Propaganda company

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Exhibition of PK pictures as part of an exhibition by the Reich Committee of Photo Reporters in the Reich Association of the German Press (March 1940)

The Propagandakompanie ( PK ) or Propagandatruppe was at the time of National Socialism a branch of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS , which was subordinate to the department, later the Office Group for Wehrmacht Propaganda (WPr) in the Wehrmacht High Command . Your order was the propagandistic manipulation of the German population and the soldiers as well as the opponents of Nazism .

History of the propaganda company

Joseph Goebbels on January 28, 1941 in conversation with the chiefs of the propaganda companies of the three branches of the armed forces; far right (in profile) Hasso von Wedel

In the winter of 1938/39, the head of the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW) Wilhelm Keitel and Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels signed an "Agreement on the Implementation of Propaganda in War", which stated that the Ministry of Propaganda (RMVP) was only for regular replenishment to provide suitable material and the war propaganda for influencing the enemy army was to be carried out solely by the OKW and its propaganda units. But at the same time the leading role of the RMVP was emphasized also in times of war according to the instructions of the "Führer" and his responsibility for the production of the propaganda material. Five propaganda companies were formed. The propaganda troops were initially subordinate to the news troops , but on October 14, 1942, they became a separate branch with the weapon color light gray. In technical terms they were subordinate to the Office Group for Wehrmacht Propaganda (WPr) in the High Command of the Wehrmacht under Hasso von Wedel .

Department or office group for Wehrmacht propaganda

In April 1939 as "Department of Wehrmacht propaganda" first formal Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and his Amtsgruppe foreign defense and intelligence subordinate to the OKW, received their instructions from the summer of 1939 directly from Colonel General Alfred Jodl , chief of the Armed Forces Operations Office. Under her boss, Hasso von Wedel, she achieved ever greater independence and at the end of 1942 was upgraded to the "Office Group for Wehrmacht Propaganda". This was initially divided into four groups (WPr I-IV). The tasks of the WPr I group included questions of propaganda management and organization, the WPr II was responsible for domestic propaganda, the WPr III initially represented the propaganda concerns of the Navy, but found its main task after the start of the war in the responsibility for military censorship. The ever expanding WPr IV was the switch point for the foreign propaganda of the Wehrmacht. This group IV, headed by Lieutenant Colonel Albrecht Blau, also processed foreign-language magazines from the beginning of 1940, placed propaganda material in the radio operating abroad and had to "deliver reports and denials for foreign propaganda". In January 1940 the groups WPr V for army propaganda and WPr VI for air force propaganda were added. In particular, the WPr V under Lieutenant Colonel and expert in military psychology and psychological warfare, Lieutenant Colonel Kurt Hesse , tried, at the instigation of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, to conduct its own propaganda, which it increasingly brought into opposition to Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels .

Expansion of the propaganda troops

At the end of 1942 the propaganda troops had grown to 15,000 people, i.e. roughly the number of divisions. The WPr now comprised 21 Army PK, eight Air Force PK, three Navy Propaganda Departments, one independent Navy PK, eight Propaganda Departments in the Occupied Territories, one SS Propaganda Battalion and the Propaganda Operations Department - a special unit for the psychological warfare. In total, the war reporters produced around 80,000 verbatim contributions and over 2 million individual photos. The material of the propaganda troops was used in particular for the creation of the synchronized German newsreel . Also in the design and implementation of the four Christmas ring broadcasts of major German broadcasting the propaganda companies were involved.

Organization, tasks and procedure of the PC

Loudspeaker truck with PK soldiers at the front on the Upper Rhine , 1939
PK soldiers in France sticking posters (May 1940)
PK anti-English posters in occupied France accusing England of war guilt (June 1940)
PK reporter with microphone (December 1940)
PK film reporter prepares to film a raid by the police and Polish policemen in German-occupied Krakow (January 1941).
SS PK photographer photographs a man with a Jewish star in the Litzmannstadt ghetto (1940).
A child lies on a sidewalk in the Warsaw Ghetto (photo taken by a member of the propaganda company 689 Zermin, May 1941).

The organization, tasks and procedures of the propaganda companies are described in the implementation regulations jointly agreed by the National Defense Department of the OKW and the Reich Defense Department of the RMVP, which historian Daniel Uziel describes as the "basic field manual of the PK" valid until 1943, as follows:

  • The PK is subordinate to the Army High Command (AOK).
  • It is the main task of the PK to ensure the interaction between propaganda and armed war in the operational areas. She collects war reports for the RMVP and leads a propaganda campaign against the enemy.
  • The company commander reports to the deputy of the AOK and works closely with the military defense
  • The PK fulfills its tasks in accordance with the instructions of the RMVP and within the scope of the AOK
  • The combat and catering convoy transmits the propaganda material to the rearguard. The censorship officer examines the material from a military point of view.

In military practice, after the setbacks of the Wehrmacht in the winter of 1941/1942, the activities of the propaganda companies shifted from war reporting to so-called active or combat propaganda, which had the goal of demoralizing the enemy soldiers and weakening their performance. But even the so-called "war reporting" with its photos and reports had the task of depicting a contrast between "racially superior" Germans and their enemies as early as 1940. In early 1940, for example, PK reporters were given the task of presenting prisoners of war from French colonies in such a way that the degeneration of the French army should catch the eye. In July 1941, PK film reporters were supposed to portray Soviet prisoners of war as clichéd grimaces: "They were presented as veteran criminals who wanted to seize Europe in a storm of annihilation."

The PK reports also focused on justifying representations of Jewish ghettos . Numerous reports about the Warsaw Ghetto tried to convince the audience that "the Jews only met a fair fate". Typical for PK reporting is a "photo report" by PK photographer Artur Grimm from occupied Warsaw in 1939, which was printed on December 5, 1939 in the Berliner Illustrirten Zeitung . It shows with staged scenes, such as Jews arrested in a raid who, as residents of the ghetto, "buried weapons in a corpse-shameful manner" in the graves of Polish soldiers. In 1942, the OKW's Wehrmacht Propaganda Office recommended that the propaganda company working in Tunisia initiate anti-Jewish pogroms and business looting, which then did not happen.

Text samples from a propaganda photographer

One of the standard works on war photography under National Socialism is Eric Borchert's landscape-format illustrated book, “decisive hours. Mit der Kamera am Feind ”from 1941. Borchert (approx. 1900–1942) had previously been the star photographer for the Berliner Illustrirten Zeitung and married the employee in the UFA press department and later dpa photographer Usa Borchert. He died as a soldier in the propaganda company in the spring of 1942 in Tobruk, North Africa . The subject of color photography , which was still rare at the time, gave the final chapter the title: “With the color camera on the enemy”. Looking back at the end of the Western campaign in April 1940, Borchert noted:

“And when I think back now, under the skies of southern France, I feel these exciting hours again, these hours of decision that I was allowed to experience. The camera caught her. I was nothing more than a tool to hold; she documented, she wrote down what the Führer had ordered. "

For Borchert, the camera operated by the "Führer" was not the only thing behind which the photographer stepped back as a mere tool, the photographer shed his job as a journalist in Hitler's warfare and became part of the troop, he also fought ideologically:

“The camera has become a weapon, an instrument of combat in the hands of soldiers. Because it is there wherever it comes to Germany and its struggle. And the reporter who once traveled across the country and across the seas is nothing more than a soldier who is allowed to hold them. "

Borchert felt the outcome of the First World War as a disgrace - like Hitler did

“[Created] a weapon against lies and slander - the truth! The propaganda companies of the Wehrmacht are supposed to announce them. They wage war with their weapons, with the typewriter, the photo and film camera and the microphone. "

Members of the propaganda troops

Among the members of the propaganda troops (mostly war reporters ) there are also some well-known media figures from post-war Germany :

literature

  • Ortwin Buchbender : The sounding ore. German propaganda against the Red Army in World War II. Seewald, Stuttgart 1978 ISBN 3-512-00473-3 (Military Political Series, 13; also: Dissertation, Hamburg 1978)
  • Miriam Y. Arani: “And the photos sparked criticism”. The " Wehrmacht Exhibition ", its critics and the new concept. A contribution from a photo-historical-source-critical point of view. In: Photo history. Contributions to the history and aesthetics of photography. Issue 85/86, 2002, pp. 96–124 ( online, picture examples )
  • Bernd Boll : The Wehrmacht Propaganda Companies 1938 to 1945 . In Christian Stadelmann, Regina Wonisch: Brutal curiosity: Walter Henisch. War photographer and picture reporter . Christian Brandstätter, Vienna 2003 ISBN 978-3-85498-294-4
  • Rainer Rutz: "Signal". A German illustrated abroad as a propaganda instrument in World War II. Klartext, Essen 2007 ISBN 978-3-89861-720-8
  • Daniel Uziel: The Propaganda Warriors. The Wehrmacht and the Consolidation of the German Home Front . Peter Lang, Oxford 2008 ISBN 978-3-03911-532-7 (review by Erica A. Johnson in the history magazine Central European History, June 2012 issue here )
  • Rainer Rother, Judith Prokasky (ed.): The camera as a weapon. Propaganda images of the Second World War. Edition text + kritik , Munich 2010 ISBN 3-86916-067-5 including:
    • Daniel Uziel: Propaganda, War Reporting and the Wehrmacht. Status and function of the propaganda troops in the Nazi state. Pp. 13-36; online at Zeithistorische Forschungen
    • Ralf Forster: From the front to the cinemas. The way of the PK reports in the German newsreel. Pp. 49-64
    • Klaus Hesse: PK photographs in the Nazi war of extermination. A photo report by Artur Grimm from occupied Warsaw in 1939. pp. 137–149
    • Miriam Y. Arani: How enemy images were made. On the visual construction of 'enemies' using the example of the photographs of the propaganda companies from Bromberg in 1939 and Warsaw in 1941. pp. 150–166
    • Alexander Zöller: soldiers or journalists? The image of the propaganda companies between claim and reality. Pp. 167-179
    • Ulrich Döge: The self-portrayal of the propaganda companies in the film press. Pp. 180-192

Web links

Commons : Propagandakompanie  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Propagandakompanie  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Remarks


Individual evidence

  1. ^ Daniel Uziel: The Propaganda Warriors. The Wehrmacht and the Consolidation of the German Home Front . Peter Lang, Oxford a. a. 2008, p. 87f.
  2. ^ Rainer Rutz: "Signal". A German illustrated abroad as a propaganda instrument in World War II. Klartext, Essen 2007, pp. 29–32.
  3. ^ Rainer Rutz: "Signal". A German illustrated abroad as a propaganda instrument in World War II. Klartext, Essen 2007, pp. 33–39, quotation p. 33f.
  4. ^ Daniel Uziel: The Propaganda Warriors. The Wehrmacht and the Consolidation of the German Home Front . Peter Lang, Oxford a. a. 2008, pp. 116 and 164ff.
  5. ^ Daniel Uziel: Propaganda, War Reporting and the Wehrmacht. Status and function of the propaganda troops in the Nazi state . In: Rainer Rother, Judith Prokasky (ed.): The camera as a weapon. Propaganda images of the Second World War. edition text + kritik, Munich 2010, pp. 13–36, here p. 20.
  6. The Christmas ring broadcast - a major achievement in terms of organization and technology. (PDF; 1.7 MB) In: Funkschau . Volume 14 (1941), Issue 2, p. 22.
  7. ^ Daniel Uziel: Propaganda, War Reporting and the Wehrmacht. Status and function of the propaganda troops in the Nazi state , p. 17.
  8. ^ Daniel Uziel: Propaganda, War Reporting and the Wehrmacht. Status and function of the propaganda troops in the Nazi state , p. 21f.
  9. ^ Daniel Uziel: Propaganda. War reporting and the Wehrmacht. Status and function of the propaganda troops in the Nazi state, p. 22.
  10. ^ Daniel Uziel: Propaganda, War Reporting and the Wehrmacht. Status and function of the propaganda troops in the Nazi state , p. 22f.
  11. ^ Klaus Hesse: PK photographs in the Nazi war of extermination. A photo report by Artur Grimm from occupied Warsaw in 1939 . In: Rainer Rother, Judith Prokasky (ed.): The camera as a weapon. Propaganda images of the Second World War. edition text + kritik, Munich 2010, pp. 140f.
  12. ^ Raul Hilberg : The Destruction of European Jews , Fischer Taschenbuch 1982, Volume 2, ISBN 3-596-24417-X , pp. 686 ff.
  13. Rolf Sachsse : The education to look away. Photography in the Nazi state . Verlag der Kunst - Philo Fine Arts, Dresden 2003, ISBN 978-3-86572-390-1 , p. 373.
  14. ^ All quotations from Eric Borchert: Crucial hours. With the camera on the enemy , Limpert, Berlin 1941