item details
Overview
This poster was published by Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF) (German Labour Front). The German Labour Front was established by the Nazi government in 1933 after all German trade unions were dissolved. Both employees and employers were forced into the Front, and by 1942 its membership totalled 25 million people.
There was no wage bargaining, no industrial action or strikes, and no dissent tolerated.
Controlling the organisation of labour allowed the Nazi Party to easily spread propaganda in workplaces (e.g. assimilating workers into a ‘national community’) and direct resources towards armament and strengthening the national economy.
The Front provided a range of facilities and support networks to motivate the workforce to produce more. It also provided education programmes, leisure opportunities and holidays for German workers through the Strength Through Joy movement (Kraft durch Freude, KdF).
This poster calls for people to give to the German Labour Front on collecting day, 17-18 October.
The poster features the swastika symbol of the German Labour Front within a cogged wheel. The swastika was an ancient Eurasian motif appropriated by the Nazi Party in the 1920s and associated with the idea of a racially ‘pure’ state. As the most recognizable symbol of the Nazi regime, the swastika came to represent fascism, terror, and the atrocities committed during the Holocaust.
Why is this poster in Te Papa's collection?
This poster was one of many collected by William (Bill) Sutch (1907-1975, United Kingdom/New Zealand), a prominent citizen known for his work as an economist, writer, public servant and diplomat. His collection traverses a tumultuous period and events including the Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union in the 1930s, the Second World War (1939-45), and the establishment of the United Nations.
Many New Zealanders watched events unfolding in Europe in the interwar period with growing alarm, and thousands volunteered or were conscripted and manpowered in the Second World War (1939-45). Some New Zealanders, like Sutch, worked for the United Nations afterwards, with the hope that future wars could be prevented, and peace maintained.
Sutch's poster collection demonstrates the various propaganda techniques employed by each power. The Nazi regime used posters to win ordinary Germans over to their worldview by showing them, and the world, the promised material advantages of belonging to Hitler’s Germany.
References:
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. n.d. ‘Foundations of the Nazi State’. Holocaust Encyclopedia.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 2017. ‘History of the Swastika’. Holocaust Encyclopedia.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. n.d. ‘Robert Ley’. Holocaust Encyclopedia.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. n.d. ‘The Nazi Terror Begins’. Holocaust Encyclopedia.
Welch, David. 1993. ‘Manufacturing a Consensus: Nazi Propaganda and the Building of a ‘National Community’ (Volksgemeinschaft)’. Contemporary European History 2 (no. 1, March): 1-15.