Kevin Prenger's Blog - Posts Tagged "germany"
Kriegsweihnacht 1944, Christmas and Nazi propaganda
In 1944, Christmas was celebrated for the sixth time since the Second World War had broken out on September 1, 1939. Men who often shared the same religious background fought each other to the death in sharp contrast with the old Christmas message of Peace on Earth. Christmas under Fire, 1944: The Last Christmas of World War II tells about this last war time Christmas. Below an excerpt from this book. This part is about how Christmas was used in Nazi propaganda.
Soldiers of the Volkssturm celebrate Christmas 1944 in a bunker in Eastern Prussia. On the table mail from the home front. (Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-J28377 / CC-BY-SA 3.0)
On Christmas Eve in a ward in a German hospital, an Oberleutnant lay motionless in bed. It was warm and quiet in the room where he was being treated for the severe injuries he had sustained on the Murmansk front. As he lay there in the corner near the stove, his head on a white pillow, it looked as if he were already dead. His eyes in a pale face were shut, and life seemed to be slipping away from him. All of a sudden, the door of the room was carefully opened and the dark room was lit by the cheerfully shimmering candles in a small fir tree. The soft sounds of German Christmas carols sung by children came closer and closer. As if by miracle, the eyes of the injured soldier opened. Laboriously, he raised himself to see where the light and the singing were coming from. While staring at the lights in the tree, his thoughts went back to past Christmas Days at home. A little smile appeared on his face. "He wants to live," so the story continues, "to live for the Heimat (fatherland) so far away but never so close as in this fateful moment, by the light of the Christmas tree. … And he feels joyous and happy: in this holy moment his fate returns from the frontier of death to within range of life itself. He will be cured.
This story about a miraculous healing by the light of a Christmas tree was published in 1944 in the propaganda bulletin "Deutsche Kriegsweihnacht" (German War Christmas). Starting in 1941, each year prior to the Christmas holidays, the department of culture of the propaganda office of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party) issued a compilation of Christmas stories for adults and children, this one being the last. The 1944 issue contained Christmas stories from the front during World War I, such as one about a soldier in France who, while on patrol close to enemy lines, risked his life while fetching a Christmas tree in order to celebrate Christmas. Furthermore, it contained letters to and from the front, poems and folk songs, all of course along the lines of the Nazi Christmas celebration. For the children, it contained fairy tales of Snow White and Mother Holle by the Grimm brothers.
Speeches by the master of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, could not be left out of course. A posthumously published contribution of an ode to the German Christmas celebration was included: National Socialist writer and poet Kurt Eggers died in 1943 at the Eastern front serving with the Waffen-SS. He argued Christmas was not about "giving love" and "legends from the far away Jewish land" but about "freedom, honor and justice." He described the Christmas tree as the symbol of the "grandeur of the struggling and defiant life that in danger and in need holds out against any fearsome and difficult situation." According to him, Christmas became "the celebration of victory and the required willingness to fight. ... We therefore do not celebrate our Weihnachtsfest in the sentimental mood, contained in so many strange Christmas carols, but in the hard and inflexible knowledge that we, as the perennial torch bearers, are destined to carry the light of freedom in the world."
Read further
Soldiers of the Volkssturm celebrate Christmas 1944 in a bunker in Eastern Prussia. On the table mail from the home front. (Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-J28377 / CC-BY-SA 3.0)
On Christmas Eve in a ward in a German hospital, an Oberleutnant lay motionless in bed. It was warm and quiet in the room where he was being treated for the severe injuries he had sustained on the Murmansk front. As he lay there in the corner near the stove, his head on a white pillow, it looked as if he were already dead. His eyes in a pale face were shut, and life seemed to be slipping away from him. All of a sudden, the door of the room was carefully opened and the dark room was lit by the cheerfully shimmering candles in a small fir tree. The soft sounds of German Christmas carols sung by children came closer and closer. As if by miracle, the eyes of the injured soldier opened. Laboriously, he raised himself to see where the light and the singing were coming from. While staring at the lights in the tree, his thoughts went back to past Christmas Days at home. A little smile appeared on his face. "He wants to live," so the story continues, "to live for the Heimat (fatherland) so far away but never so close as in this fateful moment, by the light of the Christmas tree. … And he feels joyous and happy: in this holy moment his fate returns from the frontier of death to within range of life itself. He will be cured.
This story about a miraculous healing by the light of a Christmas tree was published in 1944 in the propaganda bulletin "Deutsche Kriegsweihnacht" (German War Christmas). Starting in 1941, each year prior to the Christmas holidays, the department of culture of the propaganda office of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party) issued a compilation of Christmas stories for adults and children, this one being the last. The 1944 issue contained Christmas stories from the front during World War I, such as one about a soldier in France who, while on patrol close to enemy lines, risked his life while fetching a Christmas tree in order to celebrate Christmas. Furthermore, it contained letters to and from the front, poems and folk songs, all of course along the lines of the Nazi Christmas celebration. For the children, it contained fairy tales of Snow White and Mother Holle by the Grimm brothers.
Speeches by the master of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, could not be left out of course. A posthumously published contribution of an ode to the German Christmas celebration was included: National Socialist writer and poet Kurt Eggers died in 1943 at the Eastern front serving with the Waffen-SS. He argued Christmas was not about "giving love" and "legends from the far away Jewish land" but about "freedom, honor and justice." He described the Christmas tree as the symbol of the "grandeur of the struggling and defiant life that in danger and in need holds out against any fearsome and difficult situation." According to him, Christmas became "the celebration of victory and the required willingness to fight. ... We therefore do not celebrate our Weihnachtsfest in the sentimental mood, contained in so many strange Christmas carols, but in the hard and inflexible knowledge that we, as the perennial torch bearers, are destined to carry the light of freedom in the world."
Read further
New book: Righteous Behind Barbed Wire
Righteous behind Barbed Wire is my latest book translated into English. It was published in November 2024 and is available through Amazon and others.
In Germany, there are few reminders of human rights activist Armin T. Wegner and Auschwitz survivor Ludwig Wörl. In the Nazi period, both of these non-Jewish Germans stood up for their Jewish compatriots, actions for which they were honored after the war as Righteous among the Nations by the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Center, Yad Vashem.
Unlike the Righteous from neutral, hostile or German-occupied countries, Wegner and Wörl opposed the policy of their own government headed by dictator Adolf Hitler. Although they were citizens of the ‘perpetrators’ nation’, they stood up for the victims. In that way they showed themselves as immune to anti-Semitism and the murderous lust many compatriots either did not resist or, worse, took part in.
In addition to caring about the fate of Jews in Germany, Wegner and Wörl had another thing in common: they were themselves victims of persecution by the Nazis and were political prisoners in Hitler’s concentration camps. How did they get there, and what did they do to defend their fellow Jews from Nazi hatred?
Righteous Behind Barbed Wire: Armin Wegner & Ludwig Wörl
In Germany, there are few reminders of human rights activist Armin T. Wegner and Auschwitz survivor Ludwig Wörl. In the Nazi period, both of these non-Jewish Germans stood up for their Jewish compatriots, actions for which they were honored after the war as Righteous among the Nations by the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Center, Yad Vashem.
Unlike the Righteous from neutral, hostile or German-occupied countries, Wegner and Wörl opposed the policy of their own government headed by dictator Adolf Hitler. Although they were citizens of the ‘perpetrators’ nation’, they stood up for the victims. In that way they showed themselves as immune to anti-Semitism and the murderous lust many compatriots either did not resist or, worse, took part in.
In addition to caring about the fate of Jews in Germany, Wegner and Wörl had another thing in common: they were themselves victims of persecution by the Nazis and were political prisoners in Hitler’s concentration camps. How did they get there, and what did they do to defend their fellow Jews from Nazi hatred?
Righteous Behind Barbed Wire: Armin Wegner & Ludwig Wörl
