New images of Nazi Germany : a photographic collection

497 Pages·2012·28.574 MB·English

by  G Paul Garson

NEW IMAGES OF
NAZI GERMANY

N I
EW MAGES OF
N G
AZI ERMANY
A Photographic Collection
Compiled and with Captions
by Paul Garson

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
Frontispiece:An administrative officer within Nazi Germany’s
air force, the Luftwaffe, sits in a sea of darkness, his
finger poised on the button of his desk lamp.
LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATIONDATA
New images of Nazi Germany : a photographic collection /
compiled and with captions by Paul Garson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7864-6966-6
softcover : acid free paper

¡. Germany—History—¡933–¡945—Pictorial works.
2. Germany—Social conditions—¡933–¡945—Pictorial works.
3. National socialism—Pictorial works.
4. World War, ¡939–¡945—Germany—Pictorial works.
I. Garson, Paul, 1946–
DD256.5.N494 2012 943.086—dc23 2012029408
BRITISHLIBRARYCATALOGUINGDATAAREAVAILABLE
© 2012 Paul Garson. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
On the cover: clockwiseCameraman in action; Young girl on a tuffet; Emulation
(all photographs from author’s collection); background image© 2012 Shutterstock
Manufactured in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 6¡¡, Je›erson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
To all those who resisted the Third Reich
from within and from without ...
past, present and future
Acknowledgments
I express my debt of gratitude to the hundreds of historians whose books,
articles and documentary films I relied upon during my own research regarding
these images. Further valuable insights were gained while exploring the monu-
mental resources available at the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance/Simon
Wiesenthal Center and the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust.
I would also like to express my appreciation to my longstanding friends Gary
Williams, Idelle Musiek and Ken Capilitan who out of their own generosity came
to my financial rescue more than once during the long course of this project,
thereby enabling me to eat and keep a roof over my head. I would also thank Kai
Raecke for his German to English translations of often illegible handwriting,
often requested at odd hours of the night. My thanks also to editors Flint Whit-
lock of WWII Quarterly, Michael E. Haskew of WWII History magazine, and
Tim Newark of Military Illustrated (UK) for previously publishing my feature
articles, and also for the kind words and helpful comments by Professor Eric
Johnson of Central Michigan University’s history department after reviewing the
original manuscript.

vi
Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi
PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
INTRODUCTION: THE ROLE OF THE CAMERA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
The Photographs
Kinder—From the Cradle to the Grave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Hitler Youth—Emotion over Intellect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
RAD—The Spade Soldiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Women’s Role—From Kitchen to Uniform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Children of the Enemy—Useless Eaters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
The Photo as Sign of the Times—Text Messages of the Third Reich. . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Intimations of the War Within a War—Racial Terror. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Non-Uniform Uniformity—The German Soldier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
The Camouflage of Kultur—Art Imitates Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Acting the Part—The Third Reich Entertains Itself . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Waffen: Weapons of Fire, Blood, and S teel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
Warhorses—The Myth of the Mechanized War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Stealth Cycles—Of War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
Iron War Horses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Death from Above and from Below—Flak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
The Healing Arts—The Cured and the Inflicted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Essen und Trinken—Feeding the Third Reich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Gott mit Uns—An Ambivalent Faith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
Arbeit Macht Frei—In Service to the Reich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
Das Krieg—The War Begins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
On to France—Belgian Passage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
France—Six Weeks to Victory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
Victims of Another Color—French Colonial Soldiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
The Third Reich—Axis Allies and Collaborators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
The Great Patriotic War—The Invasion of the Soviet Union . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
vii
viii Table of Contents
Carnage Incarnate—Death Seen Through the German Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
The Holocaust by Bullets—Prelude to Institutionalized Murder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
The Tide of Defeat Turns Red—The Third Reich Reels in Reverse. . . . . . . . . . . . 408
Heldentod—Cult of Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420
Post-Mortem—Revelations, Retributions and Revisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
Aftermath—Cover-Up and Revenge Revealed?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
ADDENDA: THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDERS—CAMERAS IN USE DURING
THE THIRD REICH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
Preface
The time frame of the Third Reich was only twelve years, a blink in the eye of recorded
human history. But it was as if civilization rose up against itself from within. The German
nation was not a blatantly barbarous and rapacious entity. It was Europe’s leading cultural
and technological society, but it would launch a conflagration of such nihilistic ferocity that
it would not only rend the tapestry of Western civilization but also call into question the
very foundation of humanity itself.
For the past decade the author has examined hundreds of thousands of images captured
during those twelve years by one of civilization’s technological marvels, the camera, a device
coincidentally brought to the highest standards by German craftsmen. The images record
and chronicle an era whose powerful and often seductive malevolence continues to enthrall
international audiences even as the last perpetrators and survivors fade away. That period of
a dozen years, 1933–1945, has left an indelible impression, seemingly one that burned a
lasting after-image on the human psyche.
In an effort to gain some insight into a time that truly tried men’s souls, we can gaze
into the flickering fragments of captured light imprinted on small pieces of paper, snapshots
often pasted as personal mementoes into albums or even turned into postcards sent to family
and friends. The photos are two-sided, beyond the physical sense, as there is both a focal
point of interest within the image as well as the awareness that an individual holding the
camera has deliberately aimed it for whatever reason or purpose. The dichotomy of subject
and object, of selection and choice, presents itself for contemplation, as often the image
taken was literally a matter of life and d eath.
The photos were chosen because they reverberate with their own intrinsic “photographic
elements” but also because they establish a historical context into which the author has
striven to place them. In effect each is a time machine, a window through which we can step
back decades and witness events held secret and lost forever if not now recovered and set
out for viewing. The images also stand as evidence, evidence recorded by a military and
political mindset that initially had no fear that their own photographic record would stand
against them in the court of history—a history they thought they would own.
The original and in many cases never before seen photographs and documents were for
the most part sourced and purchased during a search of several years via the magic of the
Internet from Germany, Austria, Italy, Poland, Spain, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Latvia,
Lithuania, Belgium, Switzerland, England, France, Argentina, Canada, Mexico, Russia,
Ukraine, and the United States. Each photo offered a set of clues, some distinct, most clouded
over by anonymity and the fog of war. The quest for dates, places, names, and events some-
times led to definite conclusions, and sometimes left open ended or unanswered the funda-
mental question—why and how could it happen?
As with my previous works on the subject, it was a solo effort without benefit of staff
or assistants (and thus all idiosyncrasies and errors are of my own responsibility), the effort
perhaps verging on the obsessive. As for the “visually-oriented” author, a photo-journalist
1