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Receipt
for handing-over 13 Sovjet POWs, 1943
–
these are the main slogans by which the material of this CD-ROM
can be described. Not only soldiers, but more and more civilians
are afflicted by need, harm and death in a modern war. During
World War I, 15 % of the people killed were civilians, in Word
War II about 65 % (in today’s wars about 90 %). During World
War II, in the occupied countries, especially in Eastern Europe,
the Germans raged with terror and mass-murder. For the people in
Germany, the war with death and devastation came with the allied
bomber groups and then with the expulsion from the East. The
regimentation of more and more aspects of life became more and
more strict and the slogans to hold out increased.
Death,
need, attempts to rule the shortages, regimentations caused by
these attempts, engagement for the war and moral armament by
propaganda have produced a great number of written and printed
ephemeria and of documents of all kinds. They were not made for
posterity but for the contemporaries; for direct use, for
information and propaganda. Exactly that makes this material
interesting for us today as the past is speaking to us directly
and truly and enables us a to catch a real glimpse of life in
those days.
Identity card for the air defence of
Donnersmarckhütte, Hindenburg (Upper Silesia), 1942
There
we can find: Certificates; identification cards; a service record
book; pay slips; documents of discharge; licences to use the
railway; delousing certifications; obituaries in the newspapers;
letters of condolence; death cards; military souvenir magazines;
picture postcards for soldiers; aphorisms on field-post letters;
allied propaganda leaflets; air-raid warnings in Berlin and
Stuttgart; small advertisements; ration cards; campaign
“Coal swiper”; frontier-crossing documents;
advertisements; postage stamps; books and brochures; articles
from newspapers and much more.
The
material of this CD came from different private properties in
Germany and Austria. With no more immediate interest or use for
it’s owner, it has survived for decades as a commemoration
piece or was totally forgotten in the loft. After a death, a
move, a renovation of the house and so on, they were rediscovered
and sold at the flea-market or at an internet auction.
The
greatest part of the objects presented here by the editor and
acquired for his archive came from these two sources during the
past few years. The great stamp-collection was a heritage from
his grandfather. Only a few objects for the CD were made
available by other owners. I want to express my thanks here.
Also
in war-time, “paper warfare“ formed an important part
of military life. In the field as well as the communications
zone, lots of documents and certificates were produced. Compared
to documents from civil life in Germany, less will have survived.
In your apartment, you likely will put such a thing into a tray
or a folder, where it can survive for a longer time. The soldier
in the field only has his backpack. For him, to keep a paper
which has fulfilled it’s practical purpose and is no longer
needed, will be a much more conscious act. He must always carry
it with him and must find a place to put it, where it cannot
become wet and crumpled. When he takes something out of his
backpack, it will again and again fall into his hands and be in
his way. That means the soldier will throw it away more quickly.
For
this reason, more documents of civil life in Germany can be found
on this CD. From “Home”, from the families of the
soldiers comes the great number of documents related to the
deaths of the soldiers, including the unit’s letters of
condolence, newspaper obituaries and death cards. More aspects of
the bureaucratic regimentation of every day life in war-time
Germany can be found in the Table of Contents.
List of objects which had to be handed
over from the property of a Jewish lady deported to
Theresienstadt, 1943
There
are only a few documents related to concentration camps and the
persecution of the Jews. A person who was driven out of his
house, deported to the East and killed there, could not keep any
documents, had no loft where these documents still wait for being
discovered and had no heirs who later could have found them.
Children at once came into the gas chamber.
An
interesting lot of documents has survived in a lawyer’s
folder (also these things then later came to the flea-market) who
was a friend of the afflicted family. The lady was 73 years old
when nearly a year after the death of her “Aryan”
husband, she was deported to Theresienstadt (the oldest
fellow-sufferer in her transport was 89 years old). There she
died in 1945.
The
selected publications – extracts of brochures, books,
magazines and caricatures – are proofs of a public and
published opinion brought into line. They have nothing to do with
reality. They are proofs of a centrally guided propaganda which
meant to influence the people in the sense of the government and
it’s ideas, aims and actual needs. Here are some quotations
from the diaries of Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda:
German
caricature on Winston Churchill, 1940
1941,
July 9: „The tasks of propaganda are evident. It must be
our aim to discredit bolshevism during the campaign in the East.
In the moment when our military force will be directed against
England, propaganda will principally again have to argue against
the English plutocracy.“
1941,
July 10: „Our revealing of the bolshevist cruelties in
continuing. Anyway, the disadvantage is that little by little
increasing parts of the German population are troubled by
supposing that the German prisoners of war are mistreated by the
bolshevists. Therefore we must somewhat dose this sort of
propaganda.”
1941,
July 12: „How good is it that the German people do not
come to know everything! They get their opinion served completely
done. In wartime this is the only form of policy of information
and propaganda which can lead to success.”
And
here the instruction of the ministry of propaganda for the press
from September 1, 1939, the day the war broke out:
„No
headlines containing the word ‘war’! According to the
speech of the Führer ‘we only strike back’. The DNB
(German Bureau of Information) gives a compilation of material
which shows that yesterday Poland was determined not to fulfil
the known claims of Germany. Serious polemics and comments are
urgently required. Comment to the Führer’s speech: the
Führer has spoken from the depths of the people’s heart.
State that the German people are determined to beat back the
threat in a body, wherever it might come from.”
Such
instructions were given daily, even concerning subjects which
would seem to be of only little importance. Radio, film, the
production of books and art were guided equally strict. So we
must see the printed matters shown here as what they really were:
as propaganda.
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