Seddin war locomotive parade

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The Seddin war locomotive parade was a propaganda event of the Third Reich on July 7, 1943 .

background

The performance of German industry and war economy to demonstrate the year 1943 were in the in the first week of July marshalling yard Seddin 51 brand-new war locomotives of class 52 contracted. These locomotives were a complete daily production and at the same time the highest number of the BR 52 that all factories of the Association of Greater German Locomotive Manufacturers had ever completed within 24 hours.

In an elaborate staging for newsreels , propaganda filmmakers and the press on July 7th, all 51 locomotives, lined up on five parallel tracks, started moving on command at precisely the same moment in order to symbolically start their journey to the front . This maneuver had required extensive rehearsals in the previous days, which had also led to technical damage to the locomotives.

The parade of war locomotives, which by their simultaneous start-up and identical appearance were supposed to convey an image of impressive monolithic cohesion, was reduced in its effect by the fact that the individual locomotives did not look exactly the same, but sometimes had considerable optical differences depending on the manufacturer. At the same time, the staging turned out to be a meaningless gesture, as a few days earlier, on July 3, the responsible minister Albert Speer had announced a drastic reduction in the construction program for war locomotives, with the intention of reallocating the existing capacities in favor of repairing existing locomotives damaged by war instead of replacing them with new buildings.

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