a vivid caricature to the page on Lustige Blätter, a weekly satirical magazine, showing a Black being lynched. Although the Nazis viewed blacks as inferior, they sometimes pointed out contradictions in the United States.

In this case, the suggestion is that the United States is hypocritical in complaining about Nazi treatment of the Jews, given what it does to American Blacks.

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.

More on a Bad Translation of Mein Kampf

In 2009, one Michael Ford published a bad translation of Mein Kampf, which I discussed in an earlier post.

What I find astonishing, although it is typical of Internet discussions, is that those who for some reason like his translation accuse me of making up Ford's mistakes.

Well, I suppose it is time to make the evidence available. I've started a page that demonstrates errors in Michael Ford's translation. If anyone is interested, I'll add to the page as time goes on.

Material from Nazi Gauleiter Hans Schemm

I am  adding material by the various Nazi Gauleiter. It's not easy material to find, and I'd welcome more if you happen to have something.  Today, I'm adding excerpts from a 1935 book by Gauleiter Hans Schemm, mostly on racial theory.  The book was published after his death.  Its editor attempted to bring together Schemm's various speeches and writings into a coherent whole.

The Werewolf Movement in April 1945

A visitor to the site sent me an interesting copy of an April 1945 teletype by top Goebbels aide Werner Naumann on the Werewolf Movement — a last-ditch effort by the Nazis to establish underground resistance to Allied occupation. This was directed to the heads of the regional propaganda offices. The attempt had limited success, but the teletype is interesting as one of the last gasps of the propaganda system.

Nazi Factory Propaganda

This is a rare surviving piece of Nazi ephemera, a flyer distributed at a factory in Ludwigshafen in 1931 or 1932.  It deals entirely with local factory issues: smoking, time clocks, and the fact that workers were searched when leaving the factory to stop theft of company property. It shows Nazi propaganda dealing with specific grievances of a particular factory.  I do have a second leaflet from the same factory, but probably will not get around to translating it.