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Overview
This German propaganda leaflet was dropped on Allied armies in Italy in March 1945, and provides an insight into the nature of propaganda in the last months of the Second World War (1939-45).
Propaganda is an essential tool of war and is designed to lower the enemy’s morale and give victims and resistance fighters hope and information.
Both sides in the conflict produced thousands of propaganda leaflets and fliers. They were dropped by air or fired by artillery shell. Thousands of leaflets could be dropped at once.
Such propaganda was received in various ways. For example, Allied propaganda which fell on concentration camps in 1944-45 gave prisoners hope, although they risked execution if they were found with such a leaflet. On the other hand, Allied soldiers disparaged German propaganda, sometimes using leaflets as toilet paper (they were a handy size).
Different techniques were used, such as this flier with its anti-communist message offering a vision of cheap cars made by enslaved German workers. The workers of Soviet Europe (including Soviet Germany) would be so successful, the flier claims, that Allied soldiers could sit at home collecting the dole and watching football.
This particular example was one of four propaganda leaflets picked up by New Zealand soldier Albert Norman King (1922-1984)* who served in Europe with the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force. He never mentioned the leaflets to his family, and they were found later in one of his photograph albums.
*King was also a member of the 2NZEF rugby football team, known as the 'Kiwis', which toured the United Kingdom, Eire, France and Germany from 1945-46.