Nazi Propaganda Research Articles

”Yhteinen henkinen tila”

The fame of the Finnish composer Yrjö Kilpinen (1892–1959) in Nazi Germany was evident in newspapers and classical music magazines. In this article, I examine how Nazi propaganda was constructed in German newspaper articles related to Yrjö Kilpinen from 1934 to 1944.
 Since the end of World War II, questions have lingered regarding Kilpinen’s associations with the Third Reich. As a member of Nazi cultural organisations such as Ständiger Rat für internationale Zusammenarbeit der Komponisten and as a friend of baritone Gerhard Hüsch, Reich Chamber of Music’s vice president Paul Graener and Ständiger Rat delegate Emil von Reznicek, Kilpinen made a career in Germany that was at its peak from 1934 until 1944. This article examines how Kilpinen’s fame was viewed in the press.
 I suggest that the Nazi newspaper articles did not highlight Kilpinen’s status as an independent artist but instead focused on building a common national identity between Finland and Germany, based on National Socialist journalists’ and Kilpinen’s perceptions of Finnishness and national socialist ideology. This study is based on the discourse-historical approach, which maintains that national identity is formed in discourses of identification, solidarity and differentiation. The central aim of the study is to identify the discursive strategies whereby the connection between Finland and Germany was built.
 The research material consists of eleven Nazi Germany newspaper and magazine articles about Yrjö Kilpinen. In the analysis, two discourses emerge that emphasize similarity between Finland and Germany: 1) Nordisch and 2) Volk and völkisch. With these discourses, the press aimed to build a common national identity by linking National Socialist ideology to Finland and Yrjö Kilpinen.

“Deutsches Holz”: Wood, Wirkung, and the Werkbund in 1933

Abstract In the wake of Germany’s ascension to nationhood in 1871, “deutsches Holz”—the stuff of half-timbered houses, Bierkellers, and three-legged chairs—became the building material of a new nationalist politics. But in 1933, after a decade of modernist innovations in steel, glass, and concrete, wood appealed once more to the German cultural consciousness. Amidst economic depression, social upheaval, and political turmoil, wood felt familiar and trustworthy, warm and reassuring—ubiquitous and cheap. But whose Holz was it? This essay employs wood as both substance and symbol to investigate the entangled crises of the German nation, the German Werkbund, and, in particular, Werkbund leader and architect-designer Richard Riemerschmid, in the teeth of the Nazi propaganda machine.

Warburg: father of the metabolic approach to cancer

The striking typography on the jacket of Sam Apple's biography over a black and white image of the subject evokes the German propaganda films of the Second World War. Indeed, the iconography alludes to a significant period in the life of Otto Warburg, who is regarded by contemporaries as one of the most important biochemists of the 20th century. This is a multistranded depiction of a notorious aristocratic German-Jewish pioneer in the war against cancer who somehow triumphed in his own war against the Nazi leadership.

Berichten over de Holocaust

Reporting the Holocaust. The media wars around Jews, 1940-1945 This article focuses on the ways in which Dutch media presented the persecution of Jews during the Second World War. Considering both allied and German propaganda, it offers a combined quantitative and qualitative analysis of newspapers and radio. It shows that the Holocaust was presented in the traditional, detached, and unemotional manner common to journalistic discourse on the aims and causes of the war. The German-controlled media repeated national socialist stereotypes of Jews as war mongers, bolshevists, and a threat to civilization. Allied narratives stressed the need to destroy national socialism and restore peace in Europe. Where in the German narrative till 1942 Jews got a special position, in the allied narrative especially after 1942 Jews were denied a special position. In allied media the genocide was modestly described in a mostly factual and unemotional manner. The phenomenon that in current historiography is called ‘the Holocaust’ was ‘buried in time’ and can be seen as an example of the mediatisation of reality.

Propagandaslag om Europa

Propaganda battle for Europe. Interactions between the Dutch pro-Nazi and pro-Allied press after Operation Barbarossa During the German occupation of the Netherlands the occupying authorities, Dutch collaborators, and journalists writing under censorship frequently invoked the notion of ‘Europe’ in order to legitimize Nazi-Germany’s occupation and war aims. Hitler’s invasion of Russia was justified as a crusade in defence of European civilization which justified the involvement of Dutch volunteers. While in Dutch language media the propaganda initiative lay with nazified newspapers and radio, resistance newspapers and in particular Radio Orange – the mouthpiece of the Dutch government-in-exile in London – waged a vigorous counter-campaign. This article analyzes the various ways in which Radio Orange and the Dutch underground press strove to combat Nazi narratives on Europe. They rejected any associations between National-Socialist Europe and ‘Christianity’, ‘civilization’ and ‘preservation of Dutch national sovereignty’ and exposed the methods, motives, and inefficacy of Nazi propaganda.

Kyra Markham: An Introduction

Kyra Markham: An Introduction

Intellectual freedom, cultural exchange, and Nazi Germany: the relationship between the Deutsch-Ausländischer Buchtausch, University of Denver, and other cultural heritage institutions

Shortly after Hitler’s rise to power, the Prussian State Library was restructured, birthing a new entity – the Deutsch-Ausländischer Buchtausch (DAB, German Foreign Book Exchange). The DAB was responsible for exchanging books and serials with scholarly institutions worldwide. In 1936, the University of Denver (DU) received a gift of books from the DAB. Nearly 50 per cent of the books would be categorised as Nazi propaganda or eugenics literature by current standards. Upon further research, it was discovered that the DAB’s relationships included Stanford, Yale, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Royal Historical Society, the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, the Institut d’Égypte, the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, the University of Bombay, and the countries of Spain and Portugal. This paper provides a detailed review of the DAB–DU case, an examination of the DAB, and reviews of DAB exchanges.

Иранская проблема в нацистской пропаганде на оккупированной территории Северо-Запада России (1942–1943 гг.)

Introduction. The article analyzes the coverage of the Iranian problem in the collaborationist newspapers Za rodinu (‘For Motherland’) and Novyi put’ (‘New Way’). These periodicals were published and circulated both in the Baltic and Northwest Russia during the Nazi occupation (1941–1944). The publications have never been subject to scientific inquiry before. The period witnessed a subtle diplomatic game on the ‘Iranian front’ played by Nazi Germany and aimed at winning over both Iran and Soviet peoples (including those from Transcaucasia) to its side. That policy proved so active that it was implemented even in a very remote region — Northwest Russia. Materials and methods. The work analyzes articles of the collaborationist newspapers dealing with Iranian affairs. In Russian and foreign historiography examining various aspects of Nazi propaganda during World War II this aspect has not been considered properly yet. The guiding research principles include those of objectivity, comprehensive analysis, historicism, and source criticism. Results. The article scrutinizes into Nazi Germany’s propaganda policy on Iran as a factor in the strategic struggle against the Soviet Union and Great Britain. Particular attention is paid to the propaganda affirmations used by Germany after the arrival of Soviet and British troops in Iran. Geographically, special emphasis is laid on the Near East. Nazi Russian-language propaganda in the occupied territories of Russia made significant efforts to prove depravity of the Allies of World War II. Iran and its people were treated as victims of the Soviet-British occupation and potential allies of the Third Reich.

Військові дії під Ковелем за свідченнями джерел УПА (січень–березень 1944 р.)

The armed confrontation in early 1944 in the proximity of Kovel within the context of the Soviet-German war is primarily known for the local victory of three incomplete German divisions over the army corps of the first Belarusian Front of the Red Army. Main role in this episode of the World War II was played by the coordinated actions of Wehrmacht and SS units – in particular, attempts to break through of the SS panzer company under the commander of Carl Nicollusi-Lek in the surrounded Kovel, and attack of the 4thWehrmacht panzer division by Dietrich von Sauken in the city, blocked by the Red Army. The actions, which took place in January-March 1944 didn’t change the balance of power at the Eastern front. But for some time they shifted the frontline in northwestern Volyn in the advantage of the German side. Also, to some extent, this victory helped German propaganda to maintain the fighting spirit of the army (which melted uncontrollably), just like a bit later, near Warsaw in August 1944. At the same time, since the formation of the German occupation, Volhynia has become a battlefield for a number of underground organization – primarily Ukrainian and Polish. This was caused by the polyethnic nature of the former Eastern Lands of the Second Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the specifics of the administrative management of Ukrainian territories by the Third Reich, German actions to "pacify" the local population. German side was actively promoting the incitement of ethnic hatred between Poles and Ukrainians. The latter resulted in a series of armed actions by units of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), directed against Polish and Ukrainian civil populace, respectively, in 1943. Active phase of this fight hadn’t stopped at the beginning of the following year. At that time, there were departments of UPA-North working in this region, reorganized after the Conference of military officers in 1942: from the Polish side in confrontation were involved 27th division of the Home Army and “Khlopsky’s batallions”. With the shifts of Soviet-German front line, Soviet partisans had begun to come to Volhynia, and they had an experience in confrontation both with German troops, UPA and AK.

BELARUSIAN WOMEN'S COLLABORATIONISM AS A TOOL OF GERMAN PROPAGANDA DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR

The article examines the phenomenon of Belarusian women's collaboration in the context of the problem of German propaganda in the occupied Soviet territory during the Great Patriotic War. The study was conducted on the materials of the General District of Belarus, chronological framework – 1941-1944. The paper analyzes the materials of propaganda for women and the activities of Belarusian women's collaborationist organizations in the territory of the General District of Belarus. The district occupied about a quarter of the pre-war territory of the BSSR and included mainly western and part of the central districts. The object of the study was German propaganda for women and the occupation policy towards women in the territory of the General District of Belarus. Research methods: analysis, synthesis, comparison. The purpose of the work is to analyze the content of German propaganda for women and the activities of Belarusian women's pro-German associations, to determine their goals and effectiveness. The author comes to the conclusion that the long period of German occupation of a number of Soviet territories, in this case the BSSR, caused the appearance of some specific features of the occupation policy. The head of the German civil administration of the district, Wilhelm Kube, made the main bet on propaganda and encouragement of various kinds of nationalist collaborationist organizations that were supposed to carry out systematic ideological influence on the population of the district. In addition, W. Kube initiated the creation of special "women's" organizations in the district. A special place among them was occupied by the Association of Belarusian Women and the All-Belarusian Women's Committee. In general, the phenomenon of Belarusian women's collaboration had two components – political and cultural education. The first of them was mainly related to the activities of the "Union of Belarusian Youth" (SBM), built on the principle of the German "Hitler Youth". The second component of the Belarusian women's collaboration was cultural and educational, which took place in the context of the policy of "Belarusization". Art exhibitions, contests, concerts were organized under the sign of the national Belarusian symbols. Well-known Belarusian cultural activists, poetesses Natalia Arsenyeva and Larisa Geniyush, have shown themselves in this area. However, the actualization of the "women's issue" in German propaganda, as well as the participation in propaganda actions and campaigns of well-known representatives of Belarusian culture, did not bring the expected results to the occupation authorities. Propaganda contrasted sharply with the realities of the occupation regime. Punitive expeditions against civilians, methods of fighting partisans, the actual genocide of the peoples of Belarus, the looting and destruction of its cultural and historical heritage – all this together devalued the content of German propaganda, made obvious the false imitation nature of the policy of "Belarusization" and the activities of the collaborators themselves.

Death-Defying: Voluntary Death as Honorable Ideal in the German-Japanese Alliance

In August 1942, an internal Sicherheitsdienst (SD) memorandum raised concerns surrounding the media currently circulating in Germany about its Asian ally: “The previous view, that the German soldier is the best in the world, has become somewhat confused by descriptions of the Japanese swimmers who removed mines laid outside Hong Kong, or of the death-defying Japanese pilots who swooped down upon enemy ships with their bombs. This has resulted in something a bit like an inferiority complex. The Japanese look like a kind of ‘Super-Teuton’ [Germane im Quadrat].” In its anxiety that the German public might be taking the wrong lessons from the incessant drumbeat of positive news coverage around Japan's string of victories in the winter of 1941–1942, this statement speaks to the ambivalent position of the Japanese within Nazi propaganda. On the one hand, these images of Japanese self-sacrificial loyalty to the nation reaffirmed the patterns of behavior and thought commonly valorized in the Nazi regime's captive media. At the same time, the reality that it was the Japanese—and not the Germans themselves—performing these feats of valor raised the comparison that the author found so demoralizing, and potentially even destabilizing. Nevertheless, despite the author's reservations, the conclusion was that this media's benefits outweighed the political risks because of its utility in highlighting the “inner weaknesses of Europe” for those elements of the German public still skeptical of National Socialism. In effect, the memorandum conceded, images of Japanese heroism could be persuasive as propaganda because they revealed the weakness and corruption endemic to Western modernity by contrast, which in turn affirmed the Nazi regime's decision to stake its future on a utopian “counter-modernity” framed around a synthesis of völkisch cultural authenticity and technological modernism.

Urchin at War: The Tale of a Leipzig Rascal and his Lutheran Granny under Bombs in Nazi Germany by Uwe Siemon-Netto

Reviewed by: Urchin at War: The Tale of a Leipzig Rascal and his Lutheran Granny under Bombs in Nazi Germany by Uwe Siemon-Netto Robert Benne Urchin at War: The Tale of a Leipzig Rascal and his Lutheran Granny under Bombs in Nazi Germany. By Uwe Siemon-Netto. Irvine, California: 1517 Publishing, 2021. 286 pp. This remarkable memoir covers only the first eleven years of Uwe Siemon-Netto's life. Many Lutherans are aware of Siemon-Netto's work, The Fabricated Luther (1995), where he dispels the claims that Luther was to blame for the rise of Nazism. In that book he gave a few vignettes of his life as a child growing up in the war years. Happily, this engaging book, one of three planned, covers in colorful detail his early years in war-torn Leipzig. Given the daily bombing, it is a wonder that he lived to tell his story. The main story involves a rather distinguished anti-Nazi Lutheran family's struggle to survive the World War II years in Leipzig in the midst of daily bombings by the Allies, on the one hand, and intense Nazi pressures to conform, on the other. One word in the title—urchin—does indicate one truth illustrated richly: Uwe was a member of a kids' gang that did lots of rascally things, such as derailing trolleys. But there is quite another set of ingredients in his growing up. His father was a highly educated lawyer who was blinded in WWI. His mother was a budding concert singer. His grandmother, the central character in the book (besides the author), was a strong, well-educated, devout Lutheran, whose steady strength carried the whole family though those harrowing days. She was a real Mensch who calmly taught Luther's Catechism to Uwe as they took cover in the bomb shelters during the daily bombings. Uwe was brought up to appreciate Bach's music and Lutheran theology. Fine literature and art were part of the family's heritage. Uwe was hardly an ignorant street urchin, though he did have enough freedom to act like a naughty little boy. In their desire to protect Uwe from the bombs, his parents sent him to a country town to live with a Lutheran pastor and his family. What seemed like a good prospect turned out to be a nightmare of abuse and heresy. The pastor was an ardent Nazi who preached Nazi propaganda from the pulpit. He and his family ostracized and humiliated Uwe because he used French words and spoke high German. The memoir does depict vicious Nazis who affected their [End Page 243] lives, but spends more time on the many Germans—ordinary and extraordinary—who despised and resisted the Nazis in their own quiet yet dangerous ways. His experience of the war years is narrated by Siemon-Netto as he returns to visit and walk around his beloved Leipzig, now rebuilt and thriving. What is striking is his amazing recall of so many details of his early life. Certainly the dramatic—and frightening—experiences he had account for some of that recall. It is more likely, however, that he already possessed some of the gifts he needed to become the accomplished journalist that he became later in life. The book is a handsome and substantial one, replete with many pictures from that time. I found the book both edifying and entertaining. I eagerly await the sequels to his remarkable story. I recommend the book to all readers, but especially to Lutherans. Robert Benne Institute of Lutheran Theology Brookings, South Dakota Copyright © 2022 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.

A Hard Sell: The Nazi Film Ohm Krüger in Wartime France

Historians of the Third Reich generally view Ohm Krüger (Hans Steinhoff, 1940), an anti-British historical drama set during the Boer War, as a triumph of Nazi propaganda, yet the film's distribution and reception in German-occupied territories have never been studied in depth. By offering a detailed comparison between the German original and a substantively reedited, French-dubbed version produced in 1941 under the title Le Président Kruger, as well as a politically and economically contextualized analysis of the film's distribution and reception in occupied and Vichy France, this article questions the persuasive power traditionally ascribed to Ohm Krüger to draw broader conclusions about the complexities of exporting Nazi propaganda to foreign markets in the volatile context of the Second World War.

Alpine Clichés and Critiques: Developments and Tensions in German-Language Literature

This article argues that the role of the Alps in German-language literature is embedded both in a socio-historical context and in the topoi or commonplaces that emerged from that context. Using examples drawn primarily from two very different Austrian authors of the interwar period—namely, Joseph Roth (1894–1939) and Ödön von Horváth (1901–1938)—as well as from their German-speaking predecessors and successors, the aim is to show the literary approaches used to undermine traditional topoi. Today, the Alps are the quintessential defining landscape for the Republic of Austria as well as for Austrian literature, yet they were demystified already in the literature of the interwar period. The themes and literary strategies of these literary works anticipate post-1945 literature, while showing surprising breadth in their approach to the Alps. Much of what is commonly understood today as a reaction to the use of the Alpine and of alpinism for Nazi propaganda belongs in fact to older traditions.

Politics of humour in extremis: Cabaret and propaganda in the Netherlands during the Second World War

This article examines politicized humour in totalitarian regimes by conducting an analysis of the radio programme ‘Zondagmiddagcabaret van Paulus de Ruiter’ (‘Sunday Afternoon Cabaret by Paulus de Ruiter’), which was aired between 1941 and 1943 in the Netherlands under German occupation. The radio programme in the occupied Netherlands is exceptional in that it was explicitly designed as a ‘political cabaret’, whereas propaganda in Nazi Germany generally aimed to indirectly influence the audience through so-called light entertainment. The focus on dramaturgies of humorous strategies and on Althusser’s concept of interpellation allows for a distinction of different scenes of interpellation as staged by the ‘Sunday Afternoon Cabaret’. Even though the study of National Socialist programmes can be distressing for both the researcher and the reader, the aim is to analyse the workings of humour without necessarily characterizing humorous strategies in terms of ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but instead paying attention to the way humour works on socio-political imaginaries. During the first period of the broadcast, the ambivalent character of humour aimed at shifting ideological frames, to redefine socio-political imaginaries. Later on, the performed dramaturgy of humour redefined the scene of interpellation as a scene of exclusive racial national identity, even before the German National Socialist authorities started to implement measures for the persecution and annihilation of Jewish citizens in the Netherlands at the beginning of 1942.

FASHION, CINEMA, AND GERMAN-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA IN 1930s BUCHAREST

This paper explores how Bucharest’s cinema-going public perceived the Nazi influence on Hollywood in the 1930s. The aim is to identify how Nazi propaganda was disseminated and consumed in interwar Bucharest and its similarities to the idea of glamour, relevant both to fashion and cinema. Considering the links between Goebbels’ propaganda machine and certain entities or individuals in Hollywood, US cinematography becomes a more complex medium of dissemination beyond a mere promoter of modernity’s technological and consumerist ideas. Romania’s situation in the 1930s, especially the increasing leaning towards the extreme right then inform movie star image, particularly through a gendered lens, as perfect tools for propagandists. The interwar cinema-centered Romanian discourse involves a triple filtration, through Hollywood, Berlin, and Bucharest, as a complex depiction of the Romanian public’s ideals and views. To illustrate these points, I will analyze relevant written and visual texts from the interwar era, including fiction, memoirs, essays, nationally and locally spread cinema-centered and general periodicals, postcards, or photographs. The interdisciplinary research will include cultural studies (fashion, media, cinema, gender), history, and discourse analysis. This innovative perspective on fashion and cinema in an interwar Romanian context adds to the existing knowledge by opening new research topics and subjects in the fields of fashion studies and Romanian studies.

THE GERMAN OCCUPATION REGIME ON THE TERRITORY OF SOVIET UKRAINE AND THE PROBLEM OF COLLABORATION IN THE SUMMER-FALL OF 1941

The article substantiates the scientific and political relevance of the topic of studying the German occupation policy in Ukraine in 1941. The main differences in the approaches to this problem of Russian and Ukrainian historians are shown. The source base of this study was the documents of the intelligence agencies of the Southern and Southwestern Fronts from the funds of the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense, which contain secret directives of the German command that determine the political and economic activities of the Germans on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR that they have seized. Purpose of the study: using previously unknown archival documents to characterize the main directions of the Nazi occupation policy in Ukraine in 1941 and to show the role of Ukrainian collaborators in creating a "new order" in the occupied territories. The basis of the research methodology is the principle of historicism, which presupposes an examination of the object under study, taking into account the specific circumstances of the second half of 1941. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that the authors showed the evolution of the views of the German government regarding the prospects for Ukrainian statehood; gave a description of the economic activities of the Third Reich on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR; proved that the suppression of the partisan movement became an important direction of the occupation policy; identified the main methods and means of Nazi propaganda in Ukraine. The main scientific result: it is shown that the German occupation authorities, having established a repressive regime in Ukraine, considered Ukrainian nationalists exclusively as puppets, without putting on the agenda the issue of creating Ukraine as an independent state.

German propaganda and the special treatment of Estonian prisoners of war in Germany in World War I

ABSTRACT About 3,000–5,000 Estonians who served in the imperial Russian army in World War I ended up as prisoners of war (POWs) in German prison camps. Initially, they were treated as any other ‘Russians’ and endured malnutrition, backbreaking labor, and harsh treatment by the guards. From 1917, however, as Germany settled on the strategic aim of conquering the whole of the Baltic region, they began to be subjected to special treatment with the goal of making them more ‘German-friendly.’ The new German policies meant better living conditions, but also some exposure to German propaganda. This article considers the impact of these German policies on the lived experience of the Estonian POWs.

Black Metal, White Supremacy, and Fraught Masculinity

In a political momentwhen extreme right ideology seems to proliferateinpockets of the United States and Europe, it is timely to consider how an underground subculture like black metal could be susceptible for appropriation by white supremacists. Jillian Fischer’s article in this issue of react/review examines the ethnoracial symbolism ofNational Socialist black metal (NSBM) vis-à-vis early black metal and Nazi propaganda. However, her iconographical and lyric analysis should also be considered within the broader constellation of identity that undergirds these identitarian-based politics

Hitler’s Northern Utopia: Building the New Order in Occupied Norway

Hitler’s Northern Utopia: Building the New Order in Occupied Norway